G.K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a man of many talents - short story writer, novelist, poet, essayist, biographer, philosopher, art critic, literary critic, Christian apologist, journalist, and editor. He is best known now for his 53 detective stories featuring Father Brown, a Catholic priest who uses Church-trained logic and a keen understanding of human behavior to solve mysteries. Chesterton had famous friendships, rivalries, and feuds with fellow writers in a Golden Age of English literature. The names alone summon a time and place: Kipling, Shaw, Wilde, Doyle, Belloc, and many others - Chesterton was in the thick of it all.
The Father Brown stories are the best place to begin with Chesterton, but the casual essays are witty and sly and fun, graced with paradox and a conversational style. Enjoy!
The Man Who Was Thursday [Modern Library edition]
The Man Who Was Thursday [Modern Library edition]
G. K. Chesterton’s surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and, ultimately, a spellbinding allegory. As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, The real characters are the ideas. Chesterton’s nutty agenda is really quite simple: to expose moral relativism and parlor nihilism for the devils he believes them to be. This wouldn’t be interesting at all, though, if he didn’t also show such passion for giving the devil his due. He animates the forces of chaos and anarchy with every ounce of imaginative verve and rhetorical force in his body.