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Kathryn Lindskoog (1934–2003)

Författare till C.S. Lewis: Mere Christian

29 verk 1,047 medlemmar 7 recensioner

Om författaren

Kathryn Lindskoog plunged into an independent academic-honors project on C. S. Lewis in 1954, met him in 1956, & has been writing & teaching about him ever since. Although crippled with progressive multiple sclerosis, she has taught literature courses at several colleges as well as New Orleans visa mer Baptist Theological Seminary & Fuller Seminary. Lewis originally opened the door to George MacDonald & Dante for her, & that has now led to this extraordinary array of discoveries about all three. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre
Foto taget av: Impala Publishers

Verk av Kathryn Lindskoog

C.S. Lewis: Mere Christian (1973) 215 exemplar
The C.S. Lewis Hoax (1988) 146 exemplar
Journey into Narnia (1997) 69 exemplar
Sir Gibbie (1992) 46 exemplar
Fakes, Frauds & Other Malarkey (1993) 19 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1934-12-26
Avled
2003-10-21
Kön
female
Yrken
scholar

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Recensioner

An academic's look at the hoaxes that surround the "industry of experts" on author C.S. Lewis. A sad look into the lives and motivations of other authors and academics.
 
Flaggad
dlinnen | 3 andra recensioner | Feb 3, 2024 |
Conspiracy Theories for Lewis Fans

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".
… (mer)
 
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cpg | 1 annan recension | Oct 14, 2017 |
The cover's subtitle is "God, Man & Nature in C.S. Lewis's Narnia Tales".
 
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raizel | Jun 15, 2015 |
I sent two letters back in autumn, you must not-a got em
There probably was a problem at the post office or somethin
Sometimes I scribble addresses too sloppy when I jot em


What if the man who claimed to be C.S Lewis’s secretary and companion, the man who got control of a large part of the Lewis legacy, who claimed to own various “lost” essays and stories that were rescued from a bonfire after Lewis’s death, was pretty much lying about all of that and has perpetuated a strange, expensive, long term con on twentieth century Western literature?

The book comes off as a little anal and obsessive, but you’d have to be a bit of both in order to have caught this scam. You’d have to be willing and able to pour through hundreds of papers, interview elderly people in two countries, puzzle out calendar dates, write letters and wait for a response and know the author very well and his writing inside and out. It takes an obsesed fan to smoke out an obsessed fan.

What she found is both infuriating and also, pure hilarious crack.

"Meanwhile, Lewis and I became more intimate, and finally he asked me to become his companion-secretary and I moved into his house," Walter Hooper says.

How to Become a Creepy Gay Stalker In Ten Easy Lessons. Hooper was even copying Lewis's handwriting.

My girlfriends jealous cause I talk about you 24/7
But she dont know you like I know you slim, no one does


There is a bizarre story related involving a man named Anthony Marchington, who wrote a letter to an academic journal claiming he was an Oxford professor and could prove that there was no bonfire. Except…he was no professor, and in fact, he was the former roommate of Walter Hooper. Lindskoog believes Marchington wrote the letter to draw her out, and get her to embarrass herself supporting his claim, at which point he would refute it publically and make her look like a fool. He and Hooper were still friends, and Marchington appears ias an actor n Hooper’s “documentary” biopic of C.S Lewis. It’s all so bizarre and creepy.

And you though internet fandom was the only place that had sock puppets. I think that's why I don't have to ask "why would Hooper do such a thing?" I'm not surprised at the lengths an obsessed fan will go to in order to be close to their idol or be admired and get attention from other fans. On Fanficrants recently there was a woman who started a flame war with her own sock puppet just, apparently, to get attention.

If there's money involved, there's no end to what an obsessed fan will do.

You know the song by phil collins, in the air of the night
About that guy who coulda saved that other guy from drowning
But didnt, then phil saw it all, then at a a show he found him?


Not only did Lewis possibly not write the majority of this “Lost” material and was never really friends with Walter Hooper, but there probably wasn’t ever a bonfire to rescue the papers from.

There are examples of the so called “lost” stories and then very well reasoned arguments against these pieces being entirely by Lewis, using Lindskoog’s knowledge of Lewis and his writing style.

I’ve written some good stuff, some mediocre stuff and some very, very terrible stuff. But the one thing they all have in common is that you can tell I wrote them. I have a voice, and a way of choosing words, punctuating, words I use too often and ones I would never use. I know how not to sound like myself but other people don’t know how to authentically sound like me-they’d have to be a seriously better writer than me to fool people into thinking I wrote something I didn’t write. Whoever “finished” these C.S Lewis stories was a much worse writer than Lewis. Everyone has off days and everyone has awkward first drafts, it’s not that the pieces aren’t as good as they could be or even kinda embarrassing, it’s that they don’t read like he wrote them.

They don’t even read like any old literature professor at Oxford wrote them, let alone one of the most celebrated authors of the twentieth century. Whoever really wrote these stories makes writing errors I wouldn’t make. Not only are they not in his style, no professionally trained fiction writer would write like that. Well, no one who expected to be taken seriously. If someone hadn’t claimed they were by Lewis they would never have been published (people are willing to forgive and overlook a lot from famous authors and I guess the desire for more material from him muddled people’s senses).

What worries me the most is the fact that there are weirdly edited versions of his books floating around out there. Not the stuff that “came to light” after his death, I’m talking about the classic ones like The Screwtape Letters. It seems that there is an edition of Screwtape out there that has been mucked with. It means people I know, lots of people I know, may have read the wrong book, even paid money for it, and have gone through their lives thinking they know this story and they don’t. Even though I still haven’t actually read Screwtape this only feeds my occasional paranoid insistence that I must be reading different Lewis books than a large percentage of other people.
cue spooky music

That’s more unsettling than my other theory, which is that people just don’t pay attention when they read and try to write serious articles on books they haven’t cracked in years and go charging off on the basis of opinions they didn’t find in the books but formulated before they even started reading. No, I don’t mean the author of The C.S Lewis Hoax, I mean other people. They probably wouldn’t be so easily fooled if they paid as much attention as she did.

Walter Hooper reminds me of Shift in The Last Battle, even though that was written before any of this happened (coincidence, or was Lewis oddly psychic about the last years of his life?). Perhaps Warnie is Puzzle. Marchington has to be the Cat, right?

There are some other things that don’t really have a lot of to do with the scam but I want to comment on them anyway. As for the letters containing his “sado masochistic” fantasies… I am willing to bet actual money that whatever is in those letters is not as bad as stuff I cheerfully share with the public on a semi regular basis. But I still don't really want to know.

When I read the description of Mrs. Moore, I thought “Jadis”. Just a bit Jadislike. Which is doubly funny because the Jadislike character in A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray is named Miss Moore. Alright, it’s not that funny. Whatever. And as for Joy, well, you know how much of a Eustace/Jill shipper I’ve always been.

Final thought: Would Lindskoog face nearly as much angry criticism if she was a man?
… (mer)
5 rösta
Flaggad
babydraco | 3 andra recensioner | Aug 6, 2008 |

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Verk
29
Medlemmar
1,047
Popularitet
#24,610
Betyg
½ 3.6
Recensioner
7
ISBN
35
Språk
1

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