A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War

June 22, 2015
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are two of the best-known Christian writers of the 20th century. Their works have influenced millions of readers and have informed spiritual discussion in the public square for many decades. What is less well known about these two men is that they enjoyed a deep friendship and a shared life experience as soldiers in WWI. Loconte, associate professor of history at the King's College in New York City, explains that the fighting in the trenches and the thrill of survival all provided context for their later fictional writing; echoes of the war can be found everywhere in their powerful stories. Loconte offers the real-life tale behind the optimism and final triumph of good over evil that shine from Lewis and Tolkien's works: "No matter how desperate the circumstances... the characters in their stories retain the capacity to resist evil and choose the good," and it is in this choosing that redemption is finally achieved. This is a wonderful account of two remarkable Christian writers.

July 1, 2015
WWI devastated any optimism about the inevitable march of progress, but C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, soldiers in that war, managed to subsequently create fictional worlds alive with hope. Loconte begins with that early-twentieth-century optimism and then describes its horrifying explosion when the highly vaunted upward trajectory resulted in war and its disastrous weaponry. Tolkien and Lewis fought in the trenches, and the experience echoes through their fiction, but it was their postwar friendship, well described here, that also inspired their most famous works. Loconte locates other inspirations in the mythologies they both enjoyed as children and their subsequent desires to create a mythology for their own century. The book makes a compelling argument that, despite the horrors of the trenches, a lifelong love of story and deep religious faith enabled both men to create the fantastical worlds that readers have devoured ever since. Lovers of Narnia and Middle-Earth will revisit those worlds with new respect for their creators.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)