“I’ve just never liked G.K. Chesterton,” quips Austin Bramwell, “which, among the conservative Christians with whom I sometimes (though, as an Episcopalian, not often) travel, is almost enough to make me a Bad Person.”
No almost about it, Austin—that makes you very likely a Bad Person.
But that sacrilege is trivial compared to some of his other heretical claims. Take, for example, this outrage:
Chesterton fanatics sometimes talk as if his wonderfulness just can’t be doubted. For some reason, he makes a lot of people feel that it would just be not in the right spirit to subject him to critical examination. But there’s no reason not to do so. Just because Chesterton makes you feel good doesn’t mean that he’s sound.
I’m not willing to say that his wonderfulness can’t be doubted. But I’d eye with suspicion anyone who had the gall to doubt it.
Normally, I would challenge Bramwell to a duel (like in The Man Who Was Thursday) to settle this insult. Instead, I’ll take the more civil, less bullet-ridden approach by pointing out worthy rebuttals by my friends Michael Brendan Dougherty (a Catholic) and Matthew Anderson (an evangelical).
September 9th, 2010 | 1:30 pm
I have tried many times to read Chesterton, but after 5-6 pages I just give up and put him back on the shelf. Something about the style, I think. It doesn’t have much coherence for me. If you read Joseph Ratzinger’s books, you know the Pope is taking you somewhere; there is logic in the progression. Chesterton is just all over the lot.
September 9th, 2010 | 1:59 pm
I’m one of those strange people who much prefers Chesterton’s OTHER half, Hilaire Belloc. I think I understand why Chesterton’s writing has stood the test of time better; Belloc’s prose is sometimes self-consciously archaic and his sentiments deliberately offensive. While Chesterton speaks calmly and deliberately, Belloc snorts and bellows like a character in a 19th century melodrama.
But that’s why I find him entertaining. If you’re going to set yourself up against modernity, best to be theatrical about it. Chesterton’s more professorial tone is, to my ears anyway, a bit too smug and condescending.
September 9th, 2010 | 3:20 pm
Mr. Carter, I will gladly stand in as your second should you have second thoughts about that duel.
Feeney, one might prefer a strenuous hike up a mountain, to the ramble through the forest valley, but they are both beautiful.
And Andy, I think you mistake the tone of Chesterton entirely.
“Chesterton’s more professorial tone is, to my ears anyway, a bit too smug and condescending” What kind of tone does he have? Try light, joyful, expansive, genteel, commanding, loving, jeweled, conversational, hilarious, or musical – the great man himself thought it merely journalistic. However, I will only raise a pint to your own preference for Belloc. All the best,
PeteG
September 9th, 2010 | 4:41 pm
Pete:
Perhaps “professorial” was an ill-chosen word, and I’ll admit I’m more familiar with Chesterton’s educative works (like “the Dumb Ox”) than his polemical works. I do, though, consistently get the impression of a man who’s masking his bellicosity with an affected air of calm and reasonable geniality. With Belloc you get your bellicosity straight.
September 9th, 2010 | 10:32 pm
I like Chesterton, and his style, but I can certainly see why some people might not.
September 10th, 2010 | 3:05 am
I have to say, I’m not all that impressed by Chesterton, either. But then again, I’m a Bad Person.
September 10th, 2010 | 3:59 am
To be honest, I love Chesterton. I find his laughing, musical tone irresistible. And yet, when I translate his positions into philosophical or theological language, they never seem to match up against the greater Catholic thinkers. Moreover, to be lost in joy in wonder at God and this wonderful world is at times good, but to remain there can make one, I think, flippant or lacksadaisical toward sin, evil and solemnity, or cause one to see God as a sort of jolly ghost-of-Christmas-present type. Chesterton was wonderful when I read him first as an angsty 20-year-old. He’s wonderful to pick up every five years or so, especially if I’m forgetting that, by the grace of God, I found (and am continuing to find) the kingdom of heaven like a treasure in a field. But as a thinker he is not rigorous as much as he is witty and fun; as an apologist he is much more convincing to Catholics than he is to agnostics.
My worry is that, like me, so many people love his work because of the wonderful effect it has had on them; I don’t know where I would be now without Chesterton: this might cause one to be less critical of the (sometimes not very well thought out) views he puts forth.
September 10th, 2010 | 6:42 am
I find that I am, myself, a great admirer of Chesterton’s works, which is why I detest them so. Nay, a man is never so great an admirer of one author’s works as when he detests the very thought of reading them; when he tears their pages into shreds, and puts them to some better use, such as stoking his fireplace; when he boards the train to Bulverhampton North so that he can be rid of the very sight of them, on his bookshelves. And that is why I say that we must not read Chesterton. We must read Chesterton, in order that no one shall read Chesterton. His works shall be remembered, in order that they shall be forgotten. Oh, and by the way, John Calvin was a mega-doofus and Jews had it easy before the Reformation.
September 10th, 2010 | 9:39 am
Rod Blaine’s comment is officially awesome.
September 10th, 2010 | 11:35 am
I enjoyed reading Chesterton, because finding the “one liner” to demolish him made it an interesting exercise, unlike reading C. S. Lewis purely for laughs because his arguments were so thin that you could knock them down with a feather. Intellectually, and physically for that matter, Chesterton had a lot more meat to him which made cooking him for dinner all the more fun.
September 10th, 2010 | 11:59 am
Naomi and Rod, you both hit bull’s-eyes.
I like and enjoy Chesterton, but I don’t worship him. He’s more of a rhetorician that a philosopher, and at times his philosophical quality is sacrificed on behalf of his rhetoric.
I’ve just started his bio of Thomas Aquinas. To employ the style that Rod so well displayed, Chesterton writes something like (I haven’t the text before me at the moment), “Aquinas is the total fulfillment of reason, Lutheranism is the total abandonment of reason.”
Big news to Philipp Melanchthon.
September 10th, 2010 | 5:58 pm
Thank you GK and Pastor. I think I left out a “not” before a verb there, but the beauty of Chestertonian Paradox is that that won’t change the meaning of the statement…
Once I gave up waiting for a passage in which GKC conceded “Well, actually, in this one particular isolated respect, the Protestants do have a small point, that in no way invalidates the overwhelming awesomeness of Catholicism overall but, nonetheless, the denial of which would be an 8.5th Commandment violation…” and reconciled (NPI) myself to the fact that the Protestant was eternally predest-… err, was always going to play Wile E Coyote to Aquinas’ Road Runner, I came to greatly enjoy the New Canon.
Both his apologetic works, in which GKC showed that those who impute naturalistic explanations to the world are fools, and his Father Brown stories, in which GKC showed that those who impute supernaturalistic explanations to the world are fools.
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