Tolkien on de Camp's "Swords & Sorcery" Anthology

In July 1964, L. Sprague de Camp sent J.R.R. Tolkien a copy of his anthology, Swords & Sorcery, which had been published in December 1963. It is a collection of eight stories, with an introduction by de Camp, and colored cover art and eight interior black and white illustrations by Virgil Finlay.
 

Tolkien already knew the art of Virgil Finlay because his American publisher, Houghton Mifflin, had in early 1963 solicited a sample illustration by Finlay for a proposed (but unrealised) illustrated edition of The Hobbit. Tolkien commented on Finlay’s sample in a letter from 11 October 1963, noting that  “Though it gives prospects of a general treatment rather heavier and more violent and airless than I should like, I thought it was good, and actually I thought Bilbo's rather rotund and babyish (but anxious) face was in keeping with his character up to that point. After the horrors of the ‘illustrations’ to the translations [of The Hobbit] Mr. Finlay is a welcome relief. As long (as seems likely) he will leave humour to the text and pay reasonable attention to what the text says, I expect I shall be quite happy.”

Finlay sample for The Hobbit

Unfortunately, Finlay’s cover and interior illustrations to the anthology are rather undistinguised, and do not showcase Finlay’s talent, perhaps owing to the medium of reproduction in a mass market paperback on cheap paper.

With his copy of the Swords & Sorcery book, Tolkien left some jotted notes, difficult to read (see illustration at bottom). Some bits of these notes are quoted below. His main criticisms of the book he made in a 30 August 1964 letter to de Camp, which has only partially been published. In it, Tolkien noted that he was interested in practically everything save literary criticism, and he said of contemporary fantasy that “I will not pretend that it gave me much pleasure.” In particular about de Camp’s book he noted:  “Though I might say, I suppose, as a purely personal aside, that all the items seem poor in the subsidiary (but to me not unimportant) matters of nomenclature. Best when inventive, least good when literary or archaic. (For instance Thangobrind and Alaric, both singularly inapt for their purpose) . . . Also I do wonder why you chose that particular tale of Dunsany’s. It seems to me to illustrate all his faults. And the ghastly final paragraph!”

In his notes, Tolkien had written: “Found [the anthology] interesting but did not much like the stories in it.” Also: “Most of these things are overheated & exaggerated ([?...] bigger or [?would be] bigger, [?’...’] is [?...] than the purposes warrant) Also obviously over or ill-written.”

Of the eight stories, Tolkien commented upon four specifically, with a later conversational comment about a fifth as reported by de Camp. Tolkien did not comment on deCamp’s introduction, nor on the stories by Kuttner, Leiber and Lovecraft.  His comments on the four are here considered sequentially, in the order they appear in the book.

“The Valor of Cappen Varra” by Poul Anderson.  “Cappen Varra. Nomenclature v. bad. Let us have genuine Scandinavian/Norse ‘barbarians’ or something invented.”

“Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller” by Lord Dunsany. “Dunsany at his worst. Trying so hard for the shudder. But not for a moment making the tale ‘credible’ enough to make a background for a strong [?]. And the ending lamentable — in that [?setting]. In a world in which a Thangobrind could even begin to be (let alone Hlo-hlo or [?all the rest]) early 19th century Riviera [?milleau] is surely utterly impossible — or vice versa. And what is meant by selling his daughter’s soul.” And “Dunsany’s is one of his worst. That final ghastly paragraph!”

De Camp suggested that: “I suppose Tolkien meant by ‘ghastly’ Dunsany’s leaving his ‘secondary world’ to drag in a dig at a type of contemporary person he disliked.”  

In the first paragraph of the story, Dunsany wrote: “Now there was a Merchant Prince who had come to Thangobrind and had offered his daughter’s soul for the diamond that is larger than the human head and was to be found on the lap of the spider-idol, Hlo-Hlo, in his temple of Moung-ga-ling; for he had heard that Thangobrind was a thief to be trusted.”  The final paragraph of the short tale reads:

And the only daughter of the Merchant Prince felt so little gratitude for this great deliverance that she took to respectability of a militant kind, and became aggressively dull, and called her home the English Riviera, and had platitudes worked in worsted upon her tea-cosy, and in the end never died, but passed away at her residence.

“Hellsgarde” by C. L. Moore. “Jirel of Joiry. Does create an atmosphere and [?the] sinister ‘corrupt’ household of Alaric was eerie and credible. But I never [sic] find phantasmal struggles such as that of Jirel with ‘Undead’ Andred quite unconvincing — especially when the victims escape!” And: “Jirel of Joiry [pp.] 140 – 146 is good but needs a deft story (and explanation) to make it valid.”

“The Testament of Athammaus” by Clark Ashton Smith. “The Athammaus monster wholly unbelievable [?…] disgusting [?... ... …]. There are lots of ways of being [?...] nastily, without all this tooraloo of nonsense.”

De Camp met Tolkien in Oxford in February 1967, and de Camp later reported that Tolkien had said he “rather liked” the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard.  It is an odd comment, considering that Tolkien had earlier claimed that he did not much like the stories in the book, and there is no evidence to support the idea that he had read any other Conan story.  De Camp elaborated this view in a letter to John D. Rateliff on 14 January 1983:  “During our conversation, I said something casual to Tolkien about my involvement with Howard’s Conan stories, and he said he ‘rather liked them.’ That was all; we went on to other subjects. I know he had read Swords & Sorcery because I had sent him a copy. I don’t know if he had read any other Conan besides “Shadows in the Moonlight,” but I rather doubt it.”

 

Borges on Tolkien

So far as I know, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian author of such magisterial fantasy stories as "The Aleph" and "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," mentioned Tolkien only twice--and not favorably. I wondered why, for it would have seemed, knowing Borges's other interests (from Anglo-Saxon to Lewis Carroll--Borges was especially well-read in British literature), that he might have been a fan. Borges, who went completely blind around 1954, was "discovered" in translation by English readers in the 1960s, and for the last two decades of his life, he was just a trans-continental flight away from Buenos Aires to being feted in Europe, America, and elsewhere. The two quotes about Tolkien come from such celebrations.

The first was at the University of Michigan. On Tuesday, the 2nd of March 1976, he spoke first to a relatively small gathering of students and faculty, and later in the afternoon to a capacity crowd in the Modern Languages Building, where various questions were put to him, some by Professor Donald Yates of the Department of Romance Languages, who wrote up the event as "A Colloquy with Jorge Luis Borges" for The Gyspy Scholar (1976), published by Michigan State University.  The colloquy is most easily found in Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations (1998), edited by Richard Burgin. The relevant Tolkien section is as follows.

Question: I’d like him to comment on how that relates to the creative aspects of the reader, that he brings to his reading of Borges. I feel sometimes as though…

Borges: Well, how is the case of Borges different from the case of any other writer? When you are reading a book, if you don’t find your way inside it, then everything is useless. The problem with The Lord of the Rings is you’re left outside the book, no? That has happened to most of us. In that case, that book is not meant for us . . . 

Yates: In Chicago, last night and here before and every place else, people come to Borges eager to find out his opinion on Tolkien.

Borges: Well I could never. . . I wish somebody would explain it to me or somehow convey what the book’s good for. Those people say if I like Lewis Carroll, I should like Tolkien. I am very fond of Lewis Carroll, but I am disconcerted by Tolkien.

Yates: Last night you mentioned the difference between Tolkien and Lewis Carroll. You said Lewis Carroll is authentic fantasy and Tolkien is just going on and on and on.

Borges: Maybe I’m being unjust to Tolkien but, yes, I think of him as rambling on and on.

The second instance was in a filmed program, the popular "Firing Line" hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr. It was taped in Buenos Aires on 1 February 1977, and originally broadcast on PBS in the U.S. on 18 February 1977.  The full segment, "Borges: South America's Titan," can be viewed here (the Tolkien comments are at timestamp 32.30 and following). Here is a transcription of the segment, slightly edited.

Buckley: Would you go so far as to say that a writer who seeks fame ought not to read books that children can enjoyably read?

Borges: No, no.

Buckley: What about Tolkien, for instance?

Borges: Well, Tolkien--I have found him--I have only found in him utter boredom. I have never got inside his books.

Buckley: When who got inside his books?

Borges: I have never got inside his books. I have always been an outsider. I attempted that "Brotherhood--" Is it "The Brotherhood of the Rings?"

Buckley: Yes. "The Lordship of the Rings," isn't it?

Borges: "The Lordship of the Ring." I don't know. But in any case no rings were awarded me, no. I tried to enjoy him: I did my best. I was in Scotland at the time, doing American theater. Read him, laughed very loudly, but at the same time I felt I got nothing out of the reading. To compare him to Lewis Carroll is blasphemy. I'm so fond of Lewis Carroll.

Here at least Borges admits that he "attempted" The Lord of the Rings. We don't know how far he got. He says he was in Scotland at the time, and it seems Borges was there three times, in the spring of 1963, the late summer of 1964, and the spring of 1971 (after this time in Scotland, Borges went to Oxford where he was awarded an honorary doctorate on 29th April--one wonders if Tolkien attended, or if Tolkien ever read Borges). It could have been on any of these three visits to Scotland that Borges attempted the read Tolkien, for none seem to have any specific association with American theater. And who read Tolkien to him?  His sister accompanied him on the first trip; a friend María Esther Vasquez on the second. But it remains unknown who might have read Tolkien to him. And more significantly, how much of The Fellowship of the Ring was read to him? I would think not much. Certainly the Prologue and the first few chapters might lead Borges to say he laughed very loudly, but soon after that the tone of the book changes, becoming darker, so it seems that Borges read very little of the book in order to arrive at its humor and his own boredom, such that he (and William F. Buckley, Jr.) could not even recall the book's name correctly. Alas.