Tolkien, autism, and geeks

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I stumbled on this ancient piece of hate speech today, and as an aspie and a well-read, well-educated adult who (gasp) takes Tolkien seriously, it really bummed me out.
http://www.adequacy.org/diaries/stories ... 0.208.html

So, are our literary (and artistic, and musical?) tastes shaped by an "inability to grasp the full range of human emotion" (whether or not we like Tolkien)? When we enjoy the arts, are we missing the point, the very parts that normal people most appreciate? Are we fully human at all?

Maybe I shouldn't let it get to me, but this sort of thing really takes the wind out of my sails. Makes me want to spend the rest of my life hiding somewhere, meekly silent and filled with self-loathing. Maybe a subterranean lake, where I could read my Tolkien in peace and mutter to myself through mouthfuls of raw fish, or something.

This review is a bunch of BS, imo. The author completely misses the allegorical nature of the Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien wrote partially in response to what modern people would call his PTSD after WWI. The books delve into the evils of modern, mechanical-based society (Sauron and the Orcs, Saruman destroying nature as fuel to build his abominations) versus agricultural and Earth-based society, respecting nature and living things, (The Shire and Rohan and their animal husbandry). It's about the clash between the old intellectual establishment (Gondor), the old spirituality (the Elves) against the new intellectual nihilism (Goblins).

That's my two cents' worth, at any rate.

I think the person who made that needs to be tortured... mercilessly.

Who the hell cares what this guy thinks of Tolkien? Back in my college days, I took an English class called Heroic Fantasy, and our text was - you guessed it - The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. I think it's saying a lot that Tolkien's fiction is the subject matter of a college course.
For what it's worth, while I did enjoy reading Tolkien, I'm more of a Robert E. Howard man myself. Howard, of course, was creating an American alternative to Tolkien's fantasy fiction here in America in the first half of the 20th century. You ought to see how Howard's most famous character, Conan the Barbarian, has been ravaged by the critics.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

That website makes my eyes bleed. They need a new designer.