/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.768041]

Is GK Chesterton awesome or not?

"Professor," he cried, "it is intolerable. Are you afraid of this man?"

The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large, wide-open, blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty.

"Yes, I am," he said mildly. "So are you."

Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like an insulted man, and thrust the chair away from him.

"Yes," he said in a voice indescribable, "you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down."

"How?" asked the staring Professor. "Why?"

"Because I am afraid of him," said Syme; "and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid."

[Anonymous No.768050]

GK Chesterton is awesome as hell; incredibly witty, incredible prose stylist in a somewhat antique way, and filled with the love of the world. Yes, he had some regressive political & social beliefs, but he was a very good man and a very good writer. One of my favorite writers of all time, really, despite the weakness of his poetry and many of his novels. If you ever have the chance, read as many of his essays as you can.

Clive James said of him that he "defined true democracy as the sum of civilized traditions" which is a way of putting it that I like a lot.

[Anonymous No.768056]

>>768050
I finished and loved "The Man Who Was Thursday", what should I read next?

[Anonymous No.768063]

>>768056
Napoleon of Notting Hill is, in my opinion, his only other first class novel. The Flying Inn has its moments, but its ending is just too damn crazy. The Father Brown series is worth reading as well. Then I would move on to non-fiction - essays and journalism, and his autobiography.

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/index.html may prove helpful to you.