It’s an undeniable, and to me, as an Englishman who has been so influenced by the writings of C.S. Lewis from a very young age, a marvellous thing how popular the work of CSL and Tolkien is in the States.
Many people even on this one small site have been similarly influenced by these crusty academics born in the 19th century. This has led me to wonder which American writer(s) has come closest to Lewis and Tolkien - whether taken separately, as very different people, or together, as friends and colleagues - in terms of approach and spirit. Put another way (although this is perhaps a different thing), which author shows the greatest influence upon their wiriting?
I thought of putting this in IMHO, but placed it here because it’s the discussion I’m more interested in rather than merely the nominating.
Robert Heinlein & Isaac Asimov. Friends and the top of their professions (along with Brit Arthur C. Clark).
They inspired so many of those that followed. Niven, Pournelle, Spider Robinson just to name a few. Is this what you mean?
If there is an American author who is worthy of comparison to Lewis and Tolkien, I think it’s Walter Wangerin, Jr., whose fantasy tales The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Sorrows blend Christian allegory, fairy tales, and epic adventure.
Like Lewis and Tolkien, Wangerin writes beautiful essays, too.
I’d say Robert E Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. Never met (vast distance between them), but corresponded and were often published by the same pulp magazines. Each of them carved out sub-genres that have inspired tons of imitators and thousands of fans.
This is one of those “depends on your definition” issues.
Genres tend to be hothouses, in which every major figure knows every other one and so long-lasting friendships and intense antagonisms abound, and sometimes alternate.
Asimov and Heinlein, for example, were friends but not close friends: their politics were too different. Asimov probably was closer to Arthur C. Clarke than Heinlein. And even closer to a group of fans turned writers known as the Futurians, who turned out Donald Wolheim, Frederik Pohl, Judith Merrill, Cyril Kornbluth, Richard Wilson, James Blish and others. They lived in each others’ apartments and slept with each others’ wives and married in a round robin. Are any of them important enough to meet your criteria?
Heinlein, if he was close to anybody - a dubious proposition - was close to John W. Campbell, an influential author turned editor of Astounding Science Fiction and the nexus for all sf and most fantasy in the 1940s. Of course, Asimov was close to him too: he got the Three Laws of Robotics from Campbell along with ideas for half his other early work.
Anthony Boucher was good but not as important a writer, but as editor of the rival Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction he became the nexus to the 1950s sf crowd.
Or you could mention Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison, who have been close friends for over 50 years.
Closer to today, Stephen King and Peter S. Straub are friends and collaborators in horror fiction.
Mystery writers are equally tight. The British Detection Club started around 1930 with a roster that included G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers just to mention the three who are still most famous today. I don’t know how close they were other than professionally, though.
In the U.S. Ellery Queen, or the Fred Danney half of him, was both a major writer and the influential editor of the top mystery magazine. He was friends with and corresponded with everybody of note, although he wasn’t close to the Hammetts and Chandlers who weren’t close to anybody, really. He is renowned as an editorial influence on everyone from the 40s through the 70s, so you could almost pick a name. The impossible crime master John Dickson Carr, for one, who was the magazine book reviewer for many years.
All of these people I’ve mentioned have been influential on other writers, to different degrees and in varying ways. Most of them led more precarious freelance lives, though, which meant getting up and moving across country to take Hollywood writing jobs or whatever to pay the bills, so continuity of contact often suffered.
I certainly could name lots of other pairs who were close friends and/or collaborators: Pohl and Kornbluth; Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson; Roger Zelazny and Samuel R. Delany, in sf; Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer in mystery; but they may not rank as important as Tolkien and Lewis.
Maybe you can let me know whether I’ve got the idea and what of it works for you.
Really looking for Christians. A lot of Americans have written about Tolkien and Lewis, with varying success, but has anyone come forward as, as it were, an American Tolkien or Lewis?
I don’t know that I would put down their religion as the defining aspect of either author–particularly not Tolkien…
But no, I think most American authors who have been dead long enough to have been academically studied haven’t been particularly religious. I would imagine that the US has always been more polarized on religion, given it’s deist vs. puritanical background which then extends to today’s atheists/agnostics vs. bible-thumpers. Most authors will either have been fairly irreligious in their writing or overtly so I would imagine–and those who were overtly so seem not to have lasted.
Maybe the closest person I can think of is Madeleine L’Engle: a Christian (specifically, Episcopalian) author who’s best known for a series of fantasy/SF children’s books (A Wrinkle in Time et al) but who has written much other fiction and nonfiction, for children and adults, much of it on religious themes.
It seemed to me that the British were getting all the good fantasy authors, what with not only Lewis and Tolkien, but Beatrix Potter and Barrie and others.
It wasn’t until I read The Annmotated Wizard of Oz that I realized we’d been shortchanging our own. L. Frank Baum was immensely popular inn his own day, not only in the US, but around the world. As Hearn makes clear in his introduction, it wasn’t the 1939 movie that made Oz popular – the movie was riding on the coattails of Baum’s popularity. There was a virtual industry of Oz – not only Baum’s books, but Ruth Plumly Thimson’s follow-ups, stage reviews, the Baum-produced movies, the Larry Semon silent version, and others. Even in recent years there have been sequel movies and cartoons and books (Martin Gardner and Philip Jose Farmer wrote Oz books). But Baum’s originals remain excellent works of creatyive fantasy. Del Rey seems to be republishing them in paperback, after a hiatus of fifteen years. Dover has several of the Oz books in print.
Christians? Now I’m lost. Although I find a great deal of Christian symbolism in LotR, I don’t think of Tolkien as a Christian apologist as Lewis was. And as Sage Rat says, that tends not to be a major strain in American writing; just the opposite in fact.
I’m not even sure what you mean by influences now that I look back at the OP. How much influence did Lewis have on other writers? For that matter, how much influence did Tolkien have until he was turned - crassly and deliberately - into an industry by American publishers in the 1970s?
If you want a pair of major American writers who really did influence others and have been written about ad nauseam, then you have to start with Fitzgerald and Hemingway, who have Tolkien and Lewis beat by a mile.
But as I say, I’m too confused now to post anything truly useful.
I would not even define Tolkien as coming across blatantly Christian in his writings.
His stories and creation myth were influenced much by the Old “Pagan” religions of the Norse, Celtic and Finnish people.
That he was Christian and believed in Christian ideals is not debatable. However, it was really Lewis who wrote Christian fantasy. Tolkien was much more the reintroduction of the traditional Epic.
Let us keep in mind that while the Valar & Maiar were effectively Angelic orders and Erü was a monotheist God, the creation was based on a grand majestic set of three songs and this shows the Finnish influence. The Valar acted much more like Pagan Gods than angels and Gandalf walking among them does not ring like any Christian Bible story I can think of.
In addition, all of the Middle Earth stories were Pre-Christ and realistically pre history. He even drew upon the Atlantis story for partial inspiration for Numenor.
It is not until Farmer Giles and Smith of Wootton Major that Tolkien got to the Christian age.
