... I disagree quite vehemently with 'Epic Pooh'. Obviously some of his points are subjective - he doesn't like Tolkien's poetry, for instance - but the main thrust of his argument is that Tolkien's style is 'cuddly' and lacks tension. Which... I'm not sure how little of LotR you have to read to get that impression. The whole trip to Crickhollow is an exercise in slowly building tension.

He also tries to claim that Tolkien's use of humour is 'unconscious' - ie, he seems to think that all the understated comedy wasn't written deliberately - and that Tolkien doesn't take any pleasure in words. Which, when said about a man who imvented a language and then wrote a world to use it in, is pretty much the height of ridiculous.

At one point, I started on a rather scathing dissection of the essay through the mouthpiece of Terri Ryan; I never quite got it finished, but I might take it up again.

(Oh, he also complains at various points about the use of nobles, artisans, peasants, and the petit bourgeoisie as heroes. I'm not entirely sure who that leaves? Because those four broadly correlate to the Upper, Lower Middle, Working, and Upper Middle classes...)

hS