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LOL...I was still at work when I replied earlier, and when I came home I pulled one of those paperbacks off the shelf. In the Introduction by King, titled On Being Nineteen (And A Few Other Things), the very first sentence is, "Hobbits were big when I was nineteen (a number of some import in the stories you are about to read)."

The next paragraph concludes, "The Dark Tower books, like most long fantasy tales written by men and women of my generation (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen Donaldson, and The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks are just two of many), were born out of Tolkien's."