I'm aware I can just skip it. But this debate is so old, and basically people tend to take one side or the other and stick with it. It can never be properly resolved, because Tolkien is dead. I know - I visited his grave for the first time two weeks ago. That was quite an experience for me...
...I guess I would just like to see Tolkien be analyzed with some "real" criticism, and this kind of wheel-spinning just exasperates me. I understand the fun of it...I guess that, on *this* particular debate, I'm both a little exhausted by it and, from my own reading of the text in LotR, feel it is moot. But that's my feeling.
I've been reading some Robert Howard lately. Anyone else like Conan? I love serial authors...Howard, Lovecraft, Doyle etc. Although Peter David's Star Trek novels were the serials of my own youth.