Mike Farrelly

When he began writing The Lord of the Rings in the 1920s, J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor at the University of Oxford. At the time, fantasy was not considered a “serious” genre. So, one of his contemporaries explains, Tolkien was mocked by his Oxford colleagues. They said he was wasting his time “lavishing such incredible pains upon a genre which is, for them, trifling by definition.” One of Tolkien's biographers writes, “He was regularly asked in a mocking manner, 'How is your hobbit?'” Amidst a crowd of people who make fun of you, who tell you you're wasting your time, who encourage you to do something less trifling and more prestigious—sometimes, all it takes is one person's support. For Tolkien, that person was the great writer C.S. Lewis. “The unpayable debt that I owe to [Lewis] was not influence but sheer encouragement,” Tolkien said. “He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby.” Takeaway 1: In his essay, How To Do What You Love, Paul Graham writes, “You shouldn't worry about prestige...Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.” Tolkien wasn't warped by his Oxford colleagues and their belief that what he was working on wasn't prestigious. And after his works of fantasy went on to sell more than 600 million copies, Tolkien would eventually be widely called the “father of high fantasy.” He is just one example to remind us that what is considered “prestigious” isn't stable in time, and that “if you do anything well enough,” to quote Graham again, “you’ll make it prestigious.” Takeaway 2: Tolkien, Lewis, and another writer named Charles Williams were part of an informal literary club known as The Inklings. Shortly after Williams unexpectedly died, Lewis realized he stopped hearing the way Tolkien used to laugh at the way Williams used to tell a joke. Which made him then realize, “In each of my friends,” Lewis wrote, “there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.” If not for the encouragement of his friend, Tolkien said he would not have been large enough to call the whole of him into activity. “But for [Lewis'] interest and unceasing eagerness for more,” Tolkien said, “I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.” - - - “Just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.” — Paul Graham Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!