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. 

 

Books by Richard Adams That Are Not By The Author of Watership Down

Recently I finished a checklist of the writings of Richard Adams (1920-2016), the author of Watership Down and many other books. My checklist accounts for the first editions of his books, short stories, juvenilia, nonfiction, and a selection of interviews with him. I was surprised no one had done such a thing before. It will appear in a volume Watership Down: From Animal Fantasy to Ecological Reality, edited by Catherine Butler and Dimitra Fimi, to be published in 2025 by the University Press of Mississippi. 

The process involved disambiguating the publications of other people named Richard Adams from those by the author of Watership Down. Some books have been attributed to him and are demonstrably not by him; yet they appear in various usually-credible bibliographies. 

The most persistent example is the slim anthology Sinister and Supernatural Stories (Ward Lock Educational, 1976). It contains seven stories, one, "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier, and one, "Poor Ash," an original by Richard Adams, who also contributed a two page introduction. There is no biographical information on Adams in the book. The fantasist Richard Adams did anthologies, like  Richard Adams’s Favourite Animal Stories (1981), which included one tale ("The Rabbit's Ghost Story") by Adams, making for a similar situation with the earlier anthology. Research showed that this Richard Adams did other books around the same time for the same and other publishers. A second slim anthology Stories of Adolescence (1979) was edited by this Richard Adams, and likewise contains an original story titled "Dead End." 

Yet another volume edited by this Richard Adams is a collection The Birds and Other Stories (Longman, 1980), by Daphne du Maurier, which includes five stories ("The Birds" having appeared in Sinister and Supernatural Stories) and a new Foreword by du Maurier, and an Editor's Introduction by Adams. This time, however, the title page credits Richard Adams as "Head of the Sixth Form, Lord Williams's School, Thame." Other books edited by Adams in this Longman series include The Valley of Fear (1980) by Arthur Conan Doyle; Typhoon and Other Stories (1980) by Joseph Conrad.

This Richard Adams also was the series editor at Longman Study Texts for some Shakespeare plays, and ones by other authors. I note here just one, Romeo and Juliet, which was edited by Paul Cheetham, of the English Department, Lord Williams's School; so this Richard Adams didn't need to look far to hire an editor. A query to Lord Williams's School about this Richard Adams did not receive a reply. 

Yet with considerable digging, I have ascertained that this Richard [M.] Adams was born near London in 1938. He attended the Orange Hill Boys Grammar School, and St. Catherine's College, Oxford (B.A. 1961; B.Litt 1965). He taught for some years at St. Catherine's, and subsequently as an English teacher at Lord Williams's School. He wrote several school and academic textbooks, including Into Shakespeare (1977), Appropriate English (1984), and Teaching Shakespeare (1985), and a study of Iris Murdoch's The Bells (1990). as well as a Penguin Critical Studies edition on Conrad's The Heart of Darkness (1991), among others. A keen concert and festival attendee, he also published A Book of British Music Festivals (1986; see below for flap bio). In 1986 he became Professor of English Language and Literature at California State University in Sacramento, and later Adjunct Professor, English Literature, at Ramkhamhaeng University in Thailand. He is currently retired and lives in Bangkok. 

 Richard Adams (b. 1938) flap bio 1986

 

There is another Richard Adams (b. 1940) who, in the 1970s and 80s, wrote on Christian subjects, So God Said to Me ... (1978), Dear God--Dear George (1980), Seen God Lately?(1982), Signs of Life (1985), and Visions and Voices (1988).