Subj: IMPORTANT NEWS
Date: 7/14/01 6:13:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: [log in to unmask] (Kathryn Lindskoog)
There is a five-page illustrated article called "Holy War in the
Shadowlands" in the forthcoming (July 20) issue of THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER
EDUCATION. You can read it free right now on your computer screen, and you
can submit questions for the colloquy in which Joe Christopher will answer
all the questions he can on Thursday, July 19, at 1 P.M. EST. I think the
colloquy will probably remain available as a free public service.
This article is about my forthcoming book SLEUTHING C. S. LEWIS. (The
hardcovers are expected from the printer at the end of July, and the
softcovers are expected on August 14.) Stan Mattson has already announced
that he intends to sue for libel, which is strange because the book is not
libelous according to U.S. law.
The article is carefully balanced between proponents and opponents of my
work.
Walter Hooper's personal friend Jim Como scornfully dismisses all my work
on Lewis: "This is Jerry Springer stuff. It's good gossip, bad journalism,
and not at all scholarship."
There are a few errors in the article, and here they are:
CORRECTIONS
1. I did not want to be a detective when I grew up. I wanted to be a GIRL
detective right then, like Nancy Drew.
2. I have far more interests than just C S Lewis. I have published on a
wide variety of topics -- a creative writing textbook, a groundbreaking
book on sleeping dreams, an original survey of children's literature,
humorous essays, literary essays, etc. Plus Dante. And I have taught a wide
variety of college English courses, including world literature and ESL.
3. Scott McLemee said I've published over a dozen books. That's OK, but I
think the total is 22 now.
4. Hooper was not even close to being a priest when he met Lewis, and he
was definitely not a graduate student in English. He was merely an entry
level instructor at the University of Kentucky.
5. He did not help Lewis with his correspondence for several weeks -- it
was only two weeks. And his letters from Lewis in 1963 show that Lewis had
no concept of Hooper returning to be his longterm secretary. Quite the
contrary.
6. My book THE LION OF JUDAH IN NEVER-NEVER LAND was not a REVISION of my
thesis that Lewis commended. It IS the thesis. The only change worth
mentioning was that Lewis had died.
7. Hooper claimed that the gardener, not Warren, set aside a pile of
manuscripts for him. Hooper claimed to have dragged them away in some
suitcases or a trunk. There was no box.
8. I absolutely don't believe there were any suspicions of Hooper in the
1960s. Not until the mid-1970s, when Warren's charges against Hooper were
discovered in his diaries he willed to the Lewis collection at Wheaton
College.
9. There was no Kilbyite circle at Wheaton College believing that Hooper
was a latecoming interloper who pushed his way into undue influence in
shaping the Lewis legacy! That is rewriting history to cast Hooper as the
victim of jealous people. It's a fantasy.
10. It is not true that "To those already suspicious of [Hooper]" the
bonfire story sounded like a cover-up. No one doubted his bonfire story
when he first told it. No one suspected him of anything.
11. Hooper dated THE DARK TOWER in 1938 or 1939, not in the 1940s.
12. My lawsuit against Westmont College was taken on contingency because of
libelous published claims that the college refused to correct. My lawyer
assured me that the preposterous $1 million claim was only a formality to
get things launched. It was not a $3 million claim so far as I knew, and it
was not dismissed twice. It was a one-time suit, and the judge dismissed it
on the grounds that by publishing a book I had forfeited my right to
protection from false claims about me. (A highly questionable judicial
position.)
13. The Lewis Foundation's 1989 "hearing" on THE C. S. LEWIS HOAX was not
composed of a dozen Lewis experts. Several of the twelve knew little or
nothing about Lewis.
14. THE SALINAS LEWISIAN was a far cry from a peer review. It was a one-man
production undertaken to defend Hooper.
15. "Every attempt to 'answer' the lady," [Hooper] writes by e-mail, "is
like
battling the Hydra. You answer one question, only to find it replaced by a
dozen more. And so on and on. In fact, there isn't a question, or even a
dozen questions, that Ms. Lindskoog and her sect ask, but thousands." But
in fact Hooper has refused to answer even one question.
16. "She's made a full-time living out of me," Mr. Hooper says, "but I'm
far too busy to give the equivalent time to her." I wonder what he meant by
"a full-time living." I've made no money from my research on him; it has
been an expensive avocation undertaken in loyalty to Lewis and as public
service.
17. Scott McLemee stated twice that I am sometimes almost totally
paralyzed. The "sometimes" is untrue. The paralysis is constant. I not only
keyboard while lying flat on my back, but with one hand; like my legs, the
other arm and hand have not moved in years.
18. Scott McLemee completely left out the number one evidence of forgery --
lack of provenance. That was his most serious error.
I greatly appreciate the time and space he has devoted to my book. It's a
beautiful and interesting article with good links.
Kathryn
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