Tag: J.R.R. Tolkien

A Brief Defense of C.S. Lewis (and Narnia)

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Tom Baker as Puddleglum in the classic BBC production of The Silver Chair… One of my favorite Narnians

I still get comments from Christians who think The Chronicles of Narnia are rubbish and their author, C.S. Lewis, just two shades short of being an out-and-out pagan.

Well, his friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, warned him: put all those fauns and centaurs and river gods in Narnia–and Bacchus, of all things!–and readers are going to think there’s something not quite right about your Christianity. Worse, in the Narnia finale, The Last Battle, he has the old Professor say, “It’s all in Plato!” I love these books, but that line makes me cringe.

Nevertheless, I am here to plead with Narnia-knockers–please, give the man a break! He was an academic, surrounded by other academics along with college students. He could have just as easily wound up worshiping a box of rubber bands. That he had any Christianity at all is cause for celebration.

There is Christian gold in Narnia. It’s not hard to find. If you don’t care for it, only a fool tries to convince someone that he ought to like something that he doesn’t like. But at least grant me this:

For a man who started out as an atheist and was a college professor for most of his life, old “Jack” Lewis did just fine.

Fantasy Novels That Didn’t Quite Make It

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Someone, I think it was Mickey Rooney, once said, “If I have seen farther than others, it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.”

But sometimes you can do all right standing on the shoulders of midgets, too.

Here are a few old fantasy novels you’ve never read and never heard of,  but which have nevertheless inspired some very famous novels.

The Hamster, the Alchemist, and the Sock Drawer by G.M. Karz was almost certainly the inspiration for C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (starting with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe); but in Karz’ case, the various elements of the story never quite came together. There’s something unconvincing about a hamster that inspires awe, and a whole public school class of 12-year-olds accidentally entering another world while putting Limburger cheese in the headmaster’s sock drawer.

A Game of Throneberry, by Imhotep B. McGonegal, tries to re-interpret the 1962 New York Mets’ baseball season as Shakespeare’s plays about the Wars of the Roses. The Mets in 1962, their first season, lost their first twelve ballgames. Then along came Marve Throneberry and they got it together to win 40 games while only losing 120. But I dunno: presenting Marvelous Marve as a kind of modern-day Richard III, drowning poor Elio Chacon in a great big barrel of wine hidden behind the set of Kiner’s Korner–really, I can’t imagine what Mr. McGonegal thought he was doing. Inspiring today’s Game of Thrones franchise?

In The Slobbit, Prof, B.Y.O. Boose created a fantasy world centered around extremely slovenly little people called Slobbits. A Slobbit named Bulbo accompanies a group of leprechauns on their way to slay a dragon. It’s difficult because Bulbo is always losing things. Scholars believe this little-known tale prompted J.R.R. Tolkien to write The Hobbit. Could be, could be…

Last but not least, we have The Wizard of Pfudd by Priscilla Chumply, an obscure 19th century fantasy that introduced the whole idea of an entire nation being duped by a fraudulent wizard–although poor Miss Chumply undermined her own work by writing all the dialogue in garbled Classical Greek. Many modern masters of fantasy have been inspired by Pfudd, but none have ever admitted to it.

Raping Tolkien

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Yesterday, giving it a last-minute once-over before it goes to the printer, I found a typo on the cover of my new book, The Palace. Happily, it’s fixed. Nothing like a totally wrong word in the cover copy to make an author look bad.

But I can’t imagine how I’d feel if some movie-maker were doing to my books what Peter Jackson seems to be doing to Tolkien‘s classic, The Hobbit. Unlike Tolkien, I am not dead.

Jackson has taken a fairly compact book and stretched it out into a three-part movie marathon. The Hobbit II: The Desolation of Smaug has just been released, in time for Christmas. And no, I haven’t seen it. Are you kidding? These days, for the price of a bad movie, you could get a good book (one of mine, for instance). But I’ve been reading the reviews, and I have arranged for someone who has seen the movie to write a review for this blog.

It would take too much space to list all of Peter Jackson’s insults to Tolkien. Let me focus on just one of them.

For no cogent reason whatsoever, Jackson has invented a new major character to throw into the story–a gorgeous Elf-maid who is also the greatest warrior in Middle-Earth. (Barf bag, please. Excuse me for a minute…) I mean, what’s a fantasy without the most worn-out old cliche of them all?

But he doesn’t stop there. He has Miss Mirkwood fall in love with a Dwarf! Uh, Elves and Dwarves are different species. So this is like someone falling in love with a Shetland pony.

I think I might pay not to see this. I certainly wouldn’t pay to see it.

What did Tolkien or his heirs ever do to Jackson, to deserve this? Could the next movie please be directed by Reggie Jackson? Or LaToya Jackson? Anyone would do a better job than this. I am quite sure the specter of an Elf-Dwarf romance will ruin my sleep tonight.

But enough of this–I have a Christmas tree to decorate!

Review of Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien

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Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien by Stratford Caldecott (Darton, Longman, & Todd Ltd., London, UK: 2003)

“He [Tolkien] created a body of work that is imbued with a profound wisdom-a wisdom that our civilization desperately needs-drawn very largely from the Catholic faith in which he was raised.”   Caldecott, p. 4

I was a sophomore in high school when the Tolkien craze hit America, back in the mid-1960s. I read The Lord of the Rings and fell into a passion to become a fantasy novelist. I had never imagined that such stories as this had ever been written. They set my brain on fire.

It took me some fifty years to achieve my dream, by God’s grace. I am a fantasy novelist, with real books in print, published by Chalcedon. I read the Bible every day, but every two years or so, I revisit Tolkien’s world of Middle-earth. His books have never lost their fascination for me. I dare to hope that God will bless my Bell Mountain novels and someday make them speak to their readers as Tolkien speaks to me.

Tolkien published only two novels in his lifetime, The Lord of the Rings and its predecessor, The Hobbit. What is it about these two books that has wrought so strongly upon my own imagination? And I’m not alone-their sales are in the many millions, worldwide.

This little book by Stratford Caldecott-director of the Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture, Oxford-has at least some of the answer to that question.

First You Have to See It

C. S. Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, and many published meditations on Christian theology and themes, was one of Tolkien’s closest friends. Tolkien is widely credited with having converted Lewis, then an unbeliever, to the Christian faith (p. 11).

I didn’t read the Narnia books until much later in life; and when I did, their Christian message was, to me, quite obvious. Written for children, enjoyed by many adults, the Chronicles thinly disguise our Lord Jesus Christ as the great Lion, Aslan-who sang the world of Narnia into existence, died to save a sinner, and rose again from the dead to be revealed as the true king of all creation, forever. Some Christians do find these books unpalatable, pointing-as did Tolkien-to an overabundance of pagan influences. I can only answer that Lewis had a very long way to go, spiritually, before he was capable of writing Narnia. I’m sure he would have gone farther, had he lived longer.

But Tolkien’s message is not so obvious. In fact, his message has eluded many readers to whom The Lord of the Rings is just a slam-bang fantasy, nothing more. The Christianity which is the foundation of Middle-earth was not apparent to me until, frankly, other writers pointed it out to me. But now I can’t not see it!

If you haven’t seen it, either, Caldecott’s book will make it visible to you. He cites abundantly from Tolkien’s many published letters, in which Tolkien wrote candidly of his vision and his methods. For example, Tolkien wrote to a friend in 1953:

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion,’ to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism” (p. 50).

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