Book Review: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch

By Diana Pavlac Glyer

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation!”

Sometimes we say it from sheer curiosity and sometimes we say it with questionable motives, but we’re almost always searching for an insider’s perspective.

In January 2013, I sat steps away from the Rabbit Room inside The Eagle and Child pub, located few blocks from Oxford University’s city center. Over a bite of forgettable English pub food, I imagined what it might’ve been like in the mid-to-late 1930s to find a seat during the lunch rush on a run-of-the-mill Tuesday near enough to eavesdrop on the friendly banter escaping from the now-infamous Rabbit Room, which played host to the creative collective we call “the Inklings.”

“Reading Bandersnatch is like reading a detailed account of a treasure hunt through hundreds of thousands of clues sprinkled across decades of material. ”

Thanks to Diana Glyer’s book, Bandersnatch, when it comes to the Inklings’ creative collaboration we need not leave our imaginative power to the tiny brain of a fly on a wall. We now know more of the inner-workings of the punsters such as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and others who together “dabbled in ink” and workshopped their “vague or half-formed intimations and ideas.”

The book leans heavily upon primary sources from personal correspondence amongst the group. Reading Bandersnatch is like reading a detailed account of a treasure hunt through hundreds of thousands of clues sprinkled across decades of material (Glyer herself described her research as “dusting for fingerprints”). Each chapter addresses a particular feature of their collaboration and concludes with a suggestion for contemporary readers to “do what they did.” Below, I’ll highlight a few particularly meaningful aspects of their creative collaboration in hopes that it urges your onward in your own creative calling.

1.     Regularly scheduled meetings work best when there are predictable structures, almost as if the rhythm of routine creates a safe place to discuss daring possibilities.

Though one might assume creative brilliance strikes like lightning and never hits the same place twice, it’s more like lighting kindling in a fireplace with a collection of sparks from multiple sources. The safety of friends with a predictable routine actually creates a space where new ideas grow from the collective experiences of the group.

Tolkien called this process of making connections with other artistic works as investing in the “leaf-mould of the mind.” An artist’s work emerges out of this “leaf-mould” comprised of “all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.” Leaf-mould of the mind becomes the soil for something new to emerge and each creative act is both a response and a contribution to something much larger than itself.

2.     Creatives need “resonators” who understand the art of giving feedback.

A “resonator” is a friendly, interested, supportive audience who understands the artistic intention and eagerly helps to move, compel, inspire, or persuade the work into the public sphere. Such was the relationship amongst the Inklings. Their deep camaraderie enhanced the warm tones of their creativity like a violin body amplifies the vibration of its strings. Find someone who can resonate with you.

Good work should be praised lavishly and often - if warranted. In critique, offer specific suggestions. We can learn from their example.The Inklings labored over invitations to comment on another’s work. Rarely was a comment sheer critique. Instead, blunt truthfulness was paired with good-hearted suggestions and alternative ideas. In a letter from Lewis praising one of Tolkien’s poems which provided “an evening of such delight” not had in ages, Lewis still concluded, “Detailed criticisms (including grumbling at individual lines) will follow.”

3.     Collaboration is best when it’s both structured and spontaneous. Often, the distinction between work and play is hard to find.

The Rabbit Room gathering on Tuesdays at lunch at The Eagle and Child was actually the unstructured, spontaneous gathering of the Inklings. According to lesser-known member, James Dundas-Grant, “back and forth conversation would flow. Latin tags flying around. Homer quoted in the original to make a point…” with Tolkien joined the revelry “jumping up and down declaiming in Anglo-Saxon” while Lewis wondered silently what others thought of all this furiously fast theology likely mistaken for bawdy humor. Don’t let boisterous backrooms fool you: belly-laughs and banter are the breeding grounds of brilliance. You need those people in your life.

The Inklings’ more structured meeting happened on Thursday evenings in Lewis’ rooms at Magdalen College where manuscripts-in-progress were read aloud and the group given free rein to “settle down in judgment upon it.” The members held deep appreciation for the gathering as “good, witty, learned, high-hearted and stimulating,” “the best of them were as good as anything I shall live to see,” and ‘an outpouring of wit, nonsense, whimsy, dialectical swordplay, and pungent judgment such as I have rarely heard equalled.” We need this, too. Intellect, brilliance, artistry, and personality forged in the fire of regular rhythms of sharing unfinished work.

4.     Creativity thrives in community; ideas arise in conversation.

Take the words of Charles Williams: “Much was possible to a man in solitude…But some things were possible only to a man in companionship, and of these the most important was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and blindness and bigotry.”

Or Dorothy Sayers, “Poets do not merely pass on the torch in a relay race; they toss the ball to one another, to and fro, across the centuries. Dante would have been different if Virgil had never been, but if Dante had never been we should know Virgil differently…”

Bandersnatch is an invitation into the Rabbit Room, not as a spectator but as a contributor. So, stop eavesdropping, pull up a chair, and join the conversation. Take up the ball and toss it to and fro across the centuries that we may know one another more truly. Bandersnatch is an encouragement to find your rhythm of collaborative creativity in community. It’s a template for curating your unspoken inklings within structured and spontaneous conversation. Take up Bandersnatch and you’ll find plentiful kindling and ample sparks for a fresh fire in a new place where creativity grows.