Volume 17 Number 3 Article 2 Spring 3-15-1991 The Inklings in America Glen H. GoodKnight Joe R. Christopher Alexei Kondratiev Diana L. Paxson Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation GoodKnight, Glen H.; Christopher, Joe R.; Kondratiev, Alexei; and Paxson, Diana L. (1991) "The Inklings in America," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 17 : No. 3 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Transcription of a panel discussion at the 19th Mythopoeic Conference. Additional Keywords Christopher, Joe R.; Inklings—Audience; Inklings—Influence on fantasy genre; Kondratiev, Alexei; Inklings—Reception in United States This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss3/2 aoyTHLORe Issue 65 - Spring 1991 Page 11 Th e iTDlkllmgs lm AjmeRlca A, panel held ac CDyrhopoeic ConFeRence XIX, BeRkeley, CaliFoRnia, July 31,1988 Panelists: Cjlen QoodKniyhc (modeRatOR), Joe R . ChRistophcR, Alexei KondRaciev, Diana L. Parson GoodKnight: Good morning. The theme of this panel is, decided to go ahead anyway, and published the first "The Inklings in America." I'd like to introduce our paperback version. When those hit, it was a real sensation, panelists. On my left is Diana Paxson, whom I think you and eventually everybody at Houghton Mifflin and so all know, but if you haven't, you should read her books. forth finally got their act together to do it properly. But She's written quite a few now, and she's been around, been before then you couldn't have persuaded them that the part of the Mythopoeic Society for quite a few years. On books had popular appeal. So in a backhanded kind of my right is Alexei Kondratiev, a well-known Celtic way, I think we owe a great debt to Don Wollheim for authority and fantasy fiction authority, who also writes the doing that. column "Tales Newly Told" in Mythlore. And on my far The Lord of the Rings still was the only thing of its kind, right is Joe R. Christopher, who is a well-known C.S. Lewis and it took a while for other writers and the publishing scholar, primarily, but who's quite knowledgable on all industry to follow up. I think there probably were other the Inklings and, indeed, many other things as well. We writers who would have loved to do high fantasy, but it wanted to talk this morning about two things: how the always takes the editors a while to get it through their little Inklings have influenced American fictional writing, and wooden heads that anything new and unusual is what the also how they've been popularly and critically responded public really wants. So they took a lot of convincing, and to in America. I'll just start out with the natural one, the then for a while you got some very derivative things. one that's probably had the largest influence of all would There's always Terry Brooks: 'The Sword of Sha-na-na." be Tolkien, and ask Diana how you think Tolkien has [Laughter] That was an example of the Tolkien tradition influenced American fantasy writing. in the sense of practically out-and-out plagiarism, badly P ax son :ln the 60s, which was the pre-boom period when done. It certainly identified some of the problems with I discovered Tolkien, his books still existed only in the trying to write high fantasy if you're not Tolkien. But by British hardcovers. The fantasy picture at that time con­ the end of the seventies, things had swung, I think, in sisted mostly of juveniles, and most of those were framed another direction, where that kind of other-world or total­ fantasies, the assumption being that you had to start from ly new environment type fantasy became the only kind of our world, and thatfantasy was somethingfor kids. Except high fantasy to write. People who wanted to write fantasy among science fiction fans, there wasn't too much set in the so-called real world were having more trouble knowledge of the earlier twentieth century generation of finding buyers for it. fantasists like A. Merritt. There had been an earlier school As a writer myself, the major difficulty I've found is that of fantasy, but by the fifties and sixties, nobody was read­ whenever there's a situation that is at all like anything in ing them, and except for Poul Anderson's The Broken The Lord of the Rings, I run into a problem, because Tolkien Sword, nobody who was an active writer had really done has already solved that problem in the best possible way. anything in the field for a long time, certainly not in high Or at least once you've read Tolkien it looks like the only fantasy, though the Conan books were being passed possible best way. So you're faced with either avoiding around, and I think George Scithers was publishing Amra. those kinds of plot developments, or trying to do some­ But reading Tolkien in those days was sort of like being a thing else which isn't as good. It's a very hard act to follow. Christian in the first century, whispering on street comers to find the other people who shared the true belief. GoodKnight: Would you like to comment, Alexei? The reason The Lord of the Rings had so much trouble Kondratiev: Yes. On Tolkien, specifically, I would simply becoming accepted, and had to go through this whole like to recall something which was said, I think, at last underground process of dissemination, was because it was year's Conference. There was a panel which Christine so different from anything anybody was doing in that Lowentrout was chairing, in which it more or less came period. If Tolkien hadn't published The Hobbit as a out that the impact of The Lord of the Rings on the fantasy children's story, which did very well, I doubt that The Lord reading and eventually fantasy writing community was of the Rings would ever have gotten published in Britain almost like a religious event, the unveiling of a new . either. So it wasn't until it had become a kind of under­ religious mystery, a new myth. It became a structure for ground classic in science fiction fandom that Don conveying certain images of religious import. It became Wollheim, who came out of fandom himself, took the very difficult for people not to follow the episodes of this chance — he did try to get permission — but he finally myth exactly as they appear in The Lord o f the Rings, be­ Page 12 Issue 65 - Spuing 1991 CPyTHLORe cause they seem to have such a primal archetypal quality. but New York still rules the American literary world. And We run here into the problem which you just mentioned, New York is about five years behind California in terms of that Tolkien did this once and for all as well as it possibly perception of new trends. At least this is the way it appears could be done. And yet people seem to feel compelled, are to me. They also have a situation— and this is even worse drawn to these types of characters, or these types of situa­ now — in which the science fiction line names, Signet, tions, in imitation. We're probably going to have a hard Bantam, Ace, Berkley, and so forth are all part of larger time over the next generation or so, coming out of that, companies. And the larger companies may themselves be re-synthesizing it into something that is really creative and owned by something like Gulf Western or Twentieth Cen­ expressive of a new situation. Right now I still see Tolkien tury Fox or somebody that has nothing to do with books, dominating the fantasy imagination, what people expect and no understanding. The editors are caught between the to see in a fantasy, what people would probably write writers, their own desire to do quality stuff, and the fact spontaneously unless they really stop to think about it, that the final word there is going to be with these corporate from a literary point of view, and tiy to recompose. accounting types who want you to do the same thing that sold like hotcakes last year. They're looking for brand Christopher:! think one thing that you're saying, both of names. They don't understand originality. I think this you, is that under Ballantine Books, this has become a accounts for the kind of standardized quality that we get genre formula, much like romance plot structures, for in genre literature these days.