[lbo-talk] "Not another f*cking elf..."

[Grant Lee]

...was the supposed exclamation of the poet and WW1 veteran Hugo Dyson, when
Tolkein was reading drafts of LotR to his friends.

Which was pretty much my feeling about the books, but I did enjoy the recent
adaptations.

The historian in me wants to read the story as a jumbled-up, dualistic and
tendentious WW2 analogy: the pluralists of Middle Earth unite against
ultra-authoritarian primitive accumulation, aided by ruthless
military-industrialism --- seen in the mass produced, unthinking orcs.

And in the end it comes down to a small force, returning the evil to whence
it came, with earth-shattering results.