History Camp: The Mythmakers by John Hendrix

I had not attended a History Camp virtual event for a few years but am still subscribed to the weekly newsletter, so I was delighted to receive an email featuring this author talk. Graphic novelist John Hendrix recently published The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien with Abrams Books and spoke on his research for the book. The talk was moderated by History Camp founder Lee Wright and major contributor Mary Adams.

Hendrix described Narnia and Middle-earth as the “giant IPs [intellectual properties] in our world”, and emphasized that the authors never could have imagined this outcome. Lewis and Tolkien had similar childhood experiences as they orphans raised in the British Isles, and both survived World War I. Lewis became “scarred by World War I, bitter… [and] saw the world as a broken promise” while Tolkien was “far more optimistic than most of his generation… [and] created myths that could sustain his art”. In fact, Tolkien wrote the earliest drafts of what became The Silmarillion during the war.

The pair met at an English department faculty meeting at Oxford University in the late 1920s and bonded over their interest in Norse mythology, which they both loved, and the late 16^th century English epic poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, which Lewis loved and Tolkien hated. Even with these shared interest, the two had sharply different personalities. Lewis could compose a first draft of a novel with little revision and wrote all seven of his Narnia books in seven years. Tolkien was “a noodler, revisionist, and reviser” who struggled to finish anything. He took seventeen years to write The Lord of the Rings, and the published version did not feel finished to him. (I agree with Tolkien to that point, but this does work as an in-universe conceit.) Other literature experts and historians have described how the two needed each other to complete their best work, as Tolkien would not publish without encouragement from Lewis, while Lewis needed Tolkien’s “God-infused” view of the world to create his fantasy.

Lewis was an atheist when he first met Tolkien, and yet he remarked that his life felt different when around his new friend, which contributed to his conversion to Christianity. Early in their friendship, Tolkien shared the story of Luthien and Beren, a fantasy based on the relationship between Tolkien and his wife Edith. Lewis enjoyed the tale so much that he wrote a fourteen-page commentary on it, solidifying the friendship. Lewis had come “to believe that everything he truly loved in the world was imaginary” and anything that “brought him capital J Joy was lies”. Tolkien taught him that the “biggest gap with modern folks [is] myth does not equal lie [and] say[s] things about the world that are real… as true as any piece of data…”

Among the most interesting facts Hendrix shared during the talk was his statistic on number of original Narnia and Middle-earth books in print. About 250 million copies have been sold when combining both worlds. These complex world-building projects began as “a dare to one another… make the kind of works they longed to read”. While Lewis and Tolkien were highly regarded academics, they enjoyed reading fantasy and science fiction but found few books that were entertaining for adults. Lewis began his fiction career with the scifi series, The Space Trilogy, the first book being Out of the Silent Planet published in 1938. Tolkien attempted to write a time travel story that Hendrix thought was not very good, although it was published posthumously as part of The Book of Lost Tales.

Of course, Lewis and Tolkien were not alone in their writing. Tolkien enjoyed forming clubs of friends who shared his interests. The Coalbiters read Norse mythology in Icelandic, while the Inklings critiqued each other’s writing, and often none too kindly. Lewis’ older brother Warren Lewis lamented that “Reading to the Inklings was like facing a Howitzer with a peashooter”. Members sometimes had to write letters of apology for their conduct during meetings. Besides Lewis and Tolkien, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams were the most famous writers in the group. While the Inklings admired the work of Dorothy Leigh Sayers, she was not invited to attend the club as the only woman, since this would have been considered inappropriate.

Unfortunately, a rift grew between Lewis and Tolkien in the time leading up to World War II. With his growing interest in Christianity, Lewis wrote apologetics, or theological texts, based on his understanding of the Bible. Tolkien disapproved of this writing, just as he disapproved of most things, since Lewis had never attended seminary. These apologetics turned into encouraging radio talks during World War II, which later became the book Mere Christianity. Throughout this time, Tolkien was writing draft after draft of The Lord of the Rings, changing the plot from a children’s book to an adult story, and even considering a major rewrite of The Hobbit to better fit the new tone. Hendrix noted that their friendship became distant as many things do in an imperfect world: “Things kind of fall apart. This does not feel like our home, even though we want it to be… a sadness that grew between them… [an] inability to be honest with one another”. Lewis married in 1956 without telling Tolkien and died suddenly in 1963. While Tolkien thought myths should have a “eucatastrophe”, or a sudden turn of events where the protagonist is saved by grace rather than their own heroic works, his own friendship was never saved.

The talk ended with Hendrix assuring the audience that his graphic novel had a happy ending, but of course, we would have to read it to find out. His other works include deep and complex stories of martyrdom, such as biographies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Brown, as he has “respect for the audience’s ability to engage with difficult and noble ideas”. While he describes all of work as having “a Christological shape”, he wants to present stories that include moral dissonance and no clear answers as to whether the actions of the protagonist were justified. His next book will cover the Salem Witch Trials. Additionally, he teaches people of all ages his craft through the book Drawing Is Magic. I enjoyed this half-hour discussion, although I would have caught more if closed captioning was available, and I look forward to someday reading the book.