Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton

I picked up G.K. Chesterton’s celebrated work of Christian apology Orthodoxy hot off the heels of the incredible The Man Who Was Thursday. Orthodoxy is a much different sort of work, which was no surprise, but it thrums with the same gleeful energy. In its pages, Chesterton offers a primer, not for conversion generally, but for his conversion, explaining the many ways that Christianity came to him as the answers to questions he didn’t even quite realize he was asking. The result is the slightly meandering but always amusing meanderings of a fleet mind.

Chesterton positions Christianity almost as an inevitability of thought. His arguments are often well-reasoned, though some of them feel kind of spurious. I was particularly unconvinced by his reasoning that miracles have been proven because they have been reported, and skepticism of these reports comes from intellectual bigotry, and not, say, a perennially unfulfilled request for slightly more evidence. He compares this to a court ignoring eye-witness testimony because the witness was only a peasant, ignoring the fact that in said trial, there is at least the indisputable fact of a dead body to discuss. The skeptic wants to see not only that the miracle was divine, but that it actually happened in the first place.

Nevertheless, Chesterton is a great thinker, and it’s a pleasure to read his thoughts. I can’t say I was converted, but I was certainly entertained.

The Man who Was Thursday: A Nightmare - G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton was one of those writers whose name I absorbed during University without knowing much about what he actually wrote. I’d heard of him primarily as an essayist and Christian apologist, and was surprised to learn he’d written a novel. After starting The Man Who Was Thursday, I was even more surprised to learn exactly what kind of novel he’d written.

The Man Who Was Thursday is a strange and remarkable work, earnest and funny and rich in philosophical thought. In its surrealism, its humor, its persistent questioning of reality, it it antecedent to everything from Kurt Vonnegut to Franz Kafka to Philip K Dick. I can think of only one author who serves as a clear inspiration, and I like to think Chesterton would agree, for he namechecks the man in the novel (the first of the moles to fall goes by the name Gogol).

The story begins with two poets in the park: the fierce anarchist Gregory and the logical but single-mindedly anti-anarchist Syme. Syme goads Gregory into revealing his anarchist club, at which point Syme reveals himself to be an undercover policeman charged by an unseen man (or perhaps entity is a better word) to root out anarchy. Through manipulation of Gregory, Syme is elected Thursday, one of seven figureheads of a European anarchist cabal led by the enormous and enigmatic Sunday.

One by one, Syme’s fellow figureheads are revealed to be other than they claim, until the whole conspiracy folds in on itself and becomes something of a metaphysical puzzle for its principal members. The ending felt a bit weaker than the rest, settling into convention for a novel that was otherwise totally unconventional, but I’m not sure how such an odd book could end.

Chesterton’s prose is exquisite, whip-smart and hilarious, masterfully contorting ideas into impossible forms that somehow hold firm. More than most authors, his intellect is on plain display in his writing, not because he is showing off, but because it was so fill to bursting in his head that it had to go somewhere, and the page was as good a destination as any.

I’ve already started Orthodoxy and will be reading a lot more of him in the near future.