'Spun Candy' anyone?

[Child of the 7th Age]

It has the same discomfort with cities, the same 'volkishness' you get in proto-Nazi stuff. It scares me a bit, but not that much because times have changed. It would have scared me more if it had been published the year it was conceived.

Sometimes these literary folk drive me bananas! So many categories and oversimplications that bear no relationship to reality..... I don't think they've read one page of actual history in their life. I suppose Thomas Jefferson's discomfort with cities also qualifies him as a "proto-Nazi"?

Seriously, some very legitimate criticisms of Tolkien can be made. But isn't it interesting how many of the more extreme opinions require the reader to subscribe to a particular set of values, one that essentially limits the set of possibilities open to consideration in a particular world. It would be so much more honest to say this: "I personally don't like X, and since Tolkien shows X in his writings, I simply don't like his approach." I could accept that statement of personal preference. Instead we are all asked to subscribe to a particular philosophy or point of view as if that was the only legitimate one in the entire universe.