Hey, everybody! Welcome back to Tumnus’ Bookshelf, where we review any and all books written by, about, and inspired by C.S. Lewis, The Land of Narnia, and The Inklings. For today’s review, we will be looking at William O’Flaherty’s new book Misquotable Lewis: What He Didn’t Say, What He Actually Said, and Why It Matters.
TITLE: Misquotable Lewis: What He Didn’t Say, What He Actually Said, and Why It Matters
AUTHOR: William O’Flaherty
PUBLISHER: Wipf and Stock (March 16, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1532638426
ISBN-13: 978-1532638428
SUMMARY:
From William O’Flaherty , author of C.S. Lewis Goes to Hell: A Companion Guide to the Screwtape Letters is a brand new book, Misquotable Lewis, that examines many of the quotes falsely attributed to C.S Lewis. Collecting 75 quotes and divided into four chapters, Misquotable Lewis is a resource for the modern digital age of quick posts on social media that seeks to help readers sift through the quagmire of false quotes, misattributed sayings, and paraphrases , and helps readers find more accurate knowledge from Lewis’ work. Through this readers can hope to become real experts on Lewis and present the truth on-line.
Review:
By now, most of us have seen the picture on-line of American President Abraham Lincoln with a quote saying that,” the problem with quotes on the internet is that they are often not true.” Pretty much anyone can tell you that there is just as much authenticity to this Lincoln “quote” as him saying “Be Excellent to each other , and party on, dudes” in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. However, the point of the meme is to satirize the tendency to falsely attribute quotes to famous individuals, even if they can feature glaring inaccuracies. Whether it’s to comment on a current event, or provide encouragement to someone who’s hurting, it becomes an easy way to make an opinion known.
Lincoln, Einstein, Mark Twain, Martin Luther King, Jr., and yes, C.S. Lewis are some of the notables to be subjected to this. It makes sense, in times of tragedy, or when you want to say something witty about the human condition to use the notables of history and have them back up your opinions. These people have an air of authority and credibility, and thus it makes us all feel connected to each other in some big way, and makes us sound smarter in a discussion if we aren’t the only ones saying what we think. And yet, a few seconds on-line can reveal these quotes as false, and you feel stupid for posting it.
This is one of the reasons why O’Flaherty’s new book is so essential. Some may cynically think it doesn’t matter. After all, if you are sincere in trying to offer comfort, wisdom or encouragement, that’s what matters. However, in an age where with constant breaking news updates, and constant Twitter streams of sound bites, it’s all the more imperative to share these insights truthfully. It’s dishonest not only to C.S. Lewis but to whomever may have originally said the quote in the first place. If an editor of a paper, or a professor won’t accept misattributed quotes, then neither should we.
Each quote is examined and backtracked to its original source. We see that some confusion comes through “crowd sourced” resources like IMDB, Wikipedia, and Goodreads where people can post anything without full citations. While some have no basis in Lewis thought or philosophy, we learn this stems from the fact that it may have been said by a contemporary of Lewis or someone like George MacDonald who influenced Lewis ( Lewis did edit an anthology of MacDonald’s work, increasing the confusion). Other times it may be because it came from an adaptation of one of his books, or even something like Shadowlands that was about his life. However, what becomes surprising is to see quotes that contain pretty glaring anachronisms, like a mention of monkey bars ( something Lewis would not have played on as a child), or phrases like “weird” or “random” that would not have been in the vernacular for an early 20th century Oxford don being attributed to him.
It might sound to some like this book may be harsh on its readers, but that is not the case. For a book that analyzes quotes its surprisingly witty and conversational pace. The fact that we see where these quotes actually came from, and are given better Lewis quotes in exchange, can only help make us better stewards of wisdom on social media and not just mindlessly posting. Expertly researched and cleverly written, a project of this nature would be nothing short of a Herculean task, and O’Flaherty has proved to be more than up to the challenge.
Five out of Five shields.
Buy the Book from Amazon.