Debating the Legacy of C.S. Lewis

The controversy over Kathryn Lindskoog's work on the legacy of C.S. Lewis involves sex, lies, forgery, illness, and big money. Given how sensational it all seems, it was not too surprising that one website ran a link to The Chronicle's article under the headline "When Academics Attack!"

Yet this dispute also involves some of the most basic issues in literary study. How do scholars determine the coherence or integrity of an author's body of work? What are the criteria for judging evidence, once the authenticity of a text is in dispute? The kinds of arguments now being raised around C.S. Lewis would have been very familiar to scholars of the sixteenth century, for example--which seems even more appropriate, given that Lewis was an expert on that period. But the fact that problems of this kind have a distinguished history doesn't make them any less complex. And the passion they arouse can be fierce.

That's why it is good to have Joe Christopher with us this afternoon. Even Lewisians who disagree with him for endorsing Kathryn Lindskoog's work have expressed their respect for his work.

But that does not speak to the point of your question. I think the important point to remember is that the works published in Lewis's lifetime are legitimate. Unless you are drawn to the poetry, it is easy to avoid the materials being questioned.

But there is a difference between being a Lewis scholar and being a Lewis enjoyer. I think a Lewis scholar has to deal with the questions in one way or another. When Don King, in his recent (and good) book C. S. Lewis, Poet, says that he accepts Walter Hooper's account of editing the poems, he is none the less acknowledging that there is controversy in the area--otherwise, the question of accepting or not accepting would not come up.

I must confess that I could not have done what Lindskoog has done--keep up with all the material through the years. I have written a preface to each edition of Lindskoog's book, and I have twice given talks on her arguments--once at a conference of the Mythopoeic Society and once at a meeting at Abilene Christian University. But I have spent most of my energy in writing critiques of Lewis's writings, which is my way of testifying to his artistry. (I am tempted to go off onto a discussion of "Lewis and the literary canon," but that's off the topic of this colloquy!)

I would also ask the question: Why have none of these same "Lewis scholars" made an effort to carefully examine Mrs. Lindskoog's claim that there was no bonfire from which Walter Hooper rescued Lewis papers from destruction? The existence of the bonfire is well known to a number of present-day Oxford residents, none of whom have ever been queried about it -- and, having never read any of Mrs. Lindskoog's books, were amazed to learn from me this past year that anyone seriously questioned the event.

Joe Christopher:
    Dr. Brown, it's good to hear from you. I met you at the Lewis centenary celebration at Wheaton when I ducked into the exhibit hall (small room) and looked briefly at your manuscript. Let me try to answer your questions.

First, about your manuscript. Looking at the manuscripts doesn't help very much. I've looked at "The Dark Tower" manuscript, and, if Lindskoog (and two computer analyses) are right that it's a forgery, it is a good forgery--it certainly looks like Lewis's writing. (My working assumption is that they are right.) You say that your manuscript was written before Hooper was born. Do you have a record of that provenance? Lindskoog's assumption about "The Man Born Blind" is that the forger took the topic of an actual story that Lewis once wrote that hasn't survived, and created a new story on that theme. If she is right, then your manuscript is a second version of that forgery, made for sale.

You mention Owen Barfield. He clearly said that Lewis once wrote a story on the topic, but did he read your version and say that was what he once read by Lewis? As you can tell from my earlier answer about "The Dark Tower" and "Christian Reunion," I think those, due to the computer analyses, are more clearly argued than the other issues of plagiarism. When I read "The Man Born Blind," I thought it poorly written and, unless it was using some sort of symbolism that escaped me, had no real point--neither of which is typical of Lewis. But I am willing to hear about provenance and Owen Barfield's authority (and about the story's point, for that matter).

Second, that is news indeed about people in Oxford who knew about the bonfire. Did they actually see it, or have they just been told about it? According to Hooper's account, it seemed as if only three people knew about it: Fred Paxford the gardener, W. H. Lewis, and Hooper. When Hooper first told about it, W. H. Lewis was dead, but Paxford denied that it happened. A "he said, he said" situation. If you can supply the names of the people who knew about the bonfire, I suspect they'll get a chance to have their testimony recorded.

I'm sorry to be so brief, but you raise a number of questions that need to be developed.

2) Publisher’s Weekly says “Lindskoog often undermines her own argument by adducing flimsy evidence and speculation” and says the book is “often hyperbolic.” Assuming that Publisher’s Weekly has no particular ax to grind and is not part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth, do you think this criticism is reasonable?

Joe Christopher:
    1) I do not know what percentage to put on the computer analyses of the manuscript. Morton tended to give huge percentages that he was accurate. I would like to see other types of studies made -- the checking of the document, the checking of the ink, etc. This is the best information we have at the present time.

The discussion of the likelihood of Walter Hooper having forged The Dark Tower and other works creates an awkward personal situation. However, if Lindskoog is right, then however painful it is, then it's worth saying. If she is not, then it would be better if her allegations were answered with factual material of one sort or another -- perhaps a deliberate raising of money for a professional and disinterested examination of the manuscripts.

2)To a degree, yes, although I think the difficulty comes from the fact that by background, Lindskoog is a popular writer. She writes in a light style and she is interested in a number of topics that do not apply to the main concerns that most people have with the manuscripts. For example, one of her chapters is about a woman who claimed to be Lewis' wife while he was alive, and about Joy Davidman, whom he married, and Ruth Pitter. Most of that chapter, while interesting, has nothing to do with the basic topic of the book.

The difficulty about flimsy evidence probably arises because Lindskoog is interested in all sorts of details. A strictly academic discussion would have focused on the major points, and omitted some of the items that she finds of interest.

For example, for a number of years Walter Hooper insisted that Lewis did not consummate his marriage with Joy Davidman because Lewis didn't believe in divorce--and Davidman was divorced--so he could not have entered into a true marriage with her. Eventually, the fact that both Lewis and Davidman celebrated the sexual side of their marriage in letters to close friends seems to have made that position untenable. A bigger issue is that Lindskoog convincingly demonstrates, I believe, that Hooper consistently lied about his relationship to Lewis. He acted as Lewis's secretary for two weeks the last summer of Lewis's life, not for months or a year or so, as Hooper has claimed; he was not invited to be a permanent secretary to Lewis; Lewis did not encourage his return from America after that summer. For anyone who wants all the evidence on this, see Lindskoog's book. By the time she gets through, one is convinced--or at least I am convinced--that nothing said by Hooper can be trusted to be exactly true. Since he has edited most of Lewis's works since Lewis's death, this means that sometime in the future, all that work will have to be rechecked.

For example, he has edited a number of Lewis's handwritten works. I was looking at the manuscripts of some of the Boxen materials one time. For anyone who doesn't know, those are Lewis's writings about an imaginary country that he and his brother made up when they were young. I noticed that Lewis used the word _Bocsen_ in one of the titles, with a "cs," but Hooper printed _Boxen_ with an "x." Does that matter? Not greatly, but anyone looking at the edition Hooper edited can compare the page of manuscript reproduced with Hooper's text and find a number of other corrections.

I don't know that Hooper is ultimately responsible for these changes. Perhaps the Lewis Estate took a look at the original and decided no one would buy a book if it was hard to read. But whoever caused it, it means that all manuscripts edited since Lewis's death will have to be re-edited sometime in the future--probably after the copyright runs out, in a scholarly edition. I could add other problems. Lindskoog raises questions about the editing of Lewis's poems, for example. She believes some of them were contaminated.

Since I have been saying negative things about Walter Hooper, let me add that he has been, in general, a good bibliographer of Lewis's writings--both the canon and the pseudepigrapha, so to speak, in terms of Lindskoog's arguments. But at least of those works attributed to Lewis. Hooper's book titled _C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide_ has extremely valuable sections, particularly, besides the bibliography, the biographies in the section called "Who's Who." This is part of the reason Hooper has strong defenders. Often he does excellent work--just not all the time, Lindskoog argues.

Lewis, of course, was a conservative both in his aesthetics and in his religion. But there have been conservative literary authors and groups that, in the long run, have been accepted as significant. The Scribblers Club in the 18th century is an example. Pope and Swift are obviously major writers despite their conservative stances. I do not know that in another century, Lewis and Talkie, as part of the Inklings, will be considered as significant as Pope and Swift, but stranger things have happened in literary reputations.

I'm a firm believer in Dr. Johnson's adage that the major works are those that are read by many and read for a long time. So I think in the long run, Lewis will become important and will be recognized, but in the present time, both because of his aesthetic approach and because if his religious beliefs, and perhaps because of his popularity in the wrongs circles, he is not there.

And, what is your take on someone's scandalous private life affecting their work/scholarship? It seems that C.S. Lewis could be as dastardly of a human being and still be a great Christian author (which I think he falls short of), or that Lewis scholars could be involved in private misadventures which do not affect the finished product (his/her work) in their fields of expertise.

Joe Christopher:
    I'm probably not the person to make this case in any strong way, because I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Lewis, and I have published the majority of my academic papers on him -- so obviously I think he's literarily important. However, it is also obvious that, for example, the organization of The Great Divorce is not up to it's model --Dante's Divine Comedy. It is certainly from that point of view flawed.

As I've said, I tend to believe Lewis' Till We Have Faces, his reworking of the Psyche and Cupid myth, is his great work. The psychological study of Psyche's sister shows complexities in human understanding that do not appear in Lewis' other fiction. I do not think that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between private life and scholarship. On the other hand, it would be difficult for a person to continually write above where he or she is morally.

There is also a need for a very good biography of Lewis done by somebody who did not know him personally. There are excellent books involving reminiscences, but there is not a first-rate scholarly biography. I do not know to what degree questions about the posthumous publications would affect this sort of work, but obviously (I think) the concerns would have to be mentioned, and I'm not sure to what extent the Lewis estate would be supportive of a work that mentioned such questions.

The best known current author who studies authorial attributions is Donald W. Foster, who proved to a number of editors that poem entitled "A Funeral Elegy" is by Shakespeare. He did both stylistic studies and other types of studies. For example, he went to Shakespeare's plays of the period when the poem was published, and studied rare words that Shakespeare used at that time and did not use at other times. He found many of these rare words in the poem.

So there are a number of things that would need to be undertaken to be fairly convincing about The Dark Tower and "Christian Reunion." We have a beginning, but I would not suggest that we have done all of the studies that we should.