When he got his first look at Tolkien's fiction -- an early run at the love story of Beren and Luthien, a cornerstone of Middle-earth's invented mythology and and a tale with tremendous personal associations for Tolkien -- Lewis recognized a man who could spend long years grinding away at a single story, but who also had his own voice and used many of the pagan source materials Lewis loved. To his lasting credit, Lewis reacted to this discovery not with envy or jealousy, but with spontaneous and generous delight.
On that fateful night in 1931, Lewis was in the midst of a fretful return to religious faith. Raised as an Irish Protestant, he had become an agnostic as a teenager. Though he came back to accepting the idea of a divine presence in 1929, he continued to resist Christianity. It remained for Dyson, a High Anglican, and Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, to push him over the threshold -- though it literally took them all night. As they marched back and forth along Addison's Walk, Tolkien argued for the literal and mythological truth of the Resurrection of Christ.
By all accounts, the key moment came when Lewis declared that myths are lies, albeit "lies breathed through silver." Tolkien replied, "No, they are not," and demanded to know why Lewis could accept Icelandic sagas as vehicles of truth while demanding that the Gospels meet some higher standard. Hours past midnight, Tolkien finally went home to bed, leaving Dyson to carry on the campaign. Tolkien's argument -- that the Resurrection was the truest of all stories, with God as its poet -- may not sound particularly convincing to nonbelievers (nor indeed to some Christians), but to a man committed to the idea of myth as the only way to express higher truths, it was irresistible. Two weeks later, Lewis told a friend he had once again fully embraced Christianity: "My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it."
The effect on Lewis was explosive. Beginning in 1933 with "The Pilgrim's Regress," Lewis produced a torrent of books, essays, novels and radio talks, all works of Christian apologetics or stories with obvious spiritual preoccupations. Even as he churned out these works, Lewis prodded Tolkien to pull together and complete his stories of Middle-earth -- the private universe that had preoccupied him for most of his life. Thanks to that ceaseless, friendly prodding, Tolkien published "The Hobbit" to great acclaim in 1937. The prodding continued during the long, fitful gestation of its outsized sequel, "The Lord of the Rings," which finally saw the light of print in the mid-1950s. "The unpayable debt that I owe to [Lewis] was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood but sheer encouragement," Tolkien recalled. "He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby."
But the debt did not end there. Lewis quickly built a reputation as an explainer of Christianity, but he would hardly be remembered today if his fame rested solely on books like "The Problem of Pain" (1940), with their bullying style and legalistic method of argument. The man who had returned to faith through myth and poetry seemed to think he could lawyer his readers through the gates of heaven. This point was not lost on Lewis' critics, particularly those within the faith. "The problem of pain is bad enough," one clergyman groused, "without Mr. Lewis making it worse."
Lewis is at his most charming and approachable in his stories, and his journey into fiction -- like his return to faith -- was in large part guided by Tolkien. In 1937, on the eve of publication for "The Hobbit," the friends found themselves deploring the state of contemporary writing. "Tollers," Lewis said, "there is too little of that we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves."
Tolkien's response, a time-travel story called "The Lost Road," was never finished. But Lewis completed his story, an H.G. Wells-style science fiction adventure called "Out of the Silent Planet." It was published the next year, thanks to the support of Tolkien, who was enjoying commercial success with "The Hobbit" and had a bit of clout with publishers.
"Out of the Silent Planet" was widely praised, but it was Lewis' second foray into fiction that made him a household name. "The Screwtape Letters," in which a senior demon advises his infernal student on how to achieve a human's downfall, was published in 1942 (with a dedication to Tolkien) and has apparently never been out of print since. This is all to the good, since "Screwtape" contains some of Lewis' most waspishly elegant writing. (Some years ago there was an audiobook version, narrated by John Cleese, that needs to be reissued immediately.) Less persuasive, but still successful, were the second and third volumes of the Space Trilogy: "Perelandra" (1943) and "That Hideous Strength" (1945). Tolkien approved of all but "That Hideous Strength," about which he wrote, "A bit tripish, I'm afraid." But he actively detested what was to come next.
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