G K Chesterton

G K Chesterton by Karl Schmude CTS Biographies

Chesterton is one of those writers whom many of us feel we know a bit. Perhaps we have read the Father Brown stories, or we may have come across one or two of his poems or hymns. But it is easy to forget quite how much he wrote, quite how well he wrote, and quite how widely he was read. Karl Schmude helps to put the record straight: and remind us how well worth reading this great Catholic writer remains to this day.

This booklet, in some forty pages, provides both a biography and an introduction to Chesterton’s thought. The opening chapter describes his early life and the development of his ideas. Perhaps Chesterton is remembered most for his love of paradox. What is interesting is that in some ways he himself was a paradox. His writing sparkles with imagination and speed of thought: he himself, it seems, was vague and absent-minded.

But in his writing, paradox was not a mere literary device. Right from the start he championed ideas that were unfashionable to the point of being indefensible. His world-view was that the received prejudices of his time needed to be turned on their heads: it was for this reason that he loved paradox as a startling and memorable way of getting people to think differently. He profoundly believed that the best way to understand the familiar is to see it afresh, and that was the theme of many of his essays and novels.

In the second chapter, Schmude summarises Chesterton’s worldview, looking at five themes. These are the nature of wonder, his love of ordinary people, cherishing man, not supermen (in contrast, for example with his friend and antagonist, G B Shaw), orthodoxy and the excitement of truth, and heresy as the distortion of truth. Chesterton admitted that he had been tempted to found a heresy of his own, only to discover that it was orthodoxy.

The next chapter goes into detail on the heart of Chesterton’s philosophy: Hope. Chesterton’s view was that it is only by understanding the fall of man that we can have a positive view of reality: that we are in a world created good, and spoiled by men’s failings. That offers the hope that the world can eventually be righted by the right use of the will. This, together with his commitment to objective truth, finally led Chesterton into the Catholic Church in 1922.

The second half of the book explores Chesterton’s career as a writer, critic and editor, and goes into detail on his social thought, particularly distributism. This was Chesterton’s solution to the problems posed both by collectivising socialism and individualistic capitalism.

The final chapter considers Chesterton’s Legacy, and in particular the extent to which he is a prophet relevant to our own times. Having read this booklet, the reader has only one thought in mind: to go way and read some more Chesterton.