G. K. Chesterton

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Is anybody else out there a Chesterton fan?

I had read The Blue Cross a while ago, but re-read it recently and the next two stories in The Innocence of Father Brown, wondering how he would follow that first, perfect story. He followed up the story of the French policeman, Valentin, in a very surprising way, and in the story of the 12 Fisherman, finally had Flambeau repent. How wonderful! I look forward to reading more of the Father Brown stories.

There is also a site out there dedicated to all Chesterton's work. I explored it tonight a little bit -- what a remarkable and diverse intellect and wit the man had.

[sun-star]

I'm interested in reading some GK Chesterton - what would you recommend to start with?

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Well, I'm just starting out, too -- those three stories are the only ones I've read so far. That site linked above is a good place to start online, though there is so much there -- poetry and essays as well as stories. I quickly scanned a few of those, as well, and recognized a quote from one of the poems, "The Old Song" (not a cheerful ditty, that), which Pratchett and Gaiman used in their Good Omens.

I would highly recommend "The Blue Cross" in The Innocence of Father Brown for starters. Awesome and very entertaining (that said, a caution: Chesterton was writing in the early part of the 20th Century, and so didn't aim for an audience familiar with "sound bites" and the pace of modern electric media -- you might find him a bit long-winded).

But what's not to love about something like

the long roads of the North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length after length like an infernal telescope. It was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually feels that now at last he must have come to the end of the universe, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park.

or

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

Anyway, here's another link directly to the Father Brown collection that starts with "The Blue Cross."

[crickhollow]

i've read a few of the Father Brown mysteries--was very shocked at Valentin's end....v. much enjoyed the twelve fishermen.

for Christmas last year, I gave my sister The Club of Queer Trades and Napoleon of Nottinghill I think it's high time that I borrow them back. I'm still trying to find a clear spot in my schedule so that I can start Orthodoxy.

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Yes, I'd like to try to get into that hotel they meet at.

I'll have to try The Club of Queer Trades and Napoleon. Right now I'm still working through the stories in the The Innocence of Father Brown collection and have to confess (no pun intended...anyway, I'm Buddhist ) to starting to feel left a little cold. Everything has changed so much since that first wonderful story -- Flambeau is a good guy now, Father Brown is much more sure of himself; but we never got to see the transformations in detail before we saw the "new" Flambeau and Father B.

It seems like Chesterton fiddled around quite a bit with his characters after "The Blue Cross." It's too bad he turned Valentin into a bad guy and killed him off -- am probably speaking too early, with only a handful of the stories under my belt, so to speak, but much of Father Brown's credibility and appeal in that first story lay in Valentin's hunt for him and Flambeau through London and the way Valentin (and Flambeau) bowed to the little priest at the end. V. was an important part of the triad.

Maybe I've been coddled by JRRT. Now, when he describes a character, you know that character like a best friend, in the sense that they will never do anything, well, uncharacteristic, to break the spell that binds you to them.

[crickhollow]

you're right...chesterton doesn't give you a whole character. Keep plugging away, though...if for no other reason than to say that you've finished it. It's been several years since I've picked up my copy of father brown. I ought to read them again.

[The Lady of Ithilien]

W-e-e-e-ell, I'll try to wade through a few more, but the essays (some of which I like very much) and the nonfiction (which I haven't checked out yet), are calling (the poetry may be an acquired taste). Also, the suspicion is growing that Chesterton was trying to be Modern (a survival requisite for public life in the Roaring 20s) and so lost track of the timeless story he had first created in "The Blue Cross."

This may be the one critical comment on Chesterton that has yet to be made, and a place like Entmoot may be the only place to make it, but I notice that his use of the words "elfin" and "fairy," which leavened "Cross," tapered right off in subsequent stories. Instead we get word-heavy descriptions of what T.H. White would later call the "miasma" of the Celtic mind and that bizarre look at Flambeau in the trees dressed up as Harlequin.

Bricks, instead of bubbles, so to speak.

But I'll keep plugging away at it for a while.

PS: Am glad I did. Thanks, Crickhollow, for the encouragement. The very next story, "The Sins of Prince Saradine," brought the "elfin" back into it very nicely. No more bricks, either.

"All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."

Éomer and Boromir would have agreed with him.

[Amandil]

Anyone read The Man Who Was Thursday? That was as bizarre as all get out.

Orthodoxy was well worth the read. Although I had trouble getting myself to read it, though. Am currently wandering through Volume III of the Collected Works, presently in the first set of essays (book, whatever) "Where All Roads Lead." Quite fascinating, especially because I'm not a Catholic, but a "heretic" as ol' Gilbert would call me. Wery wery interwesting.

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Which essays interest you? I'm reading them online, rather than in a collection, and they're all listed by individual name.

The Man Who Would Be Thursday is there, too, so I got into it today. Am up to Chapter V so far. It's bizarre but interesting, too, especially these days.

So far, I really like how Chesterton is flipping back and forth between opposites and doing unexpected things with them -- Gregory turning into a gentleman when you just know he's going to betray Symes, Symes being elected Thursday; even the lobster salad in the dingy public house.

One only sees little hints of this liveliness of mind in the Father Brown stories, at least those in The Innocence of Father Brown that I've read so far (barring the sublime "Blue Cross"). He certainly seems to be going all out in Thursday. Great!

3/10/03: Finished Thursday. Wow. A good book, with a very unexpected ending. The West's intelligentsia were certainly in a very weird place in 1908, no? Interesting tinge of Buddhism throughout: the name Saffron Park, for instance, and the physical description of Sunday (when one takes out Syme's perceptions), which is very similar to the Buddha's image in statues, perhaps even specifically the Buddha at Kamakura (about which Kipling had written a poem less than 20 years earlier). Speaking of Syme's perceptions, that is Buddhist, too -- Chesteron was very daring to take the reader on such a rollercoaster ride, seeing things through Syme's eyes that always turned out to be, well, is "wrong" the right word?

He was wrong about Buddhism, though: doubt is one of the major mental hindrances, and too, it takes a really resolute optimist with nerves of steel to seek that which is beyond Tranquility by looking at everything as it actually is.

But all in all, a very good book.

[Mercutio]

Yes, the Father Brown stories are wonderful.

[Rían]

Orthodoxy is fabulous! Everlasting Man is v. good. Both talk about fairy, among other things. Father Brown was kinda dull to me the first time thru; the second, I loved it! I want to find Thursday.

[sun-star]

Since I posted here the first time I've read the Father Brown stories and some of Chesterton's essays on literature. I started "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" but time ran away from me I enjoyed all of them, and at least I now understand the part in "Brideshead Revisited" where they read and quote Father Brown - about "a twitch upon the thread".

[Jaquzzi]

I am new here. I have read some posts and I would like to comment on the Lady of Ithilien's post. You will probably find nowhere any description of transormation of any Chesterton's characters, because his works are generaly closer to romance than the novel proper...and in romances chracters undergo sudden chages. The focus is not on the psychological insight of the character's mind, but on action.
Anyway, I am really eager to hear from anyone, who is interested in romance and novelistic, so to say, features of Chesterton's works.
my @: hipis@o2.pl