Yes, Tolkien is Wonderful, but...

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Interestingly, this Maugham secenario in a way was prophetic of The Name of the Rose- although there Eco, an established Literatus, was shoving two fingers at those of his colleagues who claimed detective stories were inherently lightweight and unintellectual.

Certainly I agree with your assessment of the Extruded Fantasy Product which clutters the bookshops. But this hostility to 'fantasy' erupted when the LR was first published, long before the clones appeared. Indeed Tolkien was protesting against something of the sort when he actually *defended* the Beowulf-poet's focus of monsters, rather than the Dark Age politics so many scholars evidently wanted to read. Mike Drout (I think) has referred to this phenomenon as "Dyson's Law:" No writing can be considered 'good' if it contains an Elf.*



*This derives from an anecdote related by Christopher Tolkien: at one Inklings as his father began to read one of his pieces, Hugo Dyson, lounging on the sofa, loudly moaned "Not another f***ing Elf!"