Tolkien the Metafictionist

[Mithalwen]

I know that Tolkien's work is fiction but I love the level of detail that makes Middle Earth so vivid, that as you read LOTR you glimpse the Silmarillion. It isn't real but it has a plausibility about it, a degree of coherence and scope it does seem different from the likes of Alice, which i loved but which doesnt have the same hold on me and which is clearly made up with its dream conceit...oh I am finding this idea hard to express.

I suppose what it boils down to is that Tolkien may be no more real than other fantasy novels but I find it hard really to find it less real than other mythologies which I know aren't real either. They may have elements from genuine events but are they not just asbmade up albeit by more people over a longer time. Does that process make them more real than the synthetic mythology produced from the learning and imagination of one man?