Word: chesterton
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...Victorians, as Chesterton observed, were "lame giants; the strongest of them walked on one leg a little shorter than the other." It was an epoch of elegance and kitsch, dignity and pornography, liberal cant and imperial overreach. It is this instability that enlivens-and afflicts-Brian Moore's novel, The Great Victorian Collection...
...Gilbert) K. (for Keith) Chesterton's essays, he wanders the white hills of southern England. Drawing paper is at hand, but he has forgotten his pastels. Looking down, the artist enjoys a sudden epiphany. He is walking over his heart's desire: Sussex is a giant piece of chalk...
...restated the riddle of life: When is a miracle not a miracle? The answer: when it is seen for the second time. To preserve his sense of wonder, he regarded the world with the eyes of Adam. Like those other English riddlers, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and W.S. Gilbert, Chesterton was childless. Like them, he became his own child, a 300-lb. choirboy reveling in puns and paradox. But between Chesterton and the Victorians there was a profound difference. Traditionally, English eccentrics sought refuge hi nonsense. Chesterton found shelter in sense. His immense output (some 150 books and innumerable articles...
That bizarre leaning is most noticeable-and most entertaining-in this odd little novel first published in 1908. If the works of R.D. Laing were placed at the North Pole (an idea that fills Chestertonians with equanimity), The Man Who Was Thursday would be in Antarctica. Chesterton here finds his inspiration in order, his thrills in sanity. To his hero, madness and chaos are not merely evil; they are dull. To this overdue reissue of the book Critic Gary Wills contributes a luminous introduction stressing Chesterton's search for revelation in the face of absurdity. The secret...
...Although Chesterton was to become a Catholic apologist, Thursday was written long before his conversion, and it does not yield to simple theological analysis. Sunday may be God; he may just as easily be Satan or the State. The council is a satiric conceit; it is also a social prophecy that antedates Kafka's The Trial by 15 years and the CIA by two generations. Syme's story rings with the sonorities of the Book of Job. It is also a splendid detective yarn...