G. K. Chesterton: "Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him?"

Ignatius Insight ^ | May, 2011 | with permission of Dale Ahlquist

[Salvation]

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) Author Page | Ignatius Insight

 

G. K. Chesterton: "Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him?"

A pithy bio of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist, President, American Chesterton Society

I’ve heard the question more than once. It is asked by people who have just started to discover G.K. Chesterton. They have begun reading a Chesterton book, or perhaps have seen an issue of Gilbert! Magazine, or maybe they’ve only encountered a series of pithy quotations that marvelously articulate some forgotten bit of common sense. They ask the question with a mixture of wonder, gratitude and . . . resentment. They are amazed by what they have discovered. They are thankful to have discovered it. And they are almost angry that it has taken so long for them to make the discovery.

"Who is this guy. . .?"

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him, (and his Autobiography) he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the twentieth century. He said something about everything and he said it better than anybody else. But he was no mere wordsmith. He was very good at expressing himself, but more importantly, he had something very good to express. The reason he was the greatest writer of the twentieth century was because he was also the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.

Born in London, Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s, but never went to college. He went to art school. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly. (To put it into perspective, four thousand essays is the equivalent of writing an essay a day, every day, for 11 years. If you’re not impressed, try it some time. But they have to be good essays, all of them, as funny as they are serious, and as readable and rewarding a century after you’ve written them.)

Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared, even though much of it was published in throw away paper.

This man who composed such profound and perfect lines as "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried," stood 6’4" and weighed about 300 pounds, usually had a cigar in his mouth, and walked around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his moustache. And usually had no idea where or when his next appointment was. He did much of his writing in train stations, since he usually missed the train he was supposed to catch. In one famous anecdote, he wired his wife, saying, "Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" His faithful wife, Frances, attended to all the details of his life, since he continually proved he had no way of doing it himself. She was later assisted by a secretary, Dorothy Collins, who became the couple’s surrogate daughter, and went on to become the writer’s literary executrix, continuing to make his work available after his death.

This absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, this was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. This was a man who, when commissioned to write a book on St. Thomas Aquinas (aptly titled Saint Thomas Aquinas), had his secretary check out a stack of books on St. Thomas from the library, opened the top book on the stack, thumbed through it, closed it, and proceeded to dictate a book on St. Thomas. Not just any book. The renowned Thomistic scholar, Etienne Gilson, had this to say about it:

"I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a 'clever' book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas. . . cannot fail to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him."

Chesterton debated many of the celebrated intellectuals of his time: George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. According to contemporary accounts, Chesterton usually emerged as the winner of these contests, however, the world has immortalized his opponents and forgotten Chesterton, and now we hear only one side of the argument, and we are enduring the legacies of socialism, relativism, materialism, and skepticism. Ironically, all of his opponents regarded Chesterton with the greatest affection. And George Bernard Shaw said: "The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton.

His writing has been praised by Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Karel Capek, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Claudel, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Sigrid Undset, Ronald Knox, Kingsley Amis, W.H. Auden, Anthony Burgess, E.F. Schumacher, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Welles. To name a few.

T.S. Eliot said that Chesterton "deserves a permanent claim on our loyalty."

". . . and why haven’t I heard of him?

There are three answers to this question:

1. I don’t know.
   
2. You’ve been cheated.
   
3. Chesterton is the most unjustly neglected writer of our time. Perhaps it is proof that education is too important to be left to educators and that publishing is too important to be left to publishers, but there is no excuse why Chesterton is no longer taught in our schools and why his writing is not more widely reprinted and especially included in college anthologies. Well, there is an excuse. It seems that Chesterton is tough to pigeonhole, and if a writer cannot be quickly consigned to a category, or to one-word description, he risks falling through the cracks. Even if he weighs three hundred pounds.

But there is another problem. Modern thinkers and commentators and critics have found it much more convenient to ignore Chesterton rather than to engage him in an argument, because to argue with Chesterton is to lose.

Chesterton argued eloquently against all the trends that eventually took over the twentieth century: materialism, scientific determinism, moral relativism, and spineless agnosticism. He also argued against both socialism and capitalism and showed why they have both been the enemies of freedom and justice in modern society.

And what did he argue for? What was it he defended? He defended "the common man" and common sense. He defended the poor. He defended the family. He defended beauty. And he defended Christianity and the Catholic Faith. These don’t play well in the classroom, in the media, or in the public arena. And that is probably why he is neglected. The modern world prefers writers who are snobs, who have exotic and bizarre ideas, who glorify decadence, who scoff at Christianity, who deny the dignity of the poor, and who think freedom means no responsibility.

But even though Chesterton is no longer taught in schools, you cannot consider yourself educated until you have thoroughly read Chesterton. And furthermore, thoroughly reading Chesterton is almost a complete education in itself. Chesterton is indeed a teacher, and the best kind. He doesn’t merely astonish you. He doesn’t just perform the wonder of making you think. He goes beyond that. He makes you laugh.

(Reprinted by kind permission of Dale Ahlquist and the American Chesterton Society.)

Dale Ahlquist is the president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society.

He is the creator and host of the television series, “G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense,” on EWTN. Dale is the publisher of Gilbert Magazine, author of The Chesterton University Student Handbook, editor of The Gift of Wonder: The Many Sides of G.K. Chesterton, associate editor of the Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (Ignatius). He has been called “one of the most respected Chesterton scholars in the world” and has delighted audiences around the country with his variety of talks on the great English writer. He is a graduate of Carleton College (B.A.) in Northfield, Minnesota, and Hamline University (M.A.) in St. Paul, Minnesota. He lives near Minneapolis with his wife and five children. Like Chesterton, Dale is a Catholic convert and a joyful defender of the Catholic Faith. He can be contacted at info@chesterton.org.

[Mach9]

I think I’d add Joe Sobran, RIP, to the essayists. But we’re really not on a level field here. Separating writers from thinkers isn’t an easy task. Chesterton just happened to be at least one of the best of both.

[Mach9]

You find fellow fans in some of the oddest places.

So true! One of my sons forced me to read Koontz several years (decades?) ago. He may not sell as well as King, but he’s consistently moral and spiritual in the most orthodox sense. I never read a Koontz dedication to GKC, but I’m not surprised. Btw, another fairly well known chldren’s author named two of his heroes (animals, I think one was a cat, the other a rabbit) after him; but for the life of me, I can’t remember the book!

[Cronos]

at 10? you must have been quite a young intellectual! I didn’t read him until my 20s and missed a lot. I think he would have been a scarily brilliant person to have a chat with.

[Mach9]

One additional note here. The two-page biography of Charles Dickens in the famed 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was written by GKC.

[Cronos]

Pelham Grenville, aka Plum is revered more in India than in the UK.

[Cronos]

which is your favorite? Mine is "Code of the Woosters" but the man's versatility amazes me -- any author would have been proud to have just invented the "Jeeves and Wooster" series but he came up with "Blanding castle" saga, Ukridge,Mike and Psmith, and numerous others.

his working of the words are incredible -- "they were instrumental in moving the hitherto unformulated dissatisfactions from the subconscious to the conscious mind."

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

My parents had a rule that anything that was not on the very top shelf of the book case I was free to read. I was about eleven when I discovered Josephus, which was best read with a LARGE pitcher of water to cut the dust.

I discovered the world of ideas in second grade when, lacking anything better to do, I started reading my brothers seventh and eighth grade text books.

Scary brilliant people are the best kind to chat with. They can make your brain stretch until it hurts!

[Mach9]

Without question, “Something New” (a novel). It’s been renamed since it came out but is still offered under the original title. Published in 1915, it may be the first of the Blandings Castle stories. Lord Emsworth, the Hon. Freddie, among many others. Talk about screwball comedy and a flawless plot. He just can’t be topped.

Short story: “Uncle Fred Flits By”

Wodehouse Playhouse and Jeeves & Wooster never came close to doing him justice. He’s far better in print.

[Cronos]

Scary brilliant people are the best kind to chat with. They can make your brain stretch until it hurts!

yes, sigh... and Freerepublic USED to be like this, where you could have a sensible discussion or even an knock-down argument but a sensible one. What happened? When did we get the crazies? sigh...

[Cronos]

I think it was "Something Fresh". Oh, I forgot Uncle "Dynamite" Freddie!

Actually, I've never seen the "Jeeves and Wooster" TV series

I think it would be impossible to do justice to Gussie Fink-Nottle's performance at Market Blanding's school house -- oh, the pictures I framed in my mind when reading that!

Like HTB, I was a very bored 9 year old when I first started reading him -- my mum had a big collection. and from the first reading I was hooked -- out went the hardy boys and in came the marvellous idyllic world of wodehouse.

And I think I've been highly influenced by this too!

[annalex]

Chesterton argued eloquently against all the trends that eventually took over the twentieth century: materialism, scientific determinism, moral relativism, and spineless agnosticism. He also argued against both socialism and capitalism and showed why they have both been the enemies of freedom and justice in modern society.

And what did he argue for? What was it he defended? He defended "the common man" and common sense. He defended the poor. He defended the family. He defended beauty. And he defended Christianity and the Catholic Faith.

So why should we wonder why the 20's century "educators" ensured we would not hear of this guy?

[Salvation]

**“One of the paradoxes of this age is that it is the age of Pacifism, but not the age of peace.” –G. K. Chesterton.**

That’s a good one with a lot of meaning packed into a few words!

[annalex]

Albert Einstein.
Dick Feynman.

These two wrote well on the narrow subject that was their profession. I don't think they rise to the level of defending God, Justice and Beauty against the 20'th century vandalism.

[Mach9]

You’d like the Jeeves & Wooster series. Like the really good Brit TV, it beat anything we were producing.

We, my brothers & sisters & I, heard rather than read our earliest Wodehouse selections. My father sat opposite five or six of us, tears rolling down his cheeks as he shook from laughter at what he was reading. He got the same way when he read us parts of Dickens. All nine of us children, to this day, still reread and read both authors aloud to our own kids.

[Jo Nuvark]

You are now on the GKC ping list!

[aruanan]

Well, I like all the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves works the best because those were the first that I read. Even though I’m familiar with them, they’re still a pleasure to read again and again because a. the language is SO good, and b. like a good comedy, it’s fun to watch how it happens.

[CTrent1564]

Salvation:

Chesterton was also involved in the defense of life and a critic of the “eugenics movement” that started in England in the late 19th/early 20th century, which of course led to population control via abortion, euthansia, etc. One of my favorite quotes with respect to population control types [usually abortion supporters] is Chesterton’s quote from an Introduction to Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” where he wrote:

“The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.” [1925]

[Salvation]

I like that one.

 

“The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or  if not, how he knows he is not.” [1925]

~~G. K. Chesterton

 

[Mach9]

Yes, indeed—he was antisocialist, antipositivist, antiprogressivist, anticommunist. Not perhaps one of his major accomplishments, except in the eyes of Dickens lovers, was his successful denial of any progressive claim to Dickens’ social philosophy. He wrote that G. B. Shaw (despite his great admiration for CD and years of attempting to “sanitize” him for modern readers) never forgave Dickens for not succumbing to socialist panaceas. “A Christmas Carol” is but one Dickensian work that calls for private, not public, charity—the Christian solution.

[Dunstan McShane]

Better yet: What are the five (or ten) best writings of Chesterton, the ones most likely to lead one to seek out still more?

I'd suggest Orthodoxy as the first to get to, and the one most likely to take you all through the rest.

Orthodoxy is a good introduction (I think) to the way GKC thinks,an amazing (one is tempted to say "universal") assemblage of various common-sense experiences and desires of all right-thinking humans, founding its observations not so much (at first) on theology or philosophy as on fairy tales, finding in them universal (and very practical and admirable) desires for the Good, the Just and the Heroic, which almost all of us feel as children, before the various ideologies we are made subject to throughout the process cruelly called our "education" weasels and shames them out of us, and we are set adrift in a dark world where we are cut off from not only the wisdom of our faith, but that of our ancestors and even our own experiences, and schooled to believe things that do good neither to us nor to our masters (though they will tell us, often enough, that it is all for our own good). Orthodoxy is the declaration of independence for the mind that would be free to perceive reality.

That book gives you a general overview of the terrain of Planet Chesterton. If you want to get into sorts of adventures available there, I'd suggest either Manalive or (my personal recommendation) The Man Who Was Thursday. The former might (inaccurately, but what are you gonna do?) be described as a kind of social farce or (better, if used in the Aristotelian or Dantean sense) a comedy, but Thursday is a free-wheeling, extravagant and bizarre chase that is partly an espionage and detective thriller, and partly an absurdist-seeming farce (though it has nothing at all to do with absurdism--in fact, quite the opposite: it has everything to do with Sense!) And don't wait for the movie version because (please God) there will never be one. At the heart of the book is an Outlook and Attitude (I'm not completely sure that it can be called a "philosophy," though what there is of one may be found, if anywhere, in Orthodoxy) that would give most film-makers hives--and there is no director smart enough to make the movie, or even to understand the book without changing his life and career entirely--though, oddly, Orson Welles adapted it for his radio series The Mercury Theatre On The Air, the episode being available commercially and also (I believe) through legal and free download from various sites on the web (I bought mine on audiocassette before I realized this)--and I have to say it's not bad, though largely because, like the book, it's mostly a verbal experience. I have no idea how it would work as a film, unless it were a critically-opaque mixture of genres, up to and including animation, to make it work.

Once you've got through these two works, you are free to the Chestertonian universe--though probably never completely stable on your feet: Chestertonia is earthquake country, and even the most seasoned traveler there is likely to be knocked off his feet from time to time, or have the country suddenly whip around under his feet and to find himself facing in an unexpected direction. It will be outlandish and challenging.

And best of all, it will be Home--the place where you were always meant to live--not the drab, shallow, meaningless and truly absurd and wholly artificial low-level theme park that our so-called thinkers and social-engineering types have spent their lives (and yours) convincing you that you ought to be content with. It is the world humans were meant for.

Get there as fast as your legs will carry you.