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Dear Mr. Ebert,
Dec. 9th, 2005 09:13 am[yes, I sent this]
Dear Mr. Ebert,
I'm dismayed that an old fantasy/science-fiction reader like yourself would fall for the canard that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien "hated each other's fantasy worlds." Tolkien did remark privately to a friend that Lewis's Narnia "wouldn't do," by which he meant that he considered the imaginary world slapdash. But this is fastidiousness, not jealousy, and hardly rises to hatred. The year after his The Hobbit was published, Tolkien enthusiastically recommended Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet to his own publisher, writing that reading it in manuscript he "was so enthralled that I could do nothing else until I had finished it," adding that he "should have bought this story at almost any price if I had found it in print." This is not the act of a man offended that someone else is creating another universe next door to his own.
And Tolkien was a man of narrow literary sympathies. Lewis, who had much broader tastes in literature, encouraged the diffident, recalcitrant Tolkien in his literary efforts for decades. He was uniformly and entirely enthusiastic about both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and published two highly favorable reviews of each work, writing of The Lord of the Rings that "I have little doubt that the book will soon take its place among the indispensables." Lewis didn't hate Tolkien's fantasy world; he loved it as much as any literature he'd ever read.
(Tolkien's comments on Out of the Silent Planet may be found in his published Letters, Lewis's on The Lord of the Rings in his book On Stories.)
In A.N. Wilson's biography of Lewis, there's an account of one of the Inklings who would make rude interjections when Tolkien read from The Lord of the Rings. Somehow the impression has gotten around that it was Lewis who did this. Perhaps that story has come your way? Wilson has been at pains to correct this error when he finds it. His text is clear: the objector was Hugo Dyson, not Lewis. Lewis loved Tolkien's story and wanted him to keep reading it, and most of the other Inklings liked it too. And though Wilson doesn't make this clear, Dyson's objection was not to Tolkien's story so much as to any readings at all, because they interfered with open conversation, which Dyson preferred because he always dominated it.
Yours,
Dear Mr. Ebert,
I'm dismayed that an old fantasy/science-fiction reader like yourself would fall for the canard that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien "hated each other's fantasy worlds." Tolkien did remark privately to a friend that Lewis's Narnia "wouldn't do," by which he meant that he considered the imaginary world slapdash. But this is fastidiousness, not jealousy, and hardly rises to hatred. The year after his The Hobbit was published, Tolkien enthusiastically recommended Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet to his own publisher, writing that reading it in manuscript he "was so enthralled that I could do nothing else until I had finished it," adding that he "should have bought this story at almost any price if I had found it in print." This is not the act of a man offended that someone else is creating another universe next door to his own.
And Tolkien was a man of narrow literary sympathies. Lewis, who had much broader tastes in literature, encouraged the diffident, recalcitrant Tolkien in his literary efforts for decades. He was uniformly and entirely enthusiastic about both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and published two highly favorable reviews of each work, writing of The Lord of the Rings that "I have little doubt that the book will soon take its place among the indispensables." Lewis didn't hate Tolkien's fantasy world; he loved it as much as any literature he'd ever read.
(Tolkien's comments on Out of the Silent Planet may be found in his published Letters, Lewis's on The Lord of the Rings in his book On Stories.)
In A.N. Wilson's biography of Lewis, there's an account of one of the Inklings who would make rude interjections when Tolkien read from The Lord of the Rings. Somehow the impression has gotten around that it was Lewis who did this. Perhaps that story has come your way? Wilson has been at pains to correct this error when he finds it. His text is clear: the objector was Hugo Dyson, not Lewis. Lewis loved Tolkien's story and wanted him to keep reading it, and most of the other Inklings liked it too. And though Wilson doesn't make this clear, Dyson's objection was not to Tolkien's story so much as to any readings at all, because they interfered with open conversation, which Dyson preferred because he always dominated it.
Yours,
