G.K. Chesterton

I read two books by G.K. Chesterton back-to-back, the only books I’d read by the man who was the subject of the dedication of one of my very favorite books, Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.  I’m still not sure what to make of him, because though I was disposed to like him at the beginning of the works, I can’t now at the end definitively say either way.

• The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare.  Despite the subtitle, I was taken aback by the short novel’s ending, in which Syme, the protagonist, has a kind of waking-up-from-a-dream experience, although I am still unsure how real either the story or the ending was intended to be.  Syme is a poet and a policeman who becomes embroiled in a society of anarchists, each called after a different day of the week, and all serving the terrible and mysterious man named Sunday.  As Syme’s experiences become increasingly ridiculous–he duels with a Frenchman who does not bleed, he is chased by a mob, he attends a fancy dress ball–the story seems to turn into a kind of allegory, but without a clear referent.  It’s a parody of anarchists, certainly, and also of poets and policemen, but making something ridiculous is not useful without also demonstrating how the status quo can be improved.  Chera suggested pairing the book with The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is another analysis of anarchists, and I would add Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift to the unit.  Because of course I can’t read a book without constructing a class around it.  7.5 / 10.0.
• Favorite Father Brown Stories.  I’d heard of the diminutive clergyman before, of course, because I do love a good mystery.  In fact, I’m pretty surprised that we hadn’t been introduced before now.  In the first of the six stories in the collection, Father Brown outwits both the French criminal mastermind Flambeau and the French detective, the narrator, who was set to catch the crook.  Simply by being observant and by being continually underestimated by others, Father Brown is able throughout all the stories to sit and think, perform some innocuous action, and astonish the criminals, witnesses, police, and readers.  Unfortunately, Flambeau, rather than becoming a Professor Moriarty-style nemesis, turns rather into an Arthur Hastings-style sidekick.  Also, Father Brown as a character is so terribly cerebral that almost nothing ever happens in the stories, though he did once put out a fire and examine a dustbin, but not in the same tale.  Like the main character, the stories themselves are charming and innocuous but lack the urgency of preventing crime; rather, they are a casual interpretation of events or a leisurely exploration of history.  I enjoyed them, but I feel no need to read beyond the short collection.  7.0 / 10.0.

It was interesting to read two works by the same author writing in different genres.  For one, Chera observed, it is strange the way that writing before WWI has a distinctive tone (Thursday was published in 1908, and the Father Brown stories in 1911 and 1914).  I noticed too that the books seemed marked by a strange xenophobia, specifically in the descriptions of humans.  They featured no women, and the men, at worst, were described as savage, brutish, or apelike; and moving up the hierarchy they appeared black, swarthy, gypsy, Oriental (meaning Spanish or Italian), olive-skinned, and French.  Englishmen, typified by Syme, were the ultimate model of civilized gentility.  Not only prose style has changed since WWI, it seems.

Curiously, as with the Father Brown stories, I am unmoved to seek out additional works by Chesterton.  If one should come my way without my having to trouble myself to obtain it, I will read it with interest; but I think this is an author to pair, like wine and cheese, with someone else.  G.K. Chesterton and Edgar Allan Poe, or G.K. Chesterton and Bram Stoker.  Alone, I found him a little too dry.