The Walrus was Jack

[selenak]

So here I am, sitting in a train, idly reading the "Literary Review" from November, when lo and behold, I come across an article opening with the following lines:

"If Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were the Lennon and McCartney of the Inklings, then Charles Williams was the George Harrison. (And their Ringo? Possibly Owen Barfield. Another story.)"My

Comments

[sonetka]

The trouble with trying to figure that out is that Lennon and McCartney's best work was done in collaboration; once they went their separate ways they were free to overindulge themselves in the matter of lyric writing and their songs suffered for it. (I know a lot of people love "Imagine" but I'm pretty allergic to it, though has as much to do with the awful music teacher from sixth grade who LOVED it and made us practice the damn thing for months and perform it at the end of year concert. Still, I think that objectively it just isn't as good as his collaborative songs). Since Lewis and Tolkien never collaborated on any work that I know of the parallel is never going to be exact. So I'm pretty sure he was thinking of them in tandem, with the two of them together filling the "Lennon and McCartney" roles but neither one being cast specifically as Lennon or McCartney. I should read Charles Williams sometime; he's one of those people that the Inklings and contemporaries were constantly referring to but I've never actually read anything by him directly.

I'm very curious now as to what a Lewis/Tolkien fantasy collaboration would have looked like, assuming that the impossible happened and they could actually agree on anything long enough to crank out an entire story.

[selenak]

I hear you on Imagine, though this parody is divine.

Williams: same here. It's the equvivalent of fannish osmosis of shows you haven't watched but which are constantly referenced so you get many of the allusions anyway.

Lewis/Tolkien fantasy collaboration: phew. "Look, Tollers, we have to finish it before the decade. Actually, before the year. So MAYBE we should skip the part where you invent a language for everyone involved?"

"I think we should skip the embarrassing Ulster Protestantism in the main character's big monologue instead, Jack. You know what I think of allegory. Why you couldn't become a Catholic after I rescued you from the atheist dregs is beyond me, anyway."

Subject: since Lewis cheerfully confessed he wrote an emo Loki epic in school because he hated his schoolmates so much and projected them all into Thor, and since their shared love for Norse mythology was one of the things they bonded over orginally, I propose they tackle the Edda and write their version of it.

[sonetka]

I LOVE that video -- it almost makes up for having had to sing the original! (And while I have no idea whether John and Yoko actually had a white room like that, it feels right for them, you know?)

Lewis and Tolkien collaborating over the Edda sounds much more promising than trying to write a completely invented fantasy together. As much as Tolkien's world-building is actual, well, world-building, I think he was slightly handicapped by being such a genius at what he did that it was hard for him to enjoy works which, though not up to his standard, were nonetheless still really good -- at least from the perspective of mere mortals :). (I remember one of his letters where he was ragging on Gaudy Night a bit, and thinking that it had to be painful to be SO GOOD that even that book didn't seem like much to you, and I really do not mean that sarcastically).

Which monologue in Narnia is full of Ulsterior motive? I can't place it, though I haven't looked at the books in a while. Puzzle posing as and speaking for the lion comes across as kind of anti-papal, I guess. But I don't always pick up on these things right away -- I read the Narnia books first when I was about seven and honestly didn't get that lightbulb "Oh, it's a Christian allegory!" moment until I was TWENTY.

[selenak]

It does feel right, either way, but in this case, it's helped by the fact that video is a parody of the original Imagine vid, which was shot at Tittenhurst Park, John and Yoko's last English home before they moved to New York, which they sold to Ringo later. Whether or not John (who could be extremely self mocking) was conscious of the irony of singing "Imagine no possessions" while strolling around in his lordly estate is debatable.

Lewis and Tolkien collaborating over the Edda sounds much more promising than trying to write a completely invented fantasy together.

Yes, that's why I picked the idea. Tolkien's standards for world building being so high. But the Edda, no matter how you interpret it, already sets out certain parameters, and they really loved that mythology to bits.

Which monologue in Narnia is full of Ulsterior motive?

Oh, I wasn't thinking of any one in particular, more about Tolkien's dislike of blatant allegory and ongoing digs at Lewis the Protestant Ulsterman (which were however mostly due to his disappointment that Lewis didn't become a Catholic once he'd left atheism behind), as in this famous quote after Lewis' death:

“[C.S. Lewis] …of course had some oddities and could sometimes be irritating. He was after all and remained an Irishman of Ulster. But he did nothing for effect; he was not a professional clown, but a natural one, when a clown at all. He was generous-minded, on guard against all prejudices, though a few were too deep-rooted in his native background to be observed by him.”

re: religion in Narnia, never mind being twenty, I was 24 or 25 when I read the Narnia novels, and didn't twig the Alsan = Jesus bit until the third book or so (and yes, I read them in the order as originally published).