A review by krismoon
Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings by Diana Pavlac Glyer
5.0
No one else that I know of, save Christopher Tolkien, knows The Inklings like my former professor Diana Glyer. She's devoted much of her life to passionately researching them. Bandersnatch focuses on the communal nature and practices of The Inklings, namely Tolkien and Lewis.
A few surprising facts that stood out to me:
1. There were 19 Inklings in total, and they met for 17 years!
2. The Inklings greatly encouraged one another, even going so far as writing publishers to encourage them to publish one another's books.
3. While they encouraged one another, the group members fought and criticized just as easily.
4. Tolkien didn't like The Chronicles of Narnia. Like, at all.
5. But not all of the Inklings liked Lord of the Rings, for that matter, namely Hugo Dyson.
In the last section of the book, Glyer outlines how we can learn from the Inklings collective, making their successful group dynamic our own while avoiding their nasty pitfalls.
A few surprising facts that stood out to me:
1. There were 19 Inklings in total, and they met for 17 years!
2. The Inklings greatly encouraged one another, even going so far as writing publishers to encourage them to publish one another's books.
3. While they encouraged one another, the group members fought and criticized just as easily.
4. Tolkien didn't like The Chronicles of Narnia. Like, at all.
5. But not all of the Inklings liked Lord of the Rings, for that matter, namely Hugo Dyson.
In the last section of the book, Glyer outlines how we can learn from the Inklings collective, making their successful group dynamic our own while avoiding their nasty pitfalls.