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Originally Posted by cearbhallain
I agree completely - and I think that the Marshes are the best part of TT. The second book has metric butt-loads of exposition and setting up for the big finale. It's hard to make that stuff compelling and I hate the thought that first-time readers are giving up because of it.
LOTR isn't the only major work that suffers from the middle-bog problem. Another that comes immediately to mind is Little, Big by John Crowley. It's a great story and I've read it several times, but I always hesitate to start it again because the part after the set up and before the payoff really is a bit of a slog.
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I've often thought it somewhat miraculous that Tolkien created what he did.
He wasn't an author when he began. He was a college professor of Old English. He created the languages first, then peoples that spoke them, and a history of them and the world in which they lived. He was also trying to craft a specifically British branch of faery, which meant taking inspiration from Norse and Teutonic sources, but not Celtic ones.
LoTR was written as one
long volume, and split in three parts because it could not be produced as one book at the time. I've wondered on occasion what might have resulted had Tolkien been able to work with a good editor while writing the book, who could have advised him on aspects of structure, pacing, and the dreaded expository lump.
The sorts of structural problems LoTR has are those typical to an author who hasn't written a novel before, and lacks some of the insight experience brings in how to tell a story.
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Dennis