Canon: what ARE we babbling about?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien himself repeatedly stated he was uncomfortable with the 'tone' of TH. I'd suggest that this 'discomfort' was not due to TH as a story in its own right, but purely because it had been taken up into the Legendarium & it didn't fit. He only changed the Riddles in the Dark chapter to make it more consistent with LotR - not because the original version didn't work in the context of TH itself.

And shame on Tolkien for making those changes. It's like an old gaffer embarassed about escapades of his younger self, and attempting to rewrite the historical account. EDIT: Or police explanations about deaths in custody: it might be what they wished to have happened, but that is not an honest reflection of what truly happened. And somewhere along the way, someone or some text gets demonised.