“How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still,
respectable.”—G.K. Chesterton, in “The Listener,” March 6, 1935.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, born on this date in 1874, was a really big
guy. The way I figure it, he almost had to be, in order to take in his multiple
literary guises. I first came to know this British man of letters in adolescence as the creator of the
Father Brown detective stories, but in time I came to enjoy him even more as
critic, novelist, poet, journalist, essayist, and, most of all, writer of
Christian apologetics (and Catholic convert) whose influence in the last century might be exceeded
only by C.S. Lewis.
As the above quote indicates, he was particularly the master of the
playful paradox. That is the quality that informs virtually all his work, no
matter the genre—and why he continues to make fans to this day.
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