The Tolkien And Lewis Bromance: The Diana Glyer Interview
Be sure to check out The Babylon Bee YouTube Channel for more podcasts, podcast shorts, animation, and more. This is the Babylon Bee Interview Show. In this episode of The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan talk to Diana Glyer, author of Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings.. She has spent 40 years combing through archives, studying old manuscripts, and is considered a leading expert on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Her scholarship, her teaching, and her work as an artist all circle back to one common theme: creativity thrives in community. Kyle and Ethan talk to Dr. Glyer about Tolkien, Lewis, and the creativity that can happen in a community like The Inklings. To watch or listen to the full podcast, become a subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans Topics Discussed Who were The Inklings? How does Creativity thrive in community? Tom Bombadil and the quiet "homely home" portions of LOTR Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings trilogy "There are no dentists in Mordor" Tolkien caused C.S. Lewis to throw Narnia in the trash at one point Differences between C.S. Lewis and Tolkien The Chronicles Of Narnia C.S. Lewis' journey to faith and Tolkien's consistent prayer for his friend G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man influencing Lewis What was going on in the third book of Lewis' Space Trilogy? Humans being sub-creators, Mythopoeia How much pipe weed did the Inklings go through? What is a Bandersnatch? Artists need brutally honest criticism to be better Diana likes our Decaf Condemned As Heresy mugs and Mt. Writemore mugs in our store Subscriber Portion Which of these modern writers make it into The Inklings or have been promptly kicked out? The Chronicles of Narnia movies How well did Christopher Tolkien manage to expand his father's work? Amazon's Lord of the Rings series gets the Game of Thrones treatment The Hobbit movies Drama and conflicts in The Inklings Dyson is the Yoko of the group The Ten Questions
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Ryan Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee interview show.
Oh, hello, Babylon Bee fans.
I didn't see you there.
Me and Ethan were just sitting here talking to Diana Glaier.
And you just happened to stop in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Who's Diana Glier, this amazing author who wrote this book about a couple of people we really like, C.S. Lewis and Jero Tolkien?
Because, you know, if you're not a Christian, if you're not a fan of those guys.
This is absolutely true.
And so she wrote about, well, she's written a couple of books about them.
She's like a, what do you call herself, like an Inkling scholar?
Scholar.
Yeah, scholar.
Well, scholar, but is there like a specialized?
No, an inkling scholar.
That'd be good.
An inkling also.
Inkling.
And also still an enthusiast.
You know, I still get very, very excited about these guys and very curious about their creative process.
Okay, so for the few dorks who don't know what inklings are, can you explain inklings?
I can, sure.
So C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien were really good friends, and they began in December of 1929 to actually share their poetry with one another and critique it, talk about it, and to help to really encourage one another in the creative process.
And around that, those two authors, they gathered a larger group of authors.
There are 19 men who are considered members of the Inklings, and they met twice a day.
Where were the women?
We can talk about that too.
But they met over a period of about 17 years.
So it became really the center of gravity, I would say, for their creative process.
Would the women be called the Pinklings?
There have been groups that have sort of attempted to imitate the Inklings and continued their legacy in lots of ways.
The Inklings met twice a week on average.
And so they would meet on Thursday nights in C.S. Lewis's rooms at Maudlin College.
And that was the critique sessions that they had where they would read manuscripts out loud.
What was fun about that was that these were their roughest of rough drafts, right?
These were not their finished works or their polished works.
I'm pretty sure that the ink was still wet on Lord of the Rings when Tolkien was reading it out loud to the Inklings.
But they also met on Tuesday as they met at a pub you might have heard of, the Eagle and Child Pub.
And these pub sessions were very informal.
So there were women who were part of that.
There were students who would drop by.
Those weren't critique sessions, just, I don't know, when you think about your own creative process, you maybe think about gathering friends to just bounce ideas around, to challenge each other, to, you know, somebody says something outrageous and you're like, no, that's not even right.
And you kind of talk about it.
That became kind of the seed of so many of their great projects, just as they threw ideas around and enjoyed each other's company.
Well, there's also something insanely freeing when you're the type of person that spends all your time thinking and doing this thing, writing books, and when you're in that space of trying to connect art and faith, and it's kind of a lonely place.
So when you find a group of people where they're all passionate about that, it's a very safe space.
It is.
It's also very generative, you know, that so many things you wouldn't think of, right, come out of that because somebody pushes you or challenges you with an idea or throws out a suggestion or reveals to you another side that maybe you didn't think of.
And I think that the creative process is, in fact, sort of naturally, it thrives in these kinds of interactions that we have.
How drunk was JR Tolkien when he came up with Tom Bombardil?
I have no comments about the relative drunkness of these men at any particular point in time.
That hasn't been a specialty of mine in my research.
But I can tell you that Tom Bombardil was based on a toy that one of his children had.
And so the idea of Tom Bombardil was actually very important to the book.
I'm glad they left it out of the movie, but I think it was important to the book because so much of what the Lord of the Rings is about are these places that are sometimes called homely homes, right?
Homes that give us a sense of home where we can get strengthened and where we can get refreshed and where we can get revived before we have to go on and continue our heroic journey.
Yeah, I felt when I read Lord of the Rings as a kid, it was like these long, boring chapters where they talk for 30 pages.
And then I read it as an adult.
And I'm like, these are like my favorite chapters, you know, because there is because the adventure doesn't really have any context without like they're fighting for something.
There's a rest to look forward to, you know?
So he writes in these cycles of these rests and adventures.
Yes, exactly.
That's exactly right.
And the adventure isn't where the action is.
The action really is in those quieter moments where they're really trying to sort out who am I and what is my job in all of this craziness.
Yeah, they were fighting for the Shire.
There you go.
So Peter Jackson's movies.
How well did he do?
You know, I think he did a lot of things really, really well.
I think the look of it is just absolutely brilliant.
I think the color design is incredible.
I think the casting, with maybe a couple of exceptions, you know, Elrond, I don't know.
I'm not a fan of The Matrix L. Ron.
I didn't think that L. Ron came across as a strong warrior.
You know, it was kind of leaning a little heavier on the elf side than the warrior side.
So there are some things that I think were great.
I think there are aspects of the script that were great.
But I think that it's really important to keep in mind that it's a different story.
Now, I don't have a problem with that.
I think that, you know, Peter Jackson had a story he wanted to tell, and that's fine.
I think that that's an okay thing to do.
But Tolkien's story is a very different story because it's very much a story of the heroism of ordinary beings, of ordinary hobbits, the small and brave deeds of little people that is what ultimately changes the world.
And I think for Peter Jackson, the camera had to be on the big guys, the wizards and the warriors.
And I think that's just a different kind of tale.
Yeah.
Hollywood, man.
Hollywood.
Am I right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And again, I don't mind.
I don't mind that.
I think that that's appropriate, but it is important, I think, to see that their vision is quite different.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Tolkien didn't like the movies, right?
No, he didn't.
He was disappointed.
He felt like it was too much emphasis on simply fighting and bad dental work, I think, among the orcs.
Yeah.
They're cool looking, though.
Yeah.
Cool design.
No dentist and mortar.
Now that's a t-shirt design, I want to say.
Hey, Diana, that's a cool mug that you have there.
You know what?
This is my new favorite mug.
Just got it today.
This is really awesome.
Oh, wow.
What's it say on the other side?
I see the logo on there.
It says, fake news you can trust.
Hey, I see you have another mug right next to you.
Do we know how to do it?
This is really cool, too.
Look at this.
I mean, it's my mug collection.
This is my special mug collection.
This says, decaf condemned as heresy.
Amen.
There it is.
Wow.
I just want to tell you guys how much I really genuinely appreciate you inviting me today and redesigning your logo so that the double be of the wings of this bee stand for Babylon Bee and Bandersnatch, all in one.
And I just, I think that that was really like prescient of you.
It's prophetic.
Prophetic.
Before you got here, I just had one wing.
Yeah.
I also want you to know that I ripped a wing off a bug.
It's horrifying.
Or it's awesome, actually, if you hate him.
Everybody else thought Ethan's trampoline.
A bunch of subscribers' minds are exploding right now that there's two bees in the Babylon B logo.
Really?
They didn't notice that?
A lot of people don't know.
And I bet you a bunch of people right now are going, what?
What?
I bet, okay, the other thing is that a lot of people listening to this episode probably are big fans of Lewis and Chesterton, Tolkien.
Tolkien.
Chesterton, yeah, but also Chesterton.
If you like those guys, there's lots of crossing.
McDonald's.
So what's that third bug you got there?
Well, this one is just a brilliantly artistic interpretation of Mount Rushmore.
And I mean, look at the faces on there, right?
What can you say?
What can you say?
Well, you know, would you know anything about this drawing?
Would you be able to illuminate our understanding?
I draw in a fugue state, so I don't remember anything that I actually draw.
Ethan Druid.
Awesome.
Congratulations.
I witnessed it.
He went in a fugue state, but I saw him do it.
Did he draw them on each and every one of the months?
Every individual hand-painted.
I think that that's really an accomplishment.
Well done.
Not actually hand-painted.
These are all available in our store, everybody, if you would like to buy them.
And now you can be as cool as Diana Glier.
I get that right.
Yes.
With one of those things.
As I said her name, like a liar.
I hear all that name's in my head.
Because there's people that like Lord of the Rings, but they're not real happy about getting into J.R.R. Tolkien being very, you know, religious and all that.
So let's, how religious was Tolkien?
Like, give me like the full crazy.
Was he like snake handler?
What was he doing?
Most charismatic Catholics.
Yeah, when it was charismatic Catholics like ACB.
But he had been down with the ACB.
Yeah, yeah, no.
Yeah, no.
Tolkien was a devoted Christ follower all of his life, and he was a Catholic.
And I think that when we get to heaven, one of the things that we will realize is that so much of what we honor and appreciate about C.S. Lewis is due to two really important things.
One, that Tolkien prayed constantly for his friend Lewis, for him to grow deeper in his faith, for him to come to faith in the first place.
Tolkien was very influential, of course, in Lewis's conversion.
And the other thing is that Tolkien was always trying to find ways to encourage and challenge Lewis to go deeper into the things of God.
And that faithfulness of a friend, I think, is the reason that we still read C.S. Lewis.
I think his influence was that important, but it's that quiet kind of I'm in the background, being the one who supports and encourages and prays that God will do something special through this friend of mine.
So he was very devout, and he describes Lord of the Rings as a very Christian and very Catholic work.
But what he wanted was for those themes to be woven into the fabric of the story, not sprinkled on the top like seasoning, you know, or not blatant, you know, ta-da, here's the Christ figure kind of thing.
Yeah.
No Jesus lion.
No Jesus lion.
Lord of the Rings.
No.
What was Tolkien's thoughts on Narnia?
You know, Tolkien had a very negative reaction to Narnia when he first heard it.
So he heard the first three chapters of the Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe read out loud by Lewis.
And he went away mumbling under his breath that this book was as bad as bad can be.
Now, that's pretty harsh criticism.
I don't know.
And Lewis was flabbergasted.
He did not expect this response.
And so Lewis literally threw the manuscript in the trash.
Wow.
And then a couple of days later, he was chatting with another friend of his, Roger Lancelin Green.
And Lewis was kind of laughing.
It's like, yeah, I started this children's story.
It's a total bust.
I just tossed it away.
Tolkien hated it, you know.
And Green was like, can I see it?
And so they fish it out of the garbage.
Exactly.
They didn't have the cloud.
Exactly.
It wasn't backed up on Dropbox.
It was not backed up.
And so, you know, Green listens to it and he says, you know, I think you might be onto something here.
I think that there's some real potential.
But the question is, why was Tolkien so offended?
Right.
And people say, well, he didn't like the Aslan Lion thing.
In the first three chapters of Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, there is no Aslan.
Aslan hasn't even appeared yet.
All you have is Lucy goes through the wardrobe, talks to Tumnus, and goes home.
And it's that scene, the scene with Tumness, that apparently offended Tolkien so much.
And so there's lots of arguments and discussions about why Tolkien responded so vehemently against that.
But what's interesting is that later in life, Tolkien actually came to at least admire the book, so much so that he would buy sets of the Chronicles of Narnia and share those with family and friends.
And what he says later in life is not, it's as bad as bad can be.
He says, it remains outside of my sympathies, and I am a man of limited sympathies.
So he really kind of switched on it.
And that, again, is after he'd had a chance to really encounter the full series.
So what changed for Tolkien is something that people are still trying to figure out.
What's the proper order for reading the Narnia book?
Oh, my goodness, you have to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first.
No question.
Absolutely.
Because part of what is important about the Narnia books is that we encounter Aslan with a sense of mystery and awe.
And if we read Magician's Nephew first, we don't get that same thing.
We don't get the buildup to the big reveal to the aspect of Aslan that is so majestic and wonderful.
We don't get that conversation in the beaver's den, right?
About even the name of Aslan being so profoundly affecting to us.
I always felt, yeah, when I read some of Tolkien, maybe it was my perception of his criticism of Narnia when I made, I think it was in your book.
I can't remember.
Dan wrote a book, by the way, called Vandersnatch.
Oh, yeah, did we get on that yet?
It's called Vandersnatch.
C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien, and the creative collaboration.
Do we have to bleep that word or is that an okay word?
No, that's fine.
It's not okay.
I can't tell if that's like one of those older tell us the origins.
Old factions.
Oh, go ahead.
You were saying something.
Sorry.
Because there were certain aspects of Narnia that kind of always bugged me.
It's like, you're not allowed to say that.
It's sacrilegious.
And I don't know if it was the randomness.
It feels really random at moments.
But I have this sense that C.S. Lewis wasn't just being random.
He's not like an adult swim writer.
So, is there anything you can expand on the seemingly random moments in Narnia?
Is there any kind of background to I'm trying to think of an example?
One of the random moments, like a random encounter, Father Christmas.
Or like the weird, there's like, and they're like a weird, like, I don't think it's an orgy, but like a bunch of dryads and the nine.
Yeah, they all come out of nowhere.
Or yeah, Father Christmas popping up, just things like, which I guess it kind of fits the children's world theme, I guess, maybe.
Well, I think that the important thing is that C.S. Lewis had a generous imagination and he didn't see any problems with incorporating these various symbols, various ideas.
So his imaginary world was populated with contributions from lots of different mythologies.
And for him, that was an aspect I would say, even of his personality.
He enjoyed going outside of his circle and really getting to know people whose views were very different from his own.
And so I think that's one of the takeaways.
What can we learn from this group of people?
They went out of their way to form sincere friendships with people who had different points of view.
And that's part of the reason we still read them because they didn't stay siloed in their individual points of view and perspectives.
So he was like writing like Justice League fan fiction of old mythology.
There you go.
Something like that.
Like that.
Exactly.
Not really that.
You just got to shut down, man.
Shut down.
I don't even know it.
I can't use the word Justice League authoritatively.
I don't watch those movies.
Yeah.
But you wrote.
I meant Avengers, actually, but I guess they're kind of the same idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Tolkien led Lewis to Christ.
Was this like he gave an altar call and Lewis came forward?
He finished reading Lord of the Rings at the end and he said, and then there's the invitation at the end.
Yeah.
Sign here.
Just as I am without one plea.
Yeah.
Kind of coming in over the background.
Yeah.
And it had the all the it explained all the word pictures of Christ and everything that the Lord of the Rings.
Like Aragorn is Jesus.
Yeah.
If you didn't notice, Aragorn is Jesus.
No.
No, please, no.
Was it getting golf as the Holy Spirit?
Ouch.
Keep going.
I want to see if we can knock him on the ground.
He's in pain over here, man.
The hobbit is Zacchaeus.
Sigh.
Yeah, so Tolkien was very influential.
And as I said, I think that at the end of the day, we'll realize that his biggest contribution was consistent daily prayer for his friend.
I really think that that's a big deal.
And I really think that that made a big difference.
But Lewis's journey to faith was a slow and rocky one, three, four years of kind of examining the faith, examining the claims of Christ.
And it wasn't a single moment.
It wasn't a come to Jesus moment.
It was a come to Jesus over a series of years where Lewis said he felt actually pursued by God, right?
Like the, you know, he talks about it's like the mouse's search for the cat when the cat's actually been on the hunt all the time looking for you, looking to make a difference in your life, looking to claim your life.
Lewis, when he did finally convert, described himself as the most dejected convert in all of England.
Why dejected?
For a couple of reasons.
He felt like the evidence for the reality of Christ was overwhelming and he just couldn't say no to it anymore.
So little by little, he came to a tipping point where there was more evidence for faith than there was against it.
And the other thing is Lewis really had counted the cost.
He believed that if he was going to follow Christ, this was going to be costly.
This was going to change everything about every aspect of his life.
And he knew that up front and he still said yes to God.
Late in life, someone described him as the most thoroughly converted man he had ever met.
What a great thing for someone to say about you.
C.S. Lewis was the most thoroughly converted man I ever met.
What a tribute, right?
To the idea that not only did he create amazing work and impact generations, but there was something in his character, right?
And all of these good works flowed from who he really, really was in his relationship to God.
As a Chesterton fan, G.K. Chesterton.
I like to just say C.S. Lewis read The Everlasting Man and then boom, on his knees.
So, how close am I?
You're kind of close.
That was the one book that really convinced Lewis that there was something respectable, intellectually respectable, about the Christian faith.
And before that, he didn't really see it.
He didn't see how the story of Christ's life, death, and resurrection had anything to do with the world in which Lewis lived.
And then he read that and he's like, okay, that's one of the milestones or turning points for him in a big, big way.
Let me bring up Chesterton.
As much Chesterton as he can squeeze.
Is there any more Chesterton talking to you?
There's idiots who think that Chesterton was one of the inklings.
Oh, alas, no.
He wasn't even alive, right?
Yeah, he was alive.
There was a little bit of an overlap.
There's a little overlap at the end of his life.
But he's kind of Chesterton is kind of considered to be a generation before.
And so they really didn't connect, although, as you say, the influence on Lewis was profound, not only Everlasting Man, but of course orthodoxy.
Do we know if any of them ever met him or were in the same place?
Not that I'm aware.
Do they brush shoulders as they walk by in the market or anything?
Well, only to the extent that reading someone's book is like opening their heart and establishing that kind of connection.
You have such deep answers to my stupid questions.
That's what makes a good guess to the sound.
That's my specialty.
I appreciate it.
Well, you work with college kids, right?
I do.
So you know, she knows how to answer stupid questions.
Sorry, if any of your college colleagues, we're not as easily offended as the Snowflake college kids.
Yeah, those snowflake college kids.
But then remember, I teach in the honors college, so all of my students are exceptionally wonderful.
Okay, don't teach the dumb college kids.
I don't know how to get out of this one.
Can you tell me what was going on in that third book in the space trilogy?
Because I don't know.
Can you explain it to me like I'm fine?
I've tried to get through it a few times, and I don't get what's happening.
Okay, so let's start with the idea that Lewis has a very generous imagination.
And I think that a lot of things like what the heck is Merlin doing there and why is he so important is part of that generous imagination.
I think that what you need to do is recognize that Lewis himself understood that that hideous strength was really, really tough.
And so he writes the abolition of man as almost a gloss or an explanation of what he was trying to do in there and what he believes is happening as our personalities are getting sort of splintered by culture.
So rather than being the holistic people that we are, we're intended to be, we are being splintered away in terms of the various aspects or expressions of ourselves.
And so he is trying to demonstrate what that process looks like.
How does our personality become splintered by ambition primarily or the lust for power and these other things?
And how can he show this through these various characters?
But Abolition of Man is kind of the answer key in some ways.
So I recommend that you take a look at that.
I've also got a book coming out, an edited group.
I edited a set of essays that some of my students did on the space trilogy.
So that book's coming out in May, and it's called A Compass for Deep Heaven: Navigating C.S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy.
And that'll be out by Square Halo Books in May.
And it does exactly what you would want it to do.
So here's the thing about C.S. Lewis: C.S. Lewis is really smart.
And he also assumes that all of his readers are equally smart.
The problem is, we're not that smart.
And so we need kind of something to look at to help us to understand what is he assuming I already know.
It's kind of like you guys.
You write an article and you assume that people are aware of what's happening in the news.
And if they're not aware of it, then it doesn't really make sense to them.
There's a reference point, right?
That's me with like half the articles.
Yeah.
Oh, Babylon B.
So I've worked with this group of exceptional authors who have tried to give you sort of a background view.
What is Lewis referring to?
What does he think you already understand?
And how can knowing that help you to unravel some of the mysteries of the ransom trilogy, all of all three of the books?
So I recommend that you take a look at that.
I think you'll like it.
Yeah, we're reading through Chesterton's Heretics right now.
And it's like, if you don't know who he's writing against, you're like, I don't know, you gotta completely look him up.
Yeah, context really is everything looking at these things.
Absolutely.
Tolkien talked about, I'm always interested in them talking about their creative process, which would be great.
I would love suggestions on.
I mean, sure, you wrote about that in your books too, but even just like their own writings on it, what are the best sources to go to?
But I know that Tolkien talked about being sub-creators.
Can you kind of expand on what that idea was when you talked about that?
Sure.
The idea of sub-creators is most clearly articulated for Tolkien in his poem called Mythopoeia, which is a hard poem to find, but there's sometimes copies of it that float around on the internet.
But he talks about the way that we make in the image of that we were made in.
So we were created in relation to a creative God, a God who creates things.
And so we sub-create, and that's part of the way that we participate in God's nature.
And he really believed that our creativity is not just an expression of God and his creative nature, but actual participation.
You know, if you think about it, when we do creative work, when we're really like so absorbed in creative work, like whether we're writing or drawing or any of the creative arts, you know how you just lose track of time?
It's that kind of thing that we are really getting caught up into something that's a little bit heavenly when we are participating in that way.
Sub-creator.
Sub-creator.
I like it.
How much tobacco did these guys have to smoke to write?
Tons.
They were all heavy smokers.
C.S. Lewis smoked mostly cigarettes and Tolkien mostly pipes, although they didn't always stick with that.
But yeah, they smoked a lot.
They drank a lot.
So are you prescribing this?
For creators?
As an aspect of the creative process?
No, I'm merely observing a fact about them.
There are ways in which we want to imitate their secrets, but that wouldn't be one of them.
She's winking at the camera.
So are you saying that you think that they would have been better if they hadn't smoked?
Yeah, I think that's between them and God.
I'm just kidding.
Do you think, how far in are we?
Because I have some juicier questions, but I think they'd begin with the subscriber portion.
So what the heck is a Bandersnatch?
Oh, yeah, let's get that.
Yeah, Bandersnatch is a character from Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky, right?
Twas Brillig and the Slythy Toes, De Gyre and Gimble and the Wabe, right?
We all had to memorize that at some point.
And so Bandersnatch is a character from that poem and is described as having as being incredibly fast and very ornery.
And so an American college professor wrote a letter to C.S. Lewis trying to figure out was there influence among the members of this group, the Inklings.
And C.S. Lewis wrote back a long letter.
And in that letter, he says, no one ever influenced Tolkien.
You might as well try to influence a Bandersnatch.
Well, this is a classic case of taking a quote out of context because this one sentence, no one ever influenced Tolkien.
You might as well try to influence a Bandersnatch has become kind of the bottom line in discussing influence among these authors.
So I read that when I was still in high school.
And, you know, I saw that and I thought, that can't be right.
These guys met twice a week for 17 years.
They read their drafts out loud.
They critiqued them like brutally.
They had no influence on each other.
That doesn't even make any sense.
So I've spent, you know, basically the, you know, decades just looking to figure out what was the nature of the influence.
And I found out that I think that one of the big problems is people think influence means imitation.
That Lewis was imitating Tolkien.
Tolkien got his ideas and was imitating someone else.
There was no imitation.
That wasn't part of their thing.
What they did was encourage each other, challenge one another, dream up ideas together, shape the text, not only what they were writing, but where the story was going.
And they had profound influence.
And so the idea of Bandersnatch is just to kind of articulate some of those different things that they offered to one another, support, help, challenge, accountability, all of those things that creatives need.
If there's anything unique about the Inklings as a group, it's that they were really successful at doing all of those things together with the same group of people.
So a lot of times creatives find certain people are really helpful for challenge and certain people are really helpful for encouragement, you know?
And you don't go to the same folks for all of those kinds of inputs.
But what the Inklings found is that they were really, really good at helping each other get where they wanted to go.
And the end result of that was not only incredible productivity, but each man kind of finding his own voice and really figuring out how to use his creativity to the full.
Yeah, there's like a brutality that comes with a friend criticizing your work.
You know, we're pitching ideas and you throw a headline out there and the other guy's like, that's really stupid.
I wonder how much that helps.
Does everybody need that kind of a critical voice?
How can we find those kinds of things?
Yeah, we do because I know that if I were to like eavesdrop on one of your sessions where you're doing that, if somebody says that's a really stupid idea, you're not going to roll over and play dead, are you?
No, I don't know.
No, of course not.
You're going to push back.
You're going to say, no, it's not stupid.
And here's why you're stupid, right?
Right?
Yeah.
That's a direct quote.
Exactly.
See, I know.
But that's where the goodness comes from.
Because when someone says, I don't like that, you say, wait, let me make it better.
Let me explain it to you again.
Let me show you how great this idea is.
And it's in that, right, that something rises up in us and the work becomes so much better because we were forced to answer the questions of somebody who sincerely wants to bring out the best in us.
Yeah, one of the most life-changing things for me is we've talked about my friend Doug Tenaple.
Henry said you knew him or if you just knew of him.
I know we have mutual friends.
Okay.
So when I was just kind of a fanboy, I showed him my earlier comic work and he completely insulted it.
He said it's trash.
It looks like bad 90s image wannabe art.
He just didn't hold back.
And nobody had ever been that honest with me.
I'm a small town.
Yeah.
But, you know, when I, but I kept showing him my art.
And when I made my book that suddenly looked good, that just had a professionalism to it, he wrote the forward to it.
He said he loved it.
He said, you've done it, Ethan.
It's amazing.
And his compliment had so much more weight to it because he had just been honest the whole way along.
I realized the value in that to have somebody that just is straight up with you.
Every artist needs it.
Every artist needs it.
And he expected better of you.
And that's one of the great C.S. Lewis quotes, right?
That you never see quoted, which is, you know, he would read something of Tolkien's and he would say, better, Tolkien, better.
That was the whole thing.
Better.
You can do better.
I expect better of you, right?
That's what I say to Kyle whenever we do Chick-fil-A jokes.
Yeah, there you go.
There you go.
So see, now you've got another way to bring out the best in each other at the beef.
I'm going to see a banner on the wall.
Better, Kyle.
Better, Kyle.
Better.
I need one too.
Yeah, we all need one.
We all need one.
Have you ever visited all these places?
Oh, I guess people.
Have you ever gotten to do that?
I have.
I had a sabbatical and got to actually live at C.S. Lewis's house for a little while.
I got to sleep in his bed.
No.
Smoke his tobacco.
No, no, no.
Drink his robe.
I got to stand barefoot in his kitchen.
Okay.
But I mean, just think.
Just like his wife.
Barefoot and pregnant.
No.
No, not even a little bit.
Not even the tiniest little bit.
But that's, you know, think about that.
That's a good day, the day that you wake up and you realize, oh, I'm in C.S. Lewis's house.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
So all of that.
Is there any weird like vandalism or anything?
No, it's a study center, and so it's maintained really well.
And it's a great place to go for tours and stuff.
So there's not still like clothes in the closet and stuff like that?
There seems to be a couple of fur coats in the wardrobe, but I haven't really gone through to find out.
I probably, if so, wouldn't be here today.
Do you think any authors today, their house would be, because if I like hit it big and became a legend, or if I died and suddenly my works became great, my house would be a really lame place to go visit.
There's toys all over the place.
Rancho Kucamonga.
A bunch of naked, headless Barbie dolls all over the floor.
Look at this.
This messed up trampoline.
Dog poop everywhere.
I think Lewis was more of like a scholar.
He didn't have the Barbies everywhere.
England's just cooler.
England is cooler.
It's just so old.
They're like, hey, want to check out a castle?
There's one right there.
You can just say anywhere you are, there's one somewhere nearby.
It is true.
Yeah, there's so much history there here in LA.
It's like, that's an old building.
It's 50 years old.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, are we ready for if there was any conflict, any fights between C.S. Lewis?
I want to find out.
We're going to pitch some authors to you and see if you think they would make it in or not.
The Inklings, you can give them the thumbs up or down.
Let us know.
And more.
But first, we wanted to remind everybody to check out Bander Snatch, C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien and the creative collaboration of the Inklings.
And this is a more like for smart people version.
The company they keep.
Oh, this is so this is the advanced reading version?
This is the detailed version.
So I wrote the company they keep first.
It took me 23 years to kind of do all the research for that book.
And it's the book of my heart.
It really is.
But I was offering that as a textbook in a class I was teaching.
And I had a student come up to me afterwards and say, you know, Dr. Glara, you wrote the company they keep as if you cared about every single stinking detail of the life of these authors.
And I said, yeah, because I do.
And she said, well, not everyone does.
And so, and so rather than flunking her, I took that as a challenge.
And I decided, you know what?
What would it look like to take the real core message of the company they keep and to not only make it really accessible to tell a really great story, but what would it look like to look at the implications of it, the application aspect?
Like, what would it be like to write a book where I literally talk about doing what the Inklings did and how we can involve others in our creative process in such a way that we become better at what we do?
And that's Bandersnatch.
And that's just Bandersnatch.
That's a bunch of Bandersnatch.
All right, we're kicking off the freeloaders, going into the subscriber portion.
Get out of here.
You get my scraps.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
Which authors would have become welcome or kicked out?
Okay, here we go.
Ready?
George R.R. Martin.
Oh, kicked out big time.
All right, Narnia movies.
What are your thoughts?
Oh, gosh.
Yeah, but that's where a good, authentic, integrous creator puts their foot down and says, no, I won't do that.
You know, I just, I won't.
I also don't fully get the hate of the hobbit, even though I do get that it's like, what's the right word?
Terrible.
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Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.