Customer Reviews

Sleuthing C. S. Lewis: More Light in the Shadowlands

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In _Sleuthing C.S. Lewis_, Kathryn Lindskoog carries on her crusade against Walter Hooper with all the balance and objectivity of a prosecuting attorney. Readers of Mrs. Lindskoog's earlier book _Light in the Shadowlands_ may find it useful to know that this latest book is not really a sequel but a modest revision. (Neither the Amazon website nor the Mercer University Press website mentions that fact.)

The reason for the relatively low rating I gave _Sleuthing_ is that I don't think the way Mrs. Lindskoog presents her case is commensurate with the seriousness of her allegations. Unlike a real prosecuting attorney, Mrs. Lindskoog is able, and more than willing, to present information whose prejudicial effect outweighs its probative value. I don't see the point of the rumormongering that takes place on pages 90, 177, and 178, or the catty remark about Hooper's conversion that is included on page 179, for instance. For some time Lindskoog has been making insinuations about Hooper's sexual orientation, and those appear, if anything, to be getting more numerous. (As a small example, compare footnote 6 on page 58 of _Sleuthing_ to footnote 6 on page 55 of _Light_.)

It would have been nice if Mrs. Lindskoog had said more about her methodology. She bridles at the charge that her theories are unfalsifiable, but the way that both similarities and dissimilarities between disputed and undisputed Lewis texts are used to bolster charges of forgery makes one wonder what sort of evidence she would accept as exculpatory. A.Q. Morton's identification of _The Dark Tower_ as a composite work is reported by Mrs. Lindskoog, but criticism of Morton's cusum technique by Michael Hilton, David Holmes, Pieter de Haan, and Erik Schils is not.

There are probably few living scholars who know more about C.S. Lewis than Mrs. Lindskoog does. The first book about Lewis I ever bought was the 1981 edition of Lindskoog's _C.S. Lewis: Mere Christian_; I enjoyed it greatly. Looking back at that book, I see that while Mrs. Lindskoog now writes "The most far-fetched fantasy of 1977 may have been the idea that Lewis was the author of _The Dark Tower_", in 1981 she wrote that "Lewis unfortunately got only halfway through [_The Dark Tower_] . . . No one knows why Lewis gave up on this innovative story".

Lindskoog leaves a comet-trail of controversy wherever she goes in Lewis studies, but nobody who is interested in the writings of C. S. Lewis can afford to be ignorant of the case she makes in this book and in its earlier version, _Light in the Shadowlands_. What, after all, _are_ the writings of C. S. Lewis? There appears to be legitimate doubt about the authorship of some of the posthumously-released material.

_Sleuthing C. S. Lewis_ is an update and expansion of Lindskoog's earlier volume, and the text contains numerous additions. I thought it well worth the read, both to revisit the old material and to pick out the new. Also, this version has a much-needed index, unlike the earlier edition.

The text is marred by an unusually large number of typographical errors, no doubt the result of being handled by a small university press. However, this book is an important one. It is civil yet witty in tone and packed with fascinating stuff.

Buy, read, make up your own mind. (Or reserve judgement until more complete evidence is available, as the case may be.) These are important questions, and Lindskoog is the only writer on the market that treats them.

This book is almost a disaster. Don't get me wrong---I think Walter Hooper is a nut, & someone has to point out the damage he's been doing to Lewis's literary estate for 40 years. To the extent Lindskoog does point it out, I appreciate her book. Unfortunately she's a bit of a nut herself.

First, typographically the book is a mess. I've never seen so many typos in a published text; it looks like it was never proofread even once. This really obscures the meaning at times (for instance, when quoted passages are inconsistently indented so you can't tell where the quotation ends), and at best is distracting and frustrating.

Second, Lindskoog overstates her case in every chapter. A few examples: The phrase "English public school" in The Dark Tower is not used by C.S. Lewis in his own person, but by a character who is a foreigner ... English people DO know about Benedict Arnold, and would be likely to reference him rather than Quisling while conversing with Americans ... The idea that Madeleine L'engle invented the "hive-and-brainwashed-drones" sci-fi cliche is insane .... The criticisms of The Dark Tower's prose are pendantic and inept; Lindskoog seems to have no inner ear and no understanding of alliteration, parallel phrases, or rhythym.

Third, Lindskoog is very obviously (and clumsily) trying to write between the lines that Walter Hooper is gay. This smear is all the more despicable because she won't just say it outright (and explain why it's relevant). An anti-Hooper book should deal with his dishonesty, unscrupulous editing, and possible forgeries, but Lindskoog isn't satisfied with these and pushes her insinuations throughout (Hooper had a young male roommate; Hooper was briefly at a seminary that A.N. Wilson described as flamingly queer; Hooper and Owen Barfield produced a document with "blue restroom" jokes; Hooper, or someone who made a C.S. Lewis movie, was fond of boy-choirs; Hooper, according to "rumor," left this or that college "under a cloud," and more ... MUCH more). Do I need to point out that her hero, CSL, would never even begin to stoop so low?

I'm not saying that you shouldn't look into it. If you don't know about the Hooper fiasco, it's worthwhile to read one of Lindskoog's books on the subject. But as a reviewer I just can't rate her work very high.

Kathryn Lindskoog does not appear to take the role of judge or prosecuting attorney, but of investigative journalist as well as literary critic. She makes it clear in the preface material that this is an updated, expanded version of her earlier book "Light in the Shadowlands (also an excellent read). The interesting subtitle here is MORE Light in the Shadowlands. Anyone who dislikes wit and cheerful satire in serious scholarship should not read Lindskoog, because that's what she's noted for.

One should note that there is some extremely important new material in "Sleuthing", such as proof that 45 of the 75 poems that Lewis published in his lifetime were altered in 1964 by someone named Walter Hooper. So the versions that are familiar to Lewis' readers are inferior to what Lewis actually wrote. (One becomes increasingly familiar with Hooper in both books). Some of the poems are completely ruined. She also reveals shocking new facts about the secret ownership of the Lewis literary estate and the fact that the royalties on his estate go to (get this) a tax shelter in Lichtenstein, where they can't be investigated.

There are plenty of other new suprises in this highly entertaining new book, and I highly recommend it!

Kathryn Lindskoog tells one of the most bizarre stories in literary history. An aging American graduate student of no terribly noticeable ability travels to England, and attaches himself to the dying C.S.Lewis much as a tick will fasten itself to an unwary walker in the long New England spring grass, and succeeds in establishing himself as the manager, adjudicator, editor, publisher, and developer of the dead man's enormously profitable literary estate, in the process creating a whole myth of his own non-existent role in the dead man's final days, and providing himself with a career for life. This is the real story that Lindskoog is telling in this, the third version of her book The C.S.Lewis Hoax. The question of the authenticity of The Dark Tower, the posthumous Lewis work that Walter Hooper is supposed to have discovered, is an important part of the story, but by no means the whole of it, as so many readers seem to think. It is only one episode in a history of falsified texts and misrepresented relationships.

"Where on earth did Hooper come from?" is the question long-time readers of Lewis have asked from the beginning of his reign over things Lewisian, and that Mrs. Lindskoog almost answers. In fact it became fairly clear, even in the first version of her book (which is still my favorite), that the responsibility rests with Lewis's old friend, Owen Barfield, who seems to have seen in Hooper an energetic fellow who would relieve him of a lot of responsibility and a lot of rather uncongenial work as Lewis's representative. In the short run, he was right on both counts.

Every scholar knows that it is extremely difficult to bring home a matter of fact to a literary audience, especially when the nature of the case requires one to argue a negative. But as the old Romans used to say, there is to be no disputation about fact, and it seems to me that Mrs. Lindskoog has martialled enough fact to carry her case.

I've been around for a long time, read many, many books, both good and bad, and this has to be one of the most unusual hybrids of good and bad I've ever encountered. I first read it years ago and keep it around to read every year during the Christmas season, when my heart needs light and air. Poor Kathryn Lindskoog has passed on now, dying of cancer in 2003, but I'm sure she is happy that people are still wondering about Walter Hooper and how many secrets he has kept for this long.

Walter Hooper is easy to pick on, especially his way of acting more British than Msdonna, and the extraordinary circumstances under which he became the executor of Lewis' estate are just astounding, especially the way he tries to pass it off as totally natural.

Lindskoog doesn't miss a trick, nor does she suffer a fool gladly. If I have reservations about her method, well, it does seem to me that brilliant as she was, she was lacking in compassion a bit, and of course one wonders about her lifelong drive to exterminate Hooper off the face of the earth. There must, one feels, have been a personal back story behind such venom, and maybe one day this will be explained, but in the meantime it's the secret wellspring of motiveless malignity that fascinates us about SLEUTHING C S LEWIS. She does seem to scorn Hooper for his homosexuality, or for trying to conceal it: on the average, there's one or two antigay digs and innuendos every three pages in Lindskoog's book. Obviously she must have been an awful gadfly, and like every other homophobe, she seems to know more about gay sex than I do! I wonder what Hooper makes of her now, and if any of her bullet points (and there are dozens) has any basis in reality. When he arrives in heaven, will he find Kathryn Lindskoog there, sharing a laugh with C S Lewis? And who will explain the secret sexual symbolism of the "Stinging Man" to whom?

Dr. Kathryn Lindskoog's latest book on what she refers to as "the C. S. Lewis Hoax," is one that readers of her other two books on the subject will not want to miss.

I read and very much enjoyed her early study of the theology of the Narnia books, "The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land." Her first of three books on the hoax, "The C. S. Lewis Hoax," published in 1988, read like a mystery thriller and had me hooked from page one. I was thrilled at her dective skills, horrified that so many people had been duped by the Lewis Estate, and amused at her contention that Lewis himself, while objecting to his published work being tampered with, would, at the same time, probably enjoy a good chuckle over the whole thing. My initial skepticism was quashed by the extensive documentation provided in the book, as well as the positive support from C. S. Lewis friends and authorities she received in response to the book.

If even half of the extensively documented, footnoted allegations and questions Lindskoog raises in this latest book are true, the C. S. Lewis Estate, and Wallter Hooper in particular, have some serious explaining to do. To date, no answers, only threats of lawsuits have been forthcoming from Hooper and Co.

As if they needed it, Lindskoog's allegations are lent even more credibility by the fact that several prominent C. S. Lewis scholars, authors and academics, such as Lloyd Alexander, Arthur C. Clarke, Algis Budrys, Gene Wolfe, Joe Christopher and Lyle Dorset, have signed petitions (reprinted in the book's appendix section) asking Hooper and the Lewis estate to provide answers to Lindskoog's charges that "The Dark Tower" and other recently piublished Lewis material are forgeries written by Hooper, a former Episcopalian clergyman from Kentucky, who now affects a British accent and Lewisian mannerisms, and that portions of modern reprints of other Lewis works, such as "Screwtape Letters," have been altered by Hooper. The answers they provide are crucial for a true and accurate understanding of the Lewis corpus; if it's been tampred with, we need to know!

Walter Hooper is routinely touted as the "foremost authority on C. S. Lewis," a position he seems unwilling to downplay; this is incorrect-for, as her works demonstrate, Kathryn Lindskoog is the foremost authority on C. S. Lewis.

If you're at all interested in Lewis, or Lewis studies, I urge you to get this book! (and the other two) Then write a letter to the Lewis Estate demanding they put forward answers.

Thank you Dr. Lindskoog, for providing us with more light in the Shadowlands.