From the Bookshelf of J.R.R. Tolkien…

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Frie...

Joseph Loconte

Start date: October 1, 2016

Finish date: December 31, 2016

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: This year is the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, which Tolkien fought in. This book covers …more
[close] This year is the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, which Tolkien fought in. This book covers the period of WWI and also the friendship between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

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* Group Read September 2021-January 2022 (No Spoilers)
By Michael · 21 posts · 118 views

last updated Jan 31, 2022 11:38AM

Group Read January-March 2015: The Silmarillion
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last updated Apr 18, 2023 01:00PM

What Members Thought

Sep 26, 2015 Matt rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, christianity, literary-criticism

A good book, but a number of flaws keep this from being a truly great book.

The first is that there is simply not enough material about the war time experiences of Tolkien and Lewis to form the basis of solid book length treatment. Secondly, the book is just riddled with minor errors that will be easily recognizable to any fan of the books, that somehow escaped the editor. Usually these are in the form of misattributions and simple confusion and misidentification, but they are annoying especially A good book, but a number of flaws keep this from being a truly great book.

The first is that there is simply not enough material about the war time experiences of Tolkien and Lewis to form the basis of solid book length treatment. Secondly, the book is just riddled with minor errors that will be easily recognizable to any fan of the books, that somehow escaped the editor. Usually these are in the form of misattributions and simple confusion and misidentification, but they are annoying especially when the author is using and perhaps over relying on the text of the books to prove his points. Thirdly, the approach that the author gives to the text is far too loose for my tastes. If you want to say that a piece of text relates to the author's war time experiences, I'd prefer much more solid evidence. Fourthly, at least for my part, most of the book was well covered ground and well known to me. The unusual focus on the little explored portion of Lewis and Tolkien's life proved mainly to instruct that it is little focused on because there is little definite to say about it. Finally, this book is going to be really of no use whatsoever to a non-Christian audience, as it is far too clear that the author is not merely a historian building a literary and historical case, but is also an evangelist that admires the works as sermons and wishes to expand upon them. Even as a sympathetic ear that agrees that the books work as sermons, and has taught doctrine from them, this inability to choose between the unbiased voice of the historian and the passionate voice of the evangelist is a bit jarring.

Still for all that, I can recommend the book to a limited audience of Christian readers that have some knowledge of the works but don't already have a lot of insight in to the minds of the authors who created them. To them, it will likely be a revelation. Even for someone like myself, who have read the works dozens of times, read all manner of unpublished notes by Tolkien, many books of literary criticism and interpretation of the works, and dug into the text in fandom circles to levels that will seem absurd to many, there were still occasionally unlooked for vistas which were like looking out on a well known valley from vantages you'd never seen before.

In particular, I was struck by Loconte's interpretation of the mindset of Tolkien after the great war that lead him to create his work. The idea of Tolkien passing through the great war, seeing the broken state of his nation, weeping and then deliberately and consciously taking up the burden of healing his entire nation by bringing them a myth that reflected to them divine revelation just leaves me in renewed awe. Who does that sort of thing? Can you just conceive what the mind must be like that in the middle of its tears says, "My nation is broken. Their myths about themselves have deluded and failed them, and they have no stories of their own to fall back on. I know, I'll give them a new story, a great story, a light to lead them out of this dark place." My jaw hits the floor. The vision of the Good Professor once again humbles all my understanding.

It is easy to see why he is often imitated, quite often scorned, occasionally mocked, and yet no one has really come even close to equaling his work.
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Jul 31, 2020 Erin J Kahn rated it liked it

This book was interesting and parts of it were wonderful, like the excerpt from a letter Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher when Christopher was fighting in WWII. But overall, I wish it had focused more on Lewis and Tolkien and less on general WWI info. I expected it to be more like Humphrey Carpenter's 'The Inklings,' which was absolutely AMAZING, and was a little disappointed when it wasn't. (If anyone's looking for a spell-binding, deeply informative biography of Lewis, Tolkien, and their r ...more

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