Rediscovering True Myth
A Feature Review of
The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien
John Hendrix
Hardcover: Harry N. Abrams, 2024
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Reviewed by Tyler Selby
The hero is one of the most enduring types of characters passed down to us from the practice of storytelling. The brave and courageous hero continues to hold our attention. And yet perhaps just as enduring a character type as the hero is the trickster—presenting one identity on the surface, but covering over an alternative identity and deceptive purpose beneath the veneer. The Mythmakers, by John Hendrix, is a trickster of sorts. Although graphic novels have begun to gain appreciation as a serious form, they still can take a lower place behind the novel, poem, and essay. And so on the surface, The Mythmakers can seem like a playful kind of work, when in actuality it is a serious kind of play, and offers the best kind of deception—one in which reveals a richness beneath a simple surface.
As a graphic novel, The Mythmakers excels. Hendrix bends the form to make the book be more than one thing: it is a narrative of a lion and a wizard physically moving through the book, fully aware that they are in a book; it touches on literary theory and explains the nuances between fairy tale and myth; it gives historical context of England during the early 20th century as the backdrop for biography of Lewis and Tolkien; and finally it gives cursory analysis of their work and its main themes. In its cleverness, The Mythmakers is reminiscent of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and in its style, it bears similarities to Craig Thompson’s work such as in Blankets. And yet, Hendrix’s work stands on its own. But more than that, The Mythmakers is not just a great graphic novel, it is a timely work.
The Mythmakers brings the life and the work of C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien to our attention in a fresh way. And through this, Hendrix makes an apology for myth as Lewis and Tolkien saw it. Both men saw first-hand the brutal culmination of industrialization at the service of nationalism: life in the trenches of World War I broke the spell of that era’s myth in the saving power of the Enlightenment. The shattered promise of enlightened values and technological advancement to move society into a new age of perfection was devastating. But despite the disillusionment from that time, society had already been deeply shaped by the lessons of the Enlightenment: society had moved beyond the need for superstition, in other words, for myth. We have inherited that lesson: myth is just another word for a lie, a falsehood—it covers over the facts of reality. One of the lasting damages of the Enlightenment, then, is also the continued disregard for myth, or the belief that myths are a thing of the past.
And yet, myths remain with us. Myth still has power. Hendrix follows the intellectual journey of Tolkien and Lewis to bring back the true meaning of what myth actually is: not a synonym for a lie, but a narrative that gives meaning. It is a meaning-making story that extends back into time and encompasses deeper elements of what it means to be human. It aims at deeper truths that cannot be accessed through rational proposition and argument, but must be sought after in an oblique way, and through image and imagination. It is akin to Paul’s image in 1 Corinthians 13:12 of looking through a glass darkly. So although we think we have dispelled the genre of myth, there are still myth makers among us and we are still listening to their stories.
Who are the myth makers today? In the days of Lewis and Tolkien, the tellers of the myth of progress and enlightenment might have been earnest in their belief in those myths as human stories of meaning. Whereas today’s myth makers seem to be much more cynical and disingenuous. Myths today show up in political rhetoric, twitter feeds, Marvel movies, TV plotlines, and above all, in advertising. One place in which today’s myth making shows up clearly– in America at least– is in the Netflix documentary about the backstory of Vince McMahon and WWE: Mr. McMahon. The classic archetypes of traditional myths are all there: the heroes, the tricksters, the quest, the battle of good and evil, the transformation of characters and twisting storylines. And yet the stories of WWE are constantly tweaked and adjusted according to audience preference: Hulk Hogan conquers his enemies as a representation of America’s fight over evil. In one of the earlier highly promoted matches, Sgt. Slaughter –formerly a hero– turns coat and pledges allegiance to Iraq, the cultural enemy du jour, and Hogan again is sent in to represent American nationalism in his pledge to defeat Sgt. Slaughter. But when the gulf war breaks out, the myth makers have to pull back the storyline for fear of losing their audience by hitting too close to reality.
Traditionally, myth played a central cultural role. It never stood alone as just a story, but was tied to ritual and marked initiation into some community. Myth was an entrance into membership and a boundary crossing event in which a person drew closer to the heart of a community, and thereby closer to the Transcendent abiding within that community. Myth was a monumental point—the person drew near and was changed. But today, our myths are dynamic and we are the monument. WWE as myth making is a microcosm that represents much of American myth making today: the aim of these myths are not to make sense of our world and ourselves, it is to make a market. Nothing is required of us but to consume the spectacle, and membership is achieved through merchandise.
So why is Hendrix’s The Mythmakers a timely book? Because given the state of our current myth making in America, the temptation is not just to be duped into false myth, but it is to try again to throw away myth altogether. We fall into the trap of thinking we can shake off myth merely as superstitious thinking that we have progressed beyond. And yet, myth remains with us. What we actually lose when we try to outgrow the thing we can never leave behind is in fact what myth always intended to seek after: meaning and membership which derive from the Transcendent in our midst.
We are in the season of advent. The title given to Christ in this time, Immanuel, God with us, is perhaps seen in a new light when we consider Lewis’s naming of Christianity as “The True Myth.” The meaningful impact of this season, and the Christian faith, is left hollow when we lose our appetite for myth. Without a taste for the Transcendent, the Incarnation is meaningless—for what can it mean for God to come dwell among us if there is no meaningful sense of the “beyond” from which God can leave behind? And for our lives after advent has come and gone, the power of the True Myth should still sway us as we follow the way of Jesus, desiring to make known in the here and now the way of living that has come to us from “the far off country.”
Tyler Selby
Tyler Selby is the Director of Maintenance at Englewood Community Development Corporation (which serves a largely marginalized population in the Near Eastside of Indianapolis). He is a graduate of Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan College, enjoys cooking, growing tomatoes, and is certified in pest control.
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