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I think one reason that the criticisms of Pullman and Moorcock come across as petulant (at least to me) is that it's the work that is the ultimate argument. The way to really "defeat" Tolkien and win your argument over him is to write a book that is so much better (imaginatively, technically, ideologically, or whatever) that it transcends LotR so completely as to reduce it to irrelevance or at least quaintness (in the most dismissive sense of that word). For those guys -- who are at least moderately successful in their own right, but who still live in the shadow of Tolkien -- to write essays bashing him is like Charles Barkley writing essays on why Michael Jordan is overrated. No. If you want to prove that Jordan is overrated, you've got to prove it on the court where it counts. Talk is cheap.
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