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The Napoleon of Notting Hill

G.K. Chesterton

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Sep 20, 2009 Werner rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

Broadly speaking, this 1904 imagining of the world of the late 20th century and beyond can be called science fiction, but it's strictly a speculation in the social, not the technological, sciences; Chesterton had little interest in technology, --and, indeed, posits a future with no new technology, its material culture unchanged, when the novel opens, from that of his own Edwardian world. It's also an imagining that, in some particulars, could almost be called surreal, and much of it is laced wit Broadly speaking, this 1904 imagining of the world of the late 20th century and beyond can be called science fiction, but it's strictly a speculation in the social, not the technological, sciences; Chesterton had little interest in technology, --and, indeed, posits a future with no new technology, its material culture unchanged, when the novel opens, from that of his own Edwardian world. It's also an imagining that, in some particulars, could almost be called surreal, and much of it is laced with Chesterton's characteristic dry but zany, screwball humor (the flavor of which is conveyed by the opening words, "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong...."). Readers should be warned at the outset that plausibility isn't his strong suit; or, really, his strong concern, either. His concern, rather, is with making certain points.

Some of the most important and obvious of these points are social in nature. Chesterton already lived in an age, like our own, in which the powers that be exalted the centralization of political and economic power and the homogenization of culture and society; their vision of Utopia was one in which all the world was subsumed into one huge mass society with all human differences and all local particularism erased, and all of it dominated and pervaded by an all-consuming ethos of materialism. (Of course, in our day, this process is a lot further advanced than it was in Chesterton's.) Chesterton recognized that goal as the nightmare that it in fact is, and set against it a vision of small-scale society and particularism, where considerations other than monetary profit would be determining factors in human behavior. His vision, in fact, is an early forerunner and adumbration of the one E. F. Schumacher outlines in Small Is Beautiful (to which Martin Gardner alludes in the helpful introduction to the Dover edition, which is the one that I read).

Another of his points is philosophical, dealing with the relation of humor to seriousness. At first blush, the humorous tone of much of the book seems out of place in a novel dealing with serious issues, and a plot that involves serious war, with real blood running in the streets. But Chesterton would say that, in a universe that involves so much apparent absurdity, both humor and fervent seriousness need to be part of the same mind, if that mind wants to stay sane.

There are problems with the execution of this novel. Some of its basic premises --a 1984 London technologically unchanged from 1904; the idea that a technocratic society would dispense kingship by lot, or limit itself to employing swords and halberds in warfare; and especially the possibility of Adam Wayne getting anybody, let alone a whole neighborhood, to follow him-- are wildly implausible. The scheme for the development of a new neighborhood-destroying roadway (foreshadowing the destructive "development" that, in the real 20th century, gutted most of our cities) isn't explained in detail. And some readers might feel that Chesterton glorifies warfare (though I don't think that's his intention). But there is also a lot of carefully-crafted symbolism (as pointed out by Gardner) here; and the ending --which earned the book its fourth star from me-- is really powerful. ...more

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Apr 11, 2010 Jacob marked it as to-read

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