GK Chesterton: Edgy as he wants to be
The first Terry Pratchett book I ever read wasn’t a discworld novel. But it was also the first Neil Gaiman book I ever read… Look, it was Good Omens, and unless someone beats me to it I’ll write about that wonderful little novel someday. But here’s the point. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman are like two sides of the same coin: they both write intelligent, lively fantasy, but Terry Pratchett’s stuff is light and funny and Neil Gaiman’s stuff is darker and edgier.
This article isn’t about them.
The whole Pratchett/Gaiman thing is just an analogy to help you quickly understand the guy this article actually is about: G. K. Chesterton. To put it in SAT terms: G. K. Chesterton : C.S. Lewis :: Neil Gaiman : Terry Pratchett There, got it? Okay, let’s move on.
C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton have a lot in common: They’re both very British, were both active in the early 20th century, both wrote “fantastical fiction” with Christian overtones (although Chesterton is at the same time less subtle and less persistent about it), and both used two initials as names. (I understand not wanting to be called “Clive Staples”, but “Gilbert Keith” is a perfectly serviceable name, so I’m not sure why he went for the initials. Maybe it was just the cool thing to do back then.) But where Lewis wrote fantasy stories for kids full of talking lions and mice Chesterton wrote darker and edgier stories, full of darkened passageways, faceless attackers and looming, incomprehensible evils… that usually turn out to be no big deal, once you understand what’s really going on.
My introduction to G. K. Chesterton was in the form of two novels given to me by a friend of mine in high school. I’m not sure what made her think they were right up my alley, but I’ve always been grateful for the introduction. Having been exposed to more of his works since then, I can only say she chose correctly, and that the two she gave me were the best place to start.
The first is called The Club of Queer Trades. It was written as a serial (as so many books were back then) and consists of six stories about people who make their money in completely novel ways. Each story is framed as a Holmesian mystery, with the apparent crime, the suspect, etc. until it’s revealed that no crime has been committed. The detective in this book, Basil Grant, doesn’t work so much by clues and hints as by sheer knowledge of people and how they work. He’s sort of a pre-Douglas Adams holistic detective, and was written (one feels) solely to make fun of the man in the deerstalker cap. The book is far more fun to read after you’ve read some of Doyle’s stories, as the contrast is more apparent, although it’s fun to read by itself. One example, from a speech given by a suspected villain:
We give him these visions, but we give him exercise at the same time, the necessity of leaping from wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen, of running down long streets from pursuers–all healthy and pleasant exercises. We give him a glimpse of that great morning world of Robin Hood or the Knights Errant, when one great game was played under the splendid sky. We give him back his childhood, that godlike time when we can act stories, be our own heroes, and at the same instant dance and dream.”
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (1999). The Club of Queer Trades . Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
The other is The Man Who Was Thursday: a nightmare, and is probably the better of the two. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that it’s a story of a policeman who, through cunning and audacity, becomes a member of the Central Council of Anarchists (the irony in that name is fully intentional) and has many adventures therein. But (I’m pretty sure I say this about every book I write about) it’s the language and the dry, underlying humor that makes the book. Since it’s in the public domain I’ll quote freely:
Even if the people were not “artists,” the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. …That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself?
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2006). The Man Who Was Thursday, a nightmare . Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
The book is well subtitled, as it moves along at a dreamlike pace, mad scene melting into mad scene, each completely unreal but entirely plausible and all the more frightening for it. The seasons change in days, but each season is entirely real, and nobody seems to notice. An old, nearly dead man hobbles along and somehow manages to keep up with a younger man running at full speed. All the while you get details like the sun on the grass during a duel in which a man’s face is sliced off to show his true face beneath…that sort of thing. For all of its nightmare qualities, it’s still very funny and very enjoyable, not just in the “I’m glad I read that” sense, but in the sense of actually being fun to read.
Both books are freely available in many formats, and make for great summer reading.
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
It so happens that we now have a Sony ereader, a Kindle and a Nook. So. We can read it on all three!
I’ve heard the name GK Chesterron, but I never knew what he wrote. Thanks for the illustration!
We had a Kobo reader for a little while too, but I gave it away in a contest. I also have a Velocity Micro Cruz reader coming in the mail because it was a screaming deal on Woot, though.
I tell myself all this is because I have to test Zombocalypse Now on various different ebook platforms, but the reality is, I think I have a serious problem.
“Too many gadgets” isn’t a problem, it’s a way of life. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
Thanks for the recommendation- sounds very interesting.