Beagle's earlier novels, A Fine and Private Place (1960) and The Last Unicorn (1968), were often compared to the epic fantasy narratives of J. R. R. Tolkien and others, but he seems to be moving consciously away from these influences. In The Folk of the Air, the fantastic elements carry little allegorical burden in and of themselves, and serve instead as a commentary on American life in the 1980s. As Beagle once said, "[America] is certainly as fantastic a country as Middle-Earth or Prydain, and almost as real." The character of Farrell also shares strong similarities with popular novels of the California counterculture in the 1960s, especially Richard Farina's Been Down So Long Looks Like Up to Me (1965).