some words of a great man

G. K. Chesterton was a lousy novelist.

This statement may come as a surprise to those who know me and know my love for Chesterton. But rest assured that I have not suddenly reversed my position. I still love Chesterton; as much as I have a soulmate, he is it. And I love his fiction works no less than his nonfiction... but in all honesty I must acknowledge that he was a lousy novelist.

His characters have no distinct voices, and hardly any distinct personalities. They do not come to life as people at all. There are essentially two character voices he uses: the wise and the unwise. The wise voice speaks in Chesterton's own, and delivers insight, usually in the form of paradox. The unwise voice exists to give the wise voice something to respond to. Chestertonian dialogue is more like Socratic dialogue than proper fictional dialogue. And, over the whole body of his fiction, it is possible to identify about seven distinct types into which nearly all of his characters fall. But that's all right, because the true characters of Chesterton's stories aren't the people at all.

The true characters in a Chesterton story are ideas; often an idea is personified by one of the people in the story, or spread over several, or several condensed into one person. But, by combining people and events, he puts ideas into play with one another. A Chesterton story is really just a Chesterton essay dramatized. And once you come to look at it in this way, a Chesterton story is every bit as delightful as a Chesterton essay.

He rejoices in wordplay, in pun and paradox. Better than any other writer I know, he links the whimsical and the profound. He is fond of turning things on their head, a master at creating a sudden shift of perspective which yields new understanding. He is a jolly philosopher, with optimism that comes not from blindness, but from an unshakable faith that the good, true, and beautiful is stronger than the evil.

There's a great website, providing most of his writings for free and public consumption, here. If you want to read his fiction, I suggest starting with the Father Brown stories. If you want to read nonfiction, you can't go wrong with any of the essays. Some of my favorites are "The Case for the Ephemeral," "A Defence of Rash Vows," and "Cheese." And if you want to read the most marvellous love-letter ever penned, the one that would have irrevocably captured my heart had it been written to me instead of to Miss Frances Blogg (later Frances Chesterton), it is found in the essay section under the title "To Frances."

In case you're the kind of person who tells yourself you'll check out the link later and never will, here's a sampler of quotes.

"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid."

"It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.” They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority."

"What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon."

"One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a color. It is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white."

"Passing from the last miracle of practical foresight, we come to a box of matches. Every now and then I strike one of these, because fire is beautiful and burns your fingers. Some people think this a waste of matches: the same people who object to the building of Cathedrals."