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Lunacy and Letters
Hardcover, no dust jacket. Ex-Libris with usual library matter and stamps to upper, lower and outer edges of text. Wear on all edges of text. Cover faded on upper edges and along spine. Else good.
- GenresEssaysNonfictionCatholic
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1958
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About the author
G.K. Chesterton
4,658 books5,763 followersGilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 8, 2013
Solid and satisfactorily Chestertonian. I enjoy his essays because they're only 2-4 pages long, and so you can nibble at them without losing his train of thought.
October 4, 2016
I grasp only half of what G.K. Chesterton writes. But what I do understand is so astonishingly clear and profound (and witty) that I keep coming back for more.
I love the undercurrent of humor - such as the time he defended himself against the accusation of wife-beating by calling it "a pastime for which I lack the adequate energy." (p.134)
Chesterton is the king of paradox. He describes the man who wants to leave his boring city to find adventure and excitement. He contends that the opposite is true. The man is afraid of the unpredictability of real life. The reason we fly from the city is not in reality that it is not poetical; it is that its poetry is too fierce, too fascinating and too practical in its demands. (p. 23) In a later essay he writes, Let no one flatter himself that he leaves his family life in search of art, or knowledge; he leaves it because he is fleeing from the baffling knowledge of humanity and from the impossible art of life. (p. 60)
He writes of the sanctity of sleep; The greatest act of faith that a man can perform is the act that we perform every night. We abandon our identity, we turn our soul and body into chaos and old night. We uncreate ourselves as if at the end of the world; for all practical purposes we become as dead men, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection...It is in vain for us to say that we think the ultimate power [is] evil when every twelve hours we give our soul and body back to God without security. (i.e. guarantee) p. 30
Lunacy and Letters was recommended to me for the essay "Good Stories Spoiled by Great Authors" (in which Chesterton writes a scathing review of Milton's Adam from Paradise Lost). But the essay that I most loved was the last one called "The Roots of the World" which describes how "the enemies of religion cannot leave it alone." In their fruitless attempts to destroy it, however, they end up smashing everything else. (p. 191)
In Lunacy and Letters, G.K. is insightful, funny and hard-hitting. And worth the effort.
I love the undercurrent of humor - such as the time he defended himself against the accusation of wife-beating by calling it "a pastime for which I lack the adequate energy." (p.134)
Chesterton is the king of paradox. He describes the man who wants to leave his boring city to find adventure and excitement. He contends that the opposite is true. The man is afraid of the unpredictability of real life. The reason we fly from the city is not in reality that it is not poetical; it is that its poetry is too fierce, too fascinating and too practical in its demands. (p. 23) In a later essay he writes, Let no one flatter himself that he leaves his family life in search of art, or knowledge; he leaves it because he is fleeing from the baffling knowledge of humanity and from the impossible art of life. (p. 60)
He writes of the sanctity of sleep; The greatest act of faith that a man can perform is the act that we perform every night. We abandon our identity, we turn our soul and body into chaos and old night. We uncreate ourselves as if at the end of the world; for all practical purposes we become as dead men, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection...It is in vain for us to say that we think the ultimate power [is] evil when every twelve hours we give our soul and body back to God without security. (i.e. guarantee) p. 30
Lunacy and Letters was recommended to me for the essay "Good Stories Spoiled by Great Authors" (in which Chesterton writes a scathing review of Milton's Adam from Paradise Lost). But the essay that I most loved was the last one called "The Roots of the World" which describes how "the enemies of religion cannot leave it alone." In their fruitless attempts to destroy it, however, they end up smashing everything else. (p. 191)
In Lunacy and Letters, G.K. is insightful, funny and hard-hitting. And worth the effort.
April 1, 2022
Lunacy and Letters has all the sharp wit and insights that are characteristic of Chesterton's writing. There is focus in this collection on proper education in history and the important role that that knowledge plays in better understanding industry, architecture, literature, and other aspects of human life. To know history, he posits in another anthology, is to know humanity. Through the essays in Lunacy and Letters, this point is well-made.
Essays of note (including original year of publication): On Being Moved (1909), The Grave-digger (1907), History versus the Historians (1908), The Heroic That Happened (1909), The Bigot (1910), and The Roots of the World (1907)
Essays of note (including original year of publication): On Being Moved (1909), The Grave-digger (1907), History versus the Historians (1908), The Heroic That Happened (1909), The Bigot (1910), and The Roots of the World (1907)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews