david_b

Unless the people are humans or elfs (hence orcs) or dwarfs or hobbits - then they aren't influenced or changed at all by the power of the ring. The fact that the characters are somewhat like woodcuts might also be owed to two things:

- Tolkien was a linguist, not necessarily well-versed in the craft of literature. Writing good believable characters is extremely hard; moving stick puppets around (Dan Brown comes to mind) is practicaly the default-state, entry-level of writing.

- the books were his answer to the edda. I can't find a sources on this but I believe part of what he wanted was England to have a set of epic myths commensurable with those in the edda - this motivation certainly influenced the overall style of the stories.

I wouldn't call the analysis necessarily wrong or completely unconvincing (the pdf linked here shows his ideas much better), but I would call tendentious in that it looks like everything that doesn't fit conveniently is left out.

> The Moorcocks now divide their time between Paris and Austin, Texas,

It's alway good to know where people talking about fascism actually live - it gives a sense of perspective about their opinions (jodhpurs: nasty and evil / state run by nutcase defending dildo bans and religious commandments in front of state capitol: totally ok).

> “In Tolkien, everyone’s in their place and happy to be there. We go there and back, to where we started. There’s no escape, nothing will ever change and nobody will ever break out of this well-­ordered world.”

Has he even read the books? Nothing changes? I'll give him that the manichean world Tolkien created is certainly somewhat uncomfortable to anyone with a worldview that includes shades of gray (although I don't think that the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are as black and white as they are made out to be) - but calling someone a crypto-fascist is really harsh.

> Science fiction/fantasy author Michael Moorcock has suggested that the Gor novels should be placed on the top shelves of bookstores, saying, "I’m not for censorship but I am for strategies which marginalize stuff that works to objectify women and suggests women enjoy being beaten."

I want to hear him on Fifty Shades of Grey...

> For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me.

Maybe you're just really sensitive to lectins and your body is trying to tell you something...

In many countries exerting influence in the democratic process is heavily tied to the monetary resources of the person doing the influencing. Given that mechanism it might be easier to remove the wealth inequality than to dismantle the inequality in the democratic process directly.