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G.K. Chesterton: A Selection from His Non-fictional Prose
Includes discussion of Browning, Chaucer, Cobbett, Dickens, Kipling, Henry James, William Morris, Shaw, R. L. Stevenson, and others. Also discusses fairy tales, mythology, religion, and philosophy, among other things.
- GenresEssays
228 pages, Hardcover
First published January 26, 1970
About the author
G.K. Chesterton
3,932 books5,986 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 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2020
I basically returned to Chesterton to re-read a piece called "The Lunatic" (or "The Maniac"). What brought it to mind are all the conspiracy theories in the wake of Trump's election loss.
What I am seeing is that as a new theory gets debunked by reality, a new one crops up to take its place, each more extreme than the last. If you try to pass on facts or some other perspective to these folks the more absurd their claims become in their responses.
Years ago, I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. He’s a mixed bag. Like C.S. Lewis he wrote a lot of Christian apologetics. But Chesterton’s best stuff was literary criticism (e.g. Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson) and his flashes of insight on the human condition. Sometimes he could push paradox too far, but at other times it resulted in a unique take on a subject.
This excerpt is from an essay he titled “The Lunatic.” He takes on the popular stereotype of such as “blithering idiots.” But this isn’t always true, as he explains here….
“The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane.
Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humor or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
I experienced this my sister. This year has been one of Covid sheltering. It’s affected people in many ways, including psychologically and emotionally. Before sheltering, my sister was going to the gym regularly, participating in a book club, and seeing a lot of her grandchildren. But with sheltering, she’s basically been in a cocoon all day with the Internet.
We come from a conservative family, so the fact that she’s been a viewer of Fox News for many years is no surprise. But she never talked about it. But with the possibility of Trump losing this year, something snapped. She spoke of being “sick to her stomach if Trump lost.” This surprised me.
But it’s clear now that Trump and many of his followers are in heavy denial about his loss, but as I write this many prominent GOP have come out and conceded Biden’s victory, including Attorney General, William Barr.
But what Chesterton gets at is how our reasoning faculties can aid and abet nonsense. The most common notion among these folks have is that underneath the myriad events we see on the surface of the world lurks a single sinister group. And it’s usually led by an appointed villain, most recently George Soros (with obvious anti-Semitic overtones. Jews are a favorite target of conspiracy nonsense).
But the basic structure is always the same: The suspected cabal controls almost everything that happens, while simultaneously concealing its control.
As author Yuval Noah Harari, points out….
“Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes. Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if I believe some kind of global cabal theory, I enjoy the comforting feeling that I do understand everything….
The skeleton key of global cabal theory unlocks all the world’s mysteries and offers me entree into an exclusive circle — the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class: professors, journalists, politicians. I see what they overlook — or what they try to conceal.”
So we return to Chesterton’s lunatic. To try to keep the conspiracy fresh, it’s adherents continue to add random pieces—unverified, not susceptible to fact-checking—to the puzzle. And if certain pieces fail, those are unceremoniously tossed out while other pieces are randomly added. Meanwhile, they will concede nothing about how previous pieces did not fit, turned out to be wrong. They are not interested in “the dumb certainties of experience,” as Chesterton put it. Or, “being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.”
Instead, they have perverted what reasoning power they have to keep adding pieces to their master conspiracy theory that is no more real than a castle in the sky, but far more dangerous.
What I am seeing is that as a new theory gets debunked by reality, a new one crops up to take its place, each more extreme than the last. If you try to pass on facts or some other perspective to these folks the more absurd their claims become in their responses.
Years ago, I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. He’s a mixed bag. Like C.S. Lewis he wrote a lot of Christian apologetics. But Chesterton’s best stuff was literary criticism (e.g. Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson) and his flashes of insight on the human condition. Sometimes he could push paradox too far, but at other times it resulted in a unique take on a subject.
This excerpt is from an essay he titled “The Lunatic.” He takes on the popular stereotype of such as “blithering idiots.” But this isn’t always true, as he explains here….
“The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane.
Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humor or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
I experienced this my sister. This year has been one of Covid sheltering. It’s affected people in many ways, including psychologically and emotionally. Before sheltering, my sister was going to the gym regularly, participating in a book club, and seeing a lot of her grandchildren. But with sheltering, she’s basically been in a cocoon all day with the Internet.
We come from a conservative family, so the fact that she’s been a viewer of Fox News for many years is no surprise. But she never talked about it. But with the possibility of Trump losing this year, something snapped. She spoke of being “sick to her stomach if Trump lost.” This surprised me.
But it’s clear now that Trump and many of his followers are in heavy denial about his loss, but as I write this many prominent GOP have come out and conceded Biden’s victory, including Attorney General, William Barr.
But what Chesterton gets at is how our reasoning faculties can aid and abet nonsense. The most common notion among these folks have is that underneath the myriad events we see on the surface of the world lurks a single sinister group. And it’s usually led by an appointed villain, most recently George Soros (with obvious anti-Semitic overtones. Jews are a favorite target of conspiracy nonsense).
But the basic structure is always the same: The suspected cabal controls almost everything that happens, while simultaneously concealing its control.
As author Yuval Noah Harari, points out….
“Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes. Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if I believe some kind of global cabal theory, I enjoy the comforting feeling that I do understand everything….
The skeleton key of global cabal theory unlocks all the world’s mysteries and offers me entree into an exclusive circle — the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class: professors, journalists, politicians. I see what they overlook — or what they try to conceal.”
So we return to Chesterton’s lunatic. To try to keep the conspiracy fresh, it’s adherents continue to add random pieces—unverified, not susceptible to fact-checking—to the puzzle. And if certain pieces fail, those are unceremoniously tossed out while other pieces are randomly added. Meanwhile, they will concede nothing about how previous pieces did not fit, turned out to be wrong. They are not interested in “the dumb certainties of experience,” as Chesterton put it. Or, “being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.”
Instead, they have perverted what reasoning power they have to keep adding pieces to their master conspiracy theory that is no more real than a castle in the sky, but far more dangerous.
November 28, 2018
W H Auden's selection from Chesterton's non-fictional prose is interesting in that Auden chooses to avoid the essays, such as those GKC wrote for The Illustrated London News. Some of the earlier literary criticism, such as the essays on Dickens, Browning, Chaucer, and Cobbett are endlessly fascinating. Not so the more religious and philosophical excerpts toward the end of the book.
G K Chesterton remains one of my favorite authors, probably because he comes across as a good-natured optimist in a world otherwise gone crazy. Sadly, toward the end of his life, he became something of a hack journalist who had begun to repeat himself.
G K Chesterton remains one of my favorite authors, probably because he comes across as a good-natured optimist in a world otherwise gone crazy. Sadly, toward the end of his life, he became something of a hack journalist who had begun to repeat himself.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews