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The Dark Tower

The man. The myth.

The Dark Tower

Postby j0n4th4n » December 18th, 2005, 7:02 pm

A few years ago I came across a book with Lewis' name on the front in a library with that title, but it was incomplete. I can't find it in any shops and someone told me it was out of print, and on the net I read this was because there was some doubt as to whether he even wrote it. Overall, I thought it was good but a lot different from his other stories, very dark and disturbing. Does anyone know or have any opinions as to whether it was his or not?

There were some other short stories in the book: "The Shoddy Lands", "Ministering Angels" and another which I forgot. "Angels" I thought was particularly great and definately Lewis'.
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re: The Dark Tower

Postby A#minor » December 19th, 2005, 12:26 am

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re: The Dark Tower

Postby Sarah N. » December 19th, 2005, 6:38 pm

I don't know about the controversy with Walter Hooper and Lewis about who wrote it. I didn't give much though to Lewis authorship of the book, but looking back, it doesn't seem much like him. The short stories seemed more like Lewis.

Why, though, would Hooper write something, and not finish it, and have it published under Lewis' name?



You can find the book at Amazon.com, above.
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re: The Dark Tower

Postby larry gilman » December 19th, 2005, 8:29 pm

Hi--

The Dark Tower controversy is an interesting one. Feelings sometimes run high: Hooper has published hundreds of pages of prefatory writing in Lewis books since the 1960s, some of it helpful, and many of us (including me) grew up thinking of Hooper as the guide to C. S. Lewis. Indeed, Hooper has enjoyed a virtual one-man monopoly on editing C. S. Lewis books since Lewis’s death. It is a shock when someone like that is accused of forgery, which Lindskoog (now deceased) accused him of doing.

Lindskoog never made a stand-up-in-court case that Hooper had forged documents. However, she raised a number of points that are really worth considering---enough to justify convening a grand jury, so to speak---and managed to convince me, for one, that (a) her charge is not impossible, though we can’t know for sure, and (b) at the least, Hooper has demonstrably been a poor editor of Lewis’s material and has made many statements that can be most mildly described as wild exaggerations. For instance, he has claimed that Warnie Lewis, CSL’s brother, kept a “bonfire of papers”---Lewis’s papers---burning for three days after Lewis’s death. That’s absurd on the face of it: it would require truckloads of paper to keep a “bonfire of papers” (Hooper’s words) going for three days. And Hooper is our only witness to the alleged bonfire: Warnie never mentioned it and the Lewis's gardener, Fred Paxford, has denied in writing that such a bonfire ever occurred. Hooper says that the Dark Tower manuscript (which is in the Bodleian, with a photocopy at Wheaton College) was one of a heavy stack that he rescued from that blaze. He has even described these papers, in writing, as a “pile of scorched manuscripts,” implying that he actually pulled them out of the flames---but none of the manuscripts that he has released that supposedly were in the bonfire-rescue batch, including the Dark Tower MS, show any scorch-marks, that I have ever heard mention of. If no "scorched" manuscripts exist then that remark, at least, can be fingered as a fabrication on physical evidence. Hooper has also made bizarre statements about Warnie Lewis, who later came to distrust Hooper and wrote against him in his diary (but those passages were censored out of the published version of Warnie’s diary, Brothers and Friends, "at the request of and as a courtesy to" the C. S. Lewis Estate, apparently Hooper's employer at that time: the deleted passages can be read in Lindskoog’s book or in the original diary in the Wheaton College collection). Many other examples of weird claims and behavior by Hooper could be given---including his clumsy Americanizing of the language in one edition of The Screwtape Letters (which offends me to my bookish soul).

Did Hooper forge? He has had the opportunity, being the sole gatekeeper of the Lewis mansucript heritage from 1963 to the present. He has regularly claimed to “discover” a new fragment or essay or the like, or announced that he knew of such-and-such a piece and then not let anyone see the piece until years later. In 1980, he claimed that he had learned to forge Lewis’s handwriting. Hooper’s friend and roommate Tony Marchington wrote a pseudoscientific hoax letter to Christianity and Literature in 1979---typed on Hooper’s own typewriter---claiming that chemical analysis of ashes had disproved Hooper’s bonfire story. The letter was published in good faith before the hoax was discovered.

Most computer analyses of the style of Dark Tower have concluded that it is not by Lewis. However, I wouldn’t put too much weight on that sort of thing: not unless it is done much more extensively and rigorously and in a peer-reviewed context. It’s a shame that scholars with real resources haven’t systematically tackled the quantitative-methods approach to this whole controversy.

Putatively written between Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and Perelandra (1943), The Dark Tower (1938?) consists in large part of explanations of pseudo-science, which Lewis said in an essay (“On Science Fiction”) he had learned not to bother with after arranging for Weston’s solar-powered spaceship to transport the hero in Out of the Silent Planet: “I took a hero once to Mars in a space-ship, but when I knew better I had angels convey him to Venus.” Why then the huge burst of pseudoscience in Tower (about 19 pages out of 75, a fourth of the manuscript)? But Tony Marchington definitely liked cooking up pseudoscience. Hmm.

Tower could still, after all, be by Lewis, no matter how silly or fishy or secretive Hooper has been in other respects. My world would not crumble. After all, if it is by Lewis, he gave it up as a bad job and wrote Perelandra instead. Huzzah for his judgment, in that case.

But why would someone, as Sarah N. asks, “write something, and not finish it, and have it published under Lewis' name?”

Potentially, lots of reasons. Literary forgeries happen all the time. As for not finishing the piece (just assuming for the sake of the argument that it’s fake), an unfinished fragment is easier to do, and more realistic-looking. One doesn’t have to produce something that looks believably like a whole C. S. Lewis novel (which would require you write as well as C. S. Lewis), only like an abortive C. S. Lewis fragment---Lewis on a bad day. And as for motive, the psychology of forgery and deception is rich and strange. People often create literary forgeries, apparently, not for money but simply in order to enjoy a sense of power over those whom they dupe, including scholars. And scholars and experts can certainly be fooled. Read the history of the Hitler Diaries, for one egregious example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_diaries). According to the Los Angeles Times for Dec. 8, 1992, “Research shows that, in general, people want to believe what they are told, even if it is an outlandish lie. Complicating matters is the fact that many compulsive liars have a sense of how far to push their lies.” By the way, Lindskoog did not claim that Hooper himself necessarily wrote Tower. Hooper might have done it (she said), but so might Marchington or someone else---or there might have been a collaboration of talents.

Scholars could do much to tackle this question. Exhaustive, comparative, quantitative textual analysis of the Tower’s prose might settle the question, for example. But of course one would want to see a string of blindfold test cases where the method in question successfully distinguished Lewis’s writing from attempted imitations, colleagues’ writings, and things by random third parties.

Regards,

Larry Gilman

PS. I should note, in the interests of full disclosure, that I was the indexer for the 2001 edition of Lindskoog's Sleuthing C. S. Lewis (Mercer University Press). I receive no royalties from the sale of that book or any other book relating to Lindskoog, Lewis, or the like.
Last edited by larry gilman on December 20th, 2005, 7:53 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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re: The Dark Tower

Postby A#minor » December 20th, 2005, 2:58 am

Wow, larry! Marvelously explained! You certainly do know the facts, ...well, perhaps not facts (since we may never really know the actual facts of the matter) , but the different sides of the issue, and what different parties have claimed.
Thanks for posting that. It's been awhile since I've read Lindskoog and I had forgotten some of those things, like the bonfire.
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re: The Dark Tower

Postby Paul_Burgin » December 24th, 2005, 9:57 am

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re: The Dark Tower

Postby wood-maid » December 25th, 2005, 12:51 am

Wow, thanks, Larry! That was a helpful read. I've looked into the issue a little bit, but it didn't interest me enough to really research it. From Lindskoog's website, I didn't exactly care for her attitude; it seemed a little harsh toward Hooper (aside from the issue itself, I mean. I prefer it when people don't get personal and involved...to me, that keeps the issue more factual and open).
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"By the Mane!" he whispered to Eustace. "This girl is a wondrous wood-maid. If she had Dryad's blood in her she could scarce do it better." - The Last Battle
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re: The Dark Tower

Postby larry gilman » December 25th, 2005, 10:21 pm

Last edited by larry gilman on December 26th, 2005, 1:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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re: The Dark Tower

Postby Paul_Burgin » December 26th, 2005, 12:11 pm

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Re: re: The Dark Tower

Postby wood-maid » December 27th, 2005, 2:01 am

"Jill," said Tirian, "you are the bravest and most wood-wise of all my subjects, but also the most malapert and disobedient."
"By the Mane!" he whispered to Eustace. "This girl is a wondrous wood-maid. If she had Dryad's blood in her she could scarce do it better." - The Last Battle
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re: The Dark Tower

Postby kbrowne » December 28th, 2005, 8:46 am

wood-maid,

I cannot find any suggestion in 'Lenten Lands' that Paxford became an alcoholic. Are you sure it is Paxford you are thinking of? Can you tell me whereabouts in the book you found this idea.

In any case, I think Gresham's account should be read with caution. He makes some wild statements sometimes, especially about the Millers. Paul Burgin states that Gresham says that they were 'not the most friendly and trustworthy of people.' In fact he has accused them of theft and murder, although others have described them as being both honest and friendly. According to Lindskoog Gresham withdrew the accusation of theft. Presumably the accusation of murder still stands.
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Re: re: The Dark Tower

Postby mjmann » December 28th, 2005, 9:27 am

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Re: re: The Dark Tower

Postby Paul_Burgin » December 28th, 2005, 9:40 am

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Re: re: The Dark Tower

Postby mjmann » December 28th, 2005, 9:56 am

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re: The Dark Tower

Postby kbrowne » December 28th, 2005, 10:18 am

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