Tolkien vs. Lewis

I recently read that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien were both members of Inkblots, a writing group, when they were both dons in  Cambridge in the 40's.

Oh - to have been a fly on the wall!

And the goss is...Tolky was so scathing about an early draft of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, that Lewis contemplated dropping the project altogether. (And aren't we glad he didn't).

There was a lot that JRR thought sucked, but he particularly hated that Father Christmas made an appeareance in Narnia.

Seems that Lewis grew a thick skin and told Tolkien to shove it (actually, he probably thanked Tolkien for his thoughtful input).

Having read it as a kid, I did not see anything wrong with Father Christmas dropping by into Narnia once eternal winter was thawing. And as for those cool gifts he gave the kids... I think Peter got short changed with a non-magical sword and shield, but Susan and Lucy did very well with their magical horn and cordial.

Looking at it now... Tolkien had a point. I mean, a story that's essentially a Christian allegory featuring beasts from classical mythology is already an unusual mash-up (from before the time mash-ups were invented)... but chucking in a figure from contemporary Western consumer culture is just... well, I wonder what he was on.

But it worked for my eight year old self, (and every other kid, it seems), so who am I to judge now that I'm an ex-kid? I guess the lesson here is to keep the crazy stuff in your kids' stories. They tend to enjoy stuff, we adults ruin it by over analysing.

And I wonder if CS ever suggested to JRR that perhaps an occasional word-cull/ darling slaughter might have... yanno.... made his story more readable?

Lewis: 1; Tolkien: 0.