It seems hard to remember now that there was a time when the American counterculture embraced J.R.R. Tolkien and his masterpiece. Groovy dudes in pipe-weed jerkins yelling “Go Go Gandalf,” walls covered with graffiti proclaiming “Frodo Lives!”, and election-year “Gandalf for President” buttons were all popular sights on college campuses from Harvard to Berkeley.

Read the rest: Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Bored with the Good: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 4.

I had mentioned this series earlier before Part 4 was posted. I’ll need time to read it more carefully. I frankly think of Howard as more of an anti-Tolkien than not. But it has been awhile since I read him.

Also, I’m not sure I would be quite as negative about Tolkien’s appeal to “hippies.”

Still, it is a post well worth reading and thinking about.