Book Briefs: December 9, 1988

Can We Trust The Lewis Legacy?

The C. S. Lewis Hoax, by Kathryn Lindskoog, (Multnomah, 166 pp.; $11.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Nancy Lou Patterson, professor of fine arts at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and editor of Mythlore newsletter.

Was The Dark Tower, the posthumously published fantasy bearing C. S. Lewis’s byline, really written by Lewis? Were many of Lewis’s personal papers and unfinished manuscripts really burned by his brother after his death? Was Lewis’s secretary, Walter Hooper, really the confidant of the family that he claims to be?

Kathryn Lindskoog attacks these questions and others with her characteristic combination of meticulous research, witty style, deep compassion, and a profound concern for the truth. The answers she offers in The C. S. Lewis Hoax will shock some, confirm the suspicions of others, and, one hopes, finally bring forth genuine evidence to resolve the controversies the book describes.

First, the good news: Everything published by C. S. Lewis in his lifetime—the works that have moved and converted the hearts and minds of so many readers—remains intact and unmarred. And therefore, Lindskoog’s book plays no part in the ongoing theological or literary discussions by which Lewis will and should continue to be judged.

The Lewis Hoax, however, does raise serious questions about the works, whole or fragmentary, that have been published for the first time after Lewis’s death. Their veracity has already been questioned in print; in that respect, Lindskoog is not breaking new ground. But as those works have become more widely read, the questions Lindskoog raises cry more loudly for answers.

Why are these matters worth a book-length exploration? Because the authenticity of each fragment attributed to Lewis has bearing upon the others, and in the end, upon all his works. Indeed, these fragments have led to conclusions about his life, his writing methods, the order in which his works were written, and even about their meaning, which must now be reconsidered.

Oxfordian High Jinks?

Probably the most sensational of these debates concerns the posthumous fragments of The Dark Tower. Were they really written by Lewis himself, or were they merely works sent to Lewis by lesser writers and naïvely preserved with his papers? Or were they examples of Oxfordian high jinks written after Lewis died?

Lindskoog begins her argument by setting forth the context in which such fragments emerged: The enormous popularity of Lewis and the public’s eagerness for any scrap of new material from its idol was an environment, she says, in which exaggerations and even hoax could have been possible. She offers comparisons with other literary hoaxes, such as the publication as Arthur Conan Doyle’s own work of a short story written by someone else (documented in R. L. Green’s The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes).

She then argues from the text of The Dark Tower that it is, as a number of other commentators agree, an inferior and unpleasant work, uncharacteristic of Lewis’s writing style, and that it contains “a suspicious echo of the 1962 children’s classic A Wrinkle in Time.” Until an authenticated original manuscript is available, the question of The Dark Tower is unlikely to be resolved.

But, one must ask, would someone in charge of Lewis’s literary estate knowingly participate in a public hoax, prank, or practical joke? In answering this question, Lindskoog repeats the oft-told “bonfire story,” in which Hooper, the Anglican priest who became Lewis’s secretary in the author’s last year, rescues what is left of Lewis’s manuscripts from a three-day bonfire kindled at brother Warren Lewis’s behest.

Putting Out The Bonfire

Lindskoog first called this story into question, along with a long list of other charming stories about Hooper’s relationship with the Lewis brothers, almost ten years ago. Soon after, Christianity and Literature (Winter, 1979) published a letter from Anthony Marchington (a friend of Hooper’s who appears in the film series that Hooper wrote and narrated, Through Joy and Beyond) purporting to prove that a bonfire took place. This letter, Lindskoog says, was typed on Hooper’s own typewriter and is “a practical joke.” Lindskoog places this incident into a series of actions in the management of Lewis’s literary legacy, of which she questions the good taste and wisdom.

Lindskoog draws her most telling argument for hoax from Hooper’s published prefaces and recorded speeches, which, she says, tend toward richly embroidered and increasingly exaggerated accounts of his relationship with the Lewis brothers. According to Lindskoog, what began as the minor eccentricities of a young and eager disciple gradually became deeply ingrained habits.

Is the author successful in proving her thesis? As Prof. J. R. Christopher writes in his foreword to the book, “Can any of Lindskoog’s arguments be dismissed? Perhaps some can. But their power is in their accumulative weight. I do not think, overall, they can be dismissed.” The debate, no doubt, is not over. But Lindskoog has increased the body of evidence considerably. She has rendered commendable service to the ever-growing number of Lewis fans by helping purge the myth from the man and his work.

Spiritual Warfare, Supernatural Sales

This Present Darkness, by Frank E. Peretti (Crossway, 376 pp.; $8.95, paper). Reviewed by Steve Rabey, an editor with Compassion International.

Two-and-one-half years ago, when This Present Darkness was released, the spine-tingling novel sold 4,000 copies in its first six months—a respectable but uninspired reception, even for adult Christian fiction, a genre not known for blockbuster sales. But just as in the fictional town of Ashton described in the book, mysterious things began happening.

Frank Peretti’s tale of spiritual warfare in an otherwise peaceful small town sold 10,000 copies in its next six months, 20,000 copies the next six months, then 70,000 copies during the first half of 1988. By July of this year, it topped the Christian Booksellers Association paperback best-seller list.

Explanations for the book’s growing popularity focus on a story well told, and well promoted, in some very unexpected ways.

Jan Dennis, Crossway’s editor in chief, who has championed Christian fiction for eight years, describes Peretti’s book as “a good yarn.” “It’s a good detective/horror novel written from the Christian standpoint, where the supernatural good guys win,” Dennis says. “And it has a New Age connection, which makes it more interesting.”

The book has been boosted as well by a grassroots promotional bonanza about which publishers can only fantasize. Laypeople, pastors (some of whom have bought copies of the book for their entire congregations), and some of the biggest names in the Christian music industry have voiced their unsolicited endorsement of the book. Amy Grant and husband Gary Chapman read the book, which prompted them to seek spiritual renewal. Soon the book was required reading at the office of Grant’s management firm. Grant’s friend Michael W. Smith wrote the book into his new album, i 2 (EYE), in the form of a spooky instrumental number called “Ashton.”

Redeeming The Genre

Even though Christian writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and contemporary author Steven Lawhead have found popular reception for their fantasy fiction, the dark world of horror had been left to the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. With This Present Darkness, a hair-raising account of demons and angels, Peretti staked a Christian claim to this powerful and popular genre.

The novel’s plot involves the struggle between Bible-believing Christians and New Age cultists vying for control of their once-calm town. Here the novel’s similarity to most other fiction ends, for much of the action and dialogue shift from the earthly plane of human affairs to the heavenlies, where well-armed principalities and powers battle with angels of light.

Henry Busche, pastor of the Ashton Community Church, and college psychology professor Juleen Langstrat, who serves as the cult’s guru, know the reality of spiritual warfare. Both are sold out to their respective gods in the unfolding power play. But the rest of the novel’s characters are only vaguely aware of the spiritual forces that surround and move them. Majestic angels move a hard-bitten, burned-out newspaper editor to seek “true” truth, while acid-breathing demons lead town officials to join forces with the cult to shore up their political power base. Filling out the action are sorceries and suicides, car chases and possessions.

Peretti’s portrayal of the machinations of these unseen forces is effective on two levels. As a literary device, it enhances the novel’s tension while it baptizes the reader’s imagination with a new perspective on the old detective question, “Who dunnit?” As an inspirational tool, the technique helps readers reflect upon the impact angels and demons have on their lives.

Some will rightly criticize the novel’s overly simplistic approach to good and evil, and its occasionally overdone descriptions of Ashton’s New Age bad guys and girls. But This Present Darkness remains a thrilling book that demonstrates the relevance of the faith to an important literary genre, while opening thousands of minds to the reality and techniques of spiritual warfare..

20/20 Foresight

Piety and Politics: Evangelicals and Fundamentalists Confront the World, edited by Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromartie (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 424 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by John H. DeDakis, former White House correspondent for CBN News, now a writer for CNN in Atlanta.

While Democrats raised the question “Where was George?” in their campaign for the White House, other political observers may have been asking a similar question about the election in general: “Where were the evangelicals?”

Once touted as the emerging political force of the eighties, complete with a presidential candidate of their own, Pat Robertson, evangelicals and fundamentalists seemed to drop from the political landscape, or at least the headlines, as the campaign drew to a close.

Answers to their absence can be found, surprisingly, in Piety and Politics, a book released more than a year ago, during the heyday of evangelicals’ perceived influence. Most of the essays were written between 1981 and 1986. None mention recent watersheds such as the PTL scandal. Even the piece on Pat Robertson was written more than a year before he made his tilt at the presidential windmill. Yet the book remains a valuable resource, displaying prescience of the past political season.

Among other things, the book helps explain Robertson’s poor showing among evangelicals in the primaries, and it discusses issues that continue to energize the Religious Right and Left. In addition, its constructive way of handling diverse viewpoints is a model for how the church should deal with political conflict.

Editors Neuhaus and Cromartie have chosen 26 essays “from all points of the political spectrum” to give the reader a basic overview of what it means, politically, to be an evangelical or a fundamentalist. The first section examines the historical development of the two traditions while comparing and contrasting them; the second section allows leaders of the various camps to articulate their positions; and in the closing section, the editors graciously give the final say to those outside the fold—commentators, such as George Will, who sometimes defend and sometimes criticize religious-political activism.

Premonitions About Pat

That Pat Robertson failed to capture the “evangelical bloc” during the primaries comes as no surprise to Stuart Rothenberg of the Free Congress Foundation. In a 1986 essay, Rothenberg wrote that political journalists have made a “serious error” because “they have failed to take note of the diversity within the Evangelical community,” adding that Robertson was never its number one choice.

In an interesting twist of history, conservatives are now resorting to civil disobedience. Again, Piety and Politics essayists saw it coming.

A. James Reichley of the Brookings Institution quotes from a 1982 interview with Cal Thomas (then a spokesman for the Moral Majority): “Those who regard abortion as infanticide have got to show … that they are prepared to suffer in order to stop the killing.” If not through “legal means,” Thomas said, then through “radical action.” Recently, hundreds of antiabortion activists have been arrested in mass demonstrations in Atlanta, an attempt, organizers say, to make that city the Selma of their movement.

Concern for the poor is an ongoing theme tackled by the essayists. Ron Sider, author of the controversial Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, writes that evangelicals make the mistake of “allowing the values of affluent materialistic society … [to] shape their thinking about the poor. It is much easier in Evangelical circles … to insist on an orthodox Christology than to insist on the Biblical teaching that God is on the side of the poor.”

Again, the words are prophetic. Six years after Sider’s writing, the crass materialism of the PTL philosophy burst into the headlines. The man who would become the first PTL troubleshooter, Jerry Falwell, himself contributed an essay of the same vintage as Sider’s. “Our emphasis on belonging to the right group has caused us at times to overlook our own sins,” he wrote. “We cannot be blinded by our tendency to use our people to build our churches, instead of using our churches to build our people.”

Diverse, Not Derisive

Perhaps the greatest strength of Piety and Politics, however, is its ability to show an alternative to the current louder-than-thou trend. The book brings together diverse viewpoints, the articles are lively and learned, yet throughout the tone is constructive rather than derisive.

For instance, the editors offer back-to-back essays on the causes of poverty by Sojourners editor Jim Wallis and conservative author Lloyd Billingsley. Wallis: “The people of the nonindustrialized world are poor because we are rich.” Billingsley: “People can be poor because of their own lack of discipline and initiative.”

Writing in the preface of Piety and Politics, editors Neuhaus and Cromartie predict that “the new public assertiveness of conservative religion is likely to increase … in the years ahead.” And though evangelicals have not turned out en masse at the polls, the Religious Right has helped set the current political agenda. In the most recent past campaign, for example, Democrats and Republicans alike tried to out-family each other.

Within the past year, many Christians have acquired a taste for political wisdom. Piety and Politics, therefore, is a valuable primer for believer and skeptic alike. History has proved the foresight of many of its writers to be 20/20.

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