Yeah okay so the books

[petronia]

Since I made the last post I also plowed through The Wisdom of Father Brown. Basically this was two half-day binges: I'd arrive at the end of a story with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and start on the next immediately, as if it were going to do better. Can't pinpoint this except by saying that all the narratives actually seem to be moral fables, only in detective story format instead of talking animals format, and Chesterton's worldview doesn't dovetail with my own on a very basic level - that of emotional reaction. It doesn't irritate or alienate, but it depresses. ^^; I'm not sure why. I have the same problem with Graham Greene but this is more so. I want to say it's because Chesterton truly believes in salvation whereas Greene only resonates with the concept of damnation, but that's typical INTP-style great-leap-forward and doesn't make any sense. Does it? In any case Chesterton is very powerful when he writes about Evil, some of those passages will probably remain with me for life. One can see what Evelyn Waugh was thinking. XD

There's also a, how would you call it, an issue of racial and cultural attitudes. Basically my enjoyment of these stories would've been vastly less complicated if I'd read them as a child, as I did with the Tintin comics. It's that sort of thing, only magnified because the writer is such an incisive observer. And yet he doesn't deal in individuals, but in types. Of course this is partially due to the format, which is genre i.e. pop, and I expect and even crave the style in pop, but Chesterton is too smart for it not to be apparent that it's how he thinks, only on a level more complex than that of War Hero, Gentleman Thief, Beautiful Heiress, etc. on which the stories nominally operate (but don't stick to by a long shot). Borges - who must've been influenced by Father Brown - typifies in the same way, and so does Ayn Rand, but Borges doesn't even pretend to be writing about people, which is one of the reasons he's a great writer and Rand is not. I do think somewhere there lies a fundamental demarcation between conservatives and liberals, in the most abstract senses of the terms. Sometimes that outright backfires on modern my sensibilities. At other times... I mean dude stereotypes French intelligentsia at one fell swoop but I've yet to meet anyone in that category who wasn't exactly as described in these stories. XD; And if I'd read them as a child the quality of the prose would've flown over my head. The deployment of such a well-balanced tool in the-butler-did-it-cos-he-was-the-evil-duke-in-disguise narratives makes for an odd sense of luxury, like jumping in the Porsche to make a tobacconist run. Chesterton especially excels at setting descriptions and a sizeable number of the stories seem to have been inspired by some unusual architectural or street layout.

Out of 24, there is 1 x parody of Swinburne and 1 x story in which an American reporter meets a British reporter in a pub; the former is chasing a story about an alternate theory of evolution and the latter is chasing a celebrity sex scandal. LOL. Still have three collections worth to go.

As for Graham Greene I don't want to talk about it much anymore as I've talked about it everywhere, including when worldserpent was reading it (here - spoiler alert). I will say that it hadn't occurred to me until this book that Greene's Catholicism is what gives the puzzling dark aftertaste to even his lighthearted novels, otherwise you'd think he'd read like Terry Pratchett or something. All these books seem to come by twos: like the Father Brown stories, Brighton Rock is an appropriation of genre conventions and structure in order to talk about ideas on a higher order, religion and secularism and so forth. Despite its parable nature I don't know if Greene meant the outcome of his novel to have universal application, or if it's no more than that - one possible outcome of one possible battle between eternal forces. If there's a takeaway I found valuable it's the definition of secularists as people who think in terms of Right vs. Wrong, whereas believers think in terms of Good vs. Evil - and Good vs. Evil pushes more buttons, allows for more seductive and/or extreme dramas, wherease Right vs. Wrong is the choice of the annoyingly healthy in mind and body who thus assume they know best for everyone. Tempting as it is one should probably avoid calling that a fundamental demarcation between conservatives and liberals, no matter how abstractly defined. XD;

I was in the Gallimard bookstore the other day and saw this genius idea - reissues of books with the DVD of the film adaptation packaged in. They should do that for Brighton Rock! Or a Hong Kong cinema remake, though that would eliminate all the Albionic signifiers.

Comments

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

Ah, your book reviews are such a pleasure to parse!

Apropos of no actual points you make, I like the idea of an odd sense of luxury, like jumping in the Porsche to make a tobacconist run.

Oh, now I know where I first heard of Chesterton. Good Omens is dedicated to him, "A man who knew what was going on." What a nerdy memory I have. ...I suppose he does, at that. though I have not read him and don't necc. know if I want to.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of approaching the Father Brown stories on a last-ditch grown-up level. XD;; TBH, setting aside instances of historically accurate usage of the N-word and stuff like that, it's all about the prose:

The great Muscari, most original of the young Tuscan poets, walked swiftly into his favourite restaurant, which overlooked the Mediterranean, was covered by an awning and fenced by little lemon and orange trees. Waiters in white aprons were already laying out on white tables the insignia of an early and elegant lunch; and this seemed to increase a satisfaction that already touched the top of swagger. Muscari had an eagle nose like Dante; his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak, and might almost have carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him a sort of Venetian melodrama. He acted as if a troubadour had still a definite social office, like a bishop. He went as near as his century permitted to walking the world literally like Don Juan, with rapier and guitar.

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

Oh, but that is glorious and enjoyable!

Am ever fascinated by deft, brief character portraits some authors paint in such a way that five sentences is enough to give you a sense of their personality, their looks, and the world's opinion of them. :D

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Whereas I'm most impressed by how he set the decor completely with two half-sentences. XD But yeah, one paragraph is generally what these stories have to work with, and you get dazzling descriptions within that constraint.

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

G. K. Chesterton is awesome, no lie. His cultural attitudes can be distressing (dear Mr. Chesterton, please stop talking about Buddhism before I have to stop liking you), but fortunately for me I read him at an age old enough to appreciate the prose, but young enough not to realise I was allowed to be pissed off at the racism.

Other reasons to read him:
1) Nobody I've read so far has been able to beat Chesterton for building up, ooh, I don't know what the word is, atmosphere, ambiance, thingy? It is like -- you'll be reading along and slowly but with an awful inexorability you will realise that the world you are now in is not the world you came from, but a nightmarish mirror of it, where shadows are darker and nobody makes sense. The sort of feeling you might experience if one day you looked up and realised that everybody had NO EYES. Fantastic.
2) Father Brown and French detective dude are in luv

(The deployment of such a well-balanced tool in the-butler-did-it-cos-he-was-the-evil-duke-in-disguise narratives makes for an odd sense of luxury, like jumping in the Porsche to make a tobacconist run. describes it really well, petronia! p. s. have you read The Man Who Was Thursday.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

p. s. have you read The Man Who Was Thursday

I haven't! This was my first Chesterton, for reals. It's on the list, though. XD And ahaha yeah, I was sort of "oh dear I'm guessing everyone else read this before the pesky social consciousness kicked in." Someone else mentioned that she couldn't get into Chesterton because she found the conservatism of his devotees irritating, and that surprised me as it doesn't describe any Chesterton fan on my flist, but now I can see it.

1)-2) are v. true.

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I once read an article by Chesterton in Prospect and was horrified. Have I been nursing a snake on my breast, sort of thing. The Man Who Was Thursday is excellent, though -- surreal, mystic, like one of those paintings that are all splotches of colour.

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

As I appreciate prose and enjoy GKC's Wikipedia picture (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Gilbert_Keith_Chesterton2.jpg/200px-Gilbert_Keith_Chesterton2.jpg) (WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS PHOTO), I really am interested.

(Racist distress is something to bear with when reading a lot of pre-1940s fiction, agag, though I tend to select more harmless or self-involved books interested only in being classist, and occas. conscious about this. In this context I am more concerned with the levels of latent distress rather than, uh, its presence.)

brain dead but commenting anyway

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Related to this, sesame_seed and I saw Brideshead yesterday. We were wondering whether the movie was going to be about the eeeeevils of Catholicism the way the book was, or whether it was going to be more about falling in with rich debauched types and being swallowed whole the way the trailers suggested. The opening narration was something like:

"As I stand here surveying these companies arrayed at Brideshead, I can't help but think back to the last time I was here. Of all the emotions I experienced, the pleasure and pains, one feeling has stayed with me:

"Guilt."

Chrissie and I just kind of looked at each other and were like, WELL I GUESS THAT ANSWERS THAT QUESTION.