by carol » August 25th, 2004, 9:23 am
It's understood that the stories weren't to Tolkien's liking.
In George Sayer's bio, "Jack", he says:
"[Lewis] had always been constructively helpful and sympathetic with Tolkien's writing, and he probably expected similar treatment. He was hurt, astonished and discouraged when Tolkien said that he thought the book was almost worthless, that it seemed like a jumble of unrelated mythologies....."
Tolkien didn't like his having put together creatures from different backgrounds/mythologies. "The effect was incongruous, and for him, painful...." Lewis argued that they existed in both their minds together, but Tolkien disagreed. "He soon gave up trying to read them. He also thought they were carelessly and superficially written. His condemnation was so severe that one suspects he envied the speed with which Jack wrote, and compared it with his own laborious method of composition."
One of the ironies of this disagreement is that so many readers are keen fans of both men and their two styles.