For starters, I don't want to come across as someone Trash Talkin' Tolkien. The Trilogy is a remarkable work, and I was quite moved by it, even though I came to it quite skeptical. But the depth of the characters and story gripped me, there is a moral and philosophical dimension to it as well as evidence of an inspired vision and imagination.

And of course, there is the language. There is an Elizabethan sound and rhythm to it, and it never comes across as stilted or cliched. Tolkien simply wrote beautiful prose. Others have attempted to write in the style of Shakespeare and the KJV, but, in my opinion, only Tolkien has pulled it off successfully.

But I also see in Tolkien an example of what I call Medieval Mellerdrammer. There is nothing new about this, he is not the only modern writer who attempts to mine the ethos of the Middle Ages for esthetic purposes, he is just one of the few that can get away with it.

I have my own theories about this. We have romanticized this historical era. The Empire has collapsed and we take comfort in a land dominated by fair and noble Lords and Ladies, Chivalric knights, spooky wizards and sturdy yeomen. Look at the role the Teutonic Knights played in NAZI iconography. It is one of the comforting myths of our age, and it isn't only the fantasy of Western, European man. We have the tales of the Shogunate in Medieval Japan, the time of the Warlords in Ancient China, the fall of the Mycenaen Empire (the Greek Dark Ages) is the setting of the Odyssey and Iliad. Those were feudal societies too, and subsequent ages seem nostalgic for the idealized version of those times we have devised.

These are worlds dominated by small local lords, and they are times of strong men and easily identified villains and heroes. It survives today, much disguised, as States' Rights and Federalism. It is not the stultifying oppression of the Empire, but it is not the chaos of barbarian invasion, either. The men with the horses and swords live in the castle and they take good care of us.

We all may intellectually realize it wasn't like that at all, that the medieval aristocracy was little better than bikers on horseback, wearing mail and plate instead of leather and denim. But deep inside us is a nostalgia for that paternalism. The lot of the peasant was little better than slavery. But feudalism works, when it really hits the fan its about the only form of social organization that really can hold things together.

In our fairy tales, in our children's stories, in our national myths, even in our Dungeons and Dragons video games, the trope of medieval chic holds. This goes way deep into the psyche, the misty land where anthropology and psychology overlap. This is the landscape Tolkien explores, and I just don't feel comfortable there.

Frankly, I prefer the Empire. With all its flaws, it has plumbing and it has roads, the fighting is mostly far away in the provinces and unless you're a slave, its not too bad.