[Dragaera] narrative time in FHYA and The Hobbit

[Philip Hart]

At the beginning of _FHYA_ we follow a messenger in the palace.
Paarfi gets a bit diverted and when he gets back to the messenger
she has proceeded along her route.  This reflects the onrush
of events in the novel, as pointed out in the intro to the Text.

I happened to notice something similar in The Hobbit: in chapter 7,
Flies and Spiders, the Mirkwood spiders have captured the dwarves; one 
spider is about to kill Bombur.  Bilbo picks up a stone to throw at the 
spider.  Tolkien remarks that Bilbo has good aim, and can in fact do 
lots of things that "I haven't had time to tell you about.  There is no 
time now."  And in chapter 18 he writes, "[Bilbo] was aching in his 
bones for the homeward journey.  That, however, was a little delayed,
so in the meantime I will tell something of events."  He goes on to 
catch us up on stuff that happened recently.

This is not something that one would expect to find in a Vlad narrative
I think.  I don't know quite what the difference is - maybe that he
is relating things as he experienced them instead of describing what
happened.