what does /lit/ think of C.K Chesterton? I've just gotten into him and I've gotta say, his writing is some of the smoothest I've ever read.
Chesterton is one of the secret final bosses of Western thought. Read his essays arguing against the Modernist thinkers of his day. He's very homely and gentle, yet very magnificent.
Chesterton is sometimes forgotten in our own age, but everyone who's in the know has read him. He's almost part of the secret Canon, along with Kafka and Proust.
His novel The Man who was Thursday is awesome, you should all read it.
>>7813798
>secret Canon, along with Kafka and Proust.
>>7813798
The regular Canon DOESNT include Kafka or Proud?
Nigga, which Canon you reading?!
>>7813785
He's a unique thinker and writer. But honestly find his philosophy unconvincing, he's like Nietzsche in that his philosophy is shit but is really poetic and reads nicely. His novels and short stories are extremely comfy.
>>7813785
I've said this before many times, but Chesterton is the ultimate man of letters of the 20th century. He may not have been the great novelist like Faulkner or Joyce, or the great poet that Yeats and Eliot were, or the great short story writer like O'Connor, but no one could write as effectively in so many different genres and formats as Chesterton could. Poetry, criticism, apologetics, journalism, novels, short stories, satire, parody...he was fantastic at everything he put his pen to. One of the single greatest writers of the 20th century.
His influence is also infectious among patrician writers and you can find it in writers as varied as Borges, O'Connor, Gene Wolfe, to writers like Tolkien and Lewis. He was also Alfred Hitchcock's favorite writer, so take that for what its worth.
Honestly the way he can see paradox in literally everything and turn it into a fantastic literary metaphor is unsurpassed. People heap praise on witty writers like Wilde and Twain, but Chesterton outshines them both.
Give him a try. The Man Who Was Thursday and his Father Brown stories are all fantastic. Lepanto is a God-tier narrative poem, among the best of the 20th century IMO. The Everlasting Man is one of the most unique and persuasive analysis of the totality of human history and the importance of Christianity and Christendom in general I've come accross. The section on Nietzsche in Orthodoxy is full of insight and wit, and even if you don't agree with his conclusion, it's incredibly infectious and fresh.
>>7814213
Nietzsche is top tier philosophy. You probably just don't get it.
there is always one ongoing thread with approximately 8 posts
well I've read an ungodly number of his essays—every major collection plus many of the uncollected ones—and only a few of the father brown stories, little else of his fiction.
He was a brilliant man. He never said anything profoundly new or interesting, but he had a wealth of common sense, and a discerning eye for the muddles in popular discourse.
>>7813785
>fat
>Catholic
>Anglo
Wow, he's all of my least favorite things, and the Father Brown stories aren't even good.
>>7815381
>And now something I didn't understand at all, but loved was The Man who was Thursday.
The point of TMWWT is that God is in control of all things and that even people and movements who seek to usurp God ultimately serve his ends. It's very similar to Dante's Beatific Vision in a way. I'll elaborate later, but I got to run to work right now.
>>7815406
Wew Gene I see you took something from this
>>7813785
>what does /lit/ think of C.K Chesterton?
He and belloc are amazing
>>7815438
Belloc doesn't get enough love here we should shill him
>>7815444
Good that he isn't a meme.
Every longtime /lit/ user knows Belloc (he also has threads every now and then)
btw you have good taste anon
>>7813785
I really hate his smarmy sentimentalist aphorisms, particularly those that are wrong, which are many.
This is what Chesterton the aphorist does: "Well, the trouble about x and y, is that y and x. Oh dear me I'm so fat and clever, darling fetch my cape and muu-muu--"
I'll take "post-christian society", grey-faced bureaucrats and soulless concrete buildings eight days a week over this chucklehead.
>>7815825
This. Chesterton is pure sentiment and bluster hiding behind the ever-crumbling facade of Catholic "scholarship". If he weren't a Catholic he would be a fedora icon.
>>7813865
Thursday was 'ok'
The Napoleon of Notting Hill's the gravy though
>>7815910
It's probably the most unique surreal novel I've read. It's the only one like that that isn't grim, but it's incredibly cheerful.
