The Early Word on Mr. Chesterton

In the 1998 comedy Blast From the Past, a neat little clash of cultures film which I rather enjoy, it was remarked towards the end that in life, 'The parents care for the children, then the children care for the parents', or something very near to that. It occurs to me that sometimes it's a little more like the parents raise the children, then the children raise the parents.

My oldest son has inspired me to read more fully the works of Mr. G. K. Chesterton. Of course, as a Catholic, I have known of Chesterton for years, having read a few of the Father Brown mysteries (I especially like the one where the good padre sniffs out a fake priest wholly on the grounds that the fraud 'questioned reason' and a good cleric would never do that) and having started The Everlasting Man several times but never getting back to it. I knew he was legendary: no less that C. S. Lewis (whom I hold tremendous respect for) cites The Everlasting Man as one of the things which impelled him back to Christianity. But I had trouble making myself read him, for inexplicable and surely nonsensical reasons, if not simply out of plain laziness.

Then my son comes along and lists on Facebook Orthodoxy as one of his five favorite books, and I found I was amazed and pleased at that selection. He further tells me that he was currently reading Heretics, the companion or precursor to Orthodoxy and had thoroughly enjoyed The Man Who Was Thursday, perhaps Chesterton's most well known novel.

All that caused me to get a move on and dig out that copy of Everlasting Man which had languished on my bookshelves for a good twenty years and seriously try to read it.

Good move. I have read but the introduction and the first chapter, and am well rewarded. When you read, as I did on the first page of The Man in the Cave (the title of chapter one), "I think there is something a trifle vulgar about this idea of trying to rebuke spirit by size.", you know you've hit paydirt. Chesterton was decrying the false idea that we on Earth, as mere specks in an infinite universe, must therefore be insignificant. His point was that there is no corollary between physical size and spiritual significance. They are separate concepts: one is a mere fact of nature, the other an idea of innate value.

Brilliant, simply brilliant, as the obvious so often is when we get off our intellectual high horses and see things as they are rather than as we wish them to be. I can see why no less an atheist that G. B. Shaw (what is it with the English and their double-initialled nom de plumes?) called his friend "A man of colossal genius".

Thanks, Chuck. I have ordered Orthodoxy and Heretics and The Man Who Was Thursday from Amazon and expect them any day. The problem now is, can I finish one before starting the next?