Christopher Hitchens devoted
a few of his final days reckoning with G.K.
Chesterton. Whether or not Hitch managed a Chestertonian take-down is
largely in the eye of the beholder. Surely Chesterton’s anti-Semitism complicates any bent toward admiration. But then my admiration of Hitchens is complicated
by his call-to-arms against Islamo-Facism. He may have articulated the threat,
as he saw it, persuasively enough; however, his support (very public, and
deeply appreciated by the War Party) of a full-out military response, a la Iraq, remains debatable, to put it
mildly.
Hoping to contrast the two thinkers, I was all set to post
the popular canard that Chesterton, in response to the London Times’ question, “What
is wrong with the world?” promptly wrote,
Dear Sirs;
I am.
Sincerely yours, G.K. Chesterton
And yet it seems likely that this exchange occurred not at
all. Once again we have an apocryphal distillation of Chestertonian insight
that is more finely attuned than the bloat of his writings. The fabled letter is true enough, in
other words. Chesterton admitted he had faults, chief among them his incapacity
to acknowledge the worst of them — “The unknown unknowns” as the bard of a
later, wiser age put it.
Credit where it's due: Hitchens gave Chesterton a much closer read
than I ever will. I’ve taken several runs at Orthodoxy, a slim book I’ve
yet to finish. I’ve done better with On Lying In Bed & Other Essays,
edited by Alberto Manguel (A). I’ve
hopped all over its pages, and discovered many of Chesterton’s most famous
quotations.* Can’t say as I’ve finished it, though. The only book of his that I’ve
read from cover to cover is The Man Called Thursday, a grotesque
farce which penetrated my consciousness to an unsettling and even creepy
degree.
About which . . .
*Including one my
daughters have grown sick of me parroting: “An
adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered; an inconvenience is only
an adventure wrongly considered.”
2 comments:
Well, you're one up on me. I've never read any Chesterton.
My interest was piqued a few years back, when this book
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2009/02/revolutions-of-1848-by-priscilla.html
told me that The man Called Thursday was based on the real historical Blanqui's secret organization, in which the group was organized according to months, weeks and years. I've been meaning to get around to the Man Who Was Thursday ever since, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I have no trouble recommending the book, but I think you'll find the historical basis quickly warps into something quite weird -- anti-Lovecraftian, maybe.
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