The Transformative Friendship of C.S Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien

Speaker: Andrew Lazo

[rockandsandapologetics]

I've read quite a bit of C.S. Lewis and a goodly amount of J.R.R. Tolkien, including the book about their friendship and a script about the same. You skipped over a couple of things. First, Tolkien failed to talk Lewis' advice and left the first publishing company because a 2nd publishing company promised they'd publish everything, but then asked him to cut The Lord of the Rings in Half. Still Lewis was at his side encouraging him. Yet C.S. Lewis was also writing up a storm. After several books, such as the Pilgrim's Regress, Mere Christian, the Four Loves, and Screwtape letters he came out with his adult sci-fi trilogy. All this began to grate on Tolkien, but nothing was so repugnant to Lewis as his Chronicles of Narnia. After Lewis died he was still nursing a grudge. A girl came up and asked him to sign one of the Lord of the Rings book and she stated, "I read them all and the Hobbit, plus the Chronicles of Narnia. I heard you and C.S. Lewis were best friends." At the time it only made him angry, but as he was being rewarded for writing a book that had out sold any other book, both in Europe and the United States he relayed this story and that if it hadn't been for Jack Lewis and the Inklings the Lord of the Rings would never have been published. Another thing you missed was the term eucatastrophe. If I remember correctly it was a phrase coined by Lewis to express how true communion comes out of trials shared by friends. Hence the term Eucharist is joined to catastrophe making the new word eucatastrophe.