Strange Preface

I've been reading some of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries, lately, keeping a volume on my bedside table. I had only read a couple before now, and so I'm enjoying getting to know the sagacious little priest better.

The volume that I'm now reading begins with a preface by Auberon Waugh, and it strikes me as having been written by someone who had read Chesterton - and read about him - a good bit, but who had simply never understood him. He seems unable to see past Chesterton's ample surface, and weaves from his imagination a caricature of GKC that exaggerates all the wrong things.

So, he states that Chesterton "learned" Distributism from Hilaire Belloc, that he "drank himself into a state of corpulent immobility" while living in London, that because of this his wife "banished" him to Beaconsfield, and that she thereafter virtually forbade him to visit his "old haunts".

He speaks of Chesterton "churning out elegant paradoxes", and drily notes that he is certain to be forgotten except for his Father Brown stories and a few obscure bits of his poetry. He sums up Chesterton's brilliant essays as " ...pretty good rubbish, some of it repetitive, some contradictory, some nearly incomprehensible, with just the occasional flash of light that makes the reader gasp".

In other words, Waugh sounds like a thoroughly worldly modern trying to explain Chesterton's rather other-worldy and timeless thought in ways he and his more jaded peers can relate to.

The last laugh is Chesterton's, though. There has just concluded the twenty-ninth annual Chesterton Conference of the American Chesterton Society, and GKC is being read and quoted and considered more now than at any time since he was alive.

I haven't discovered, yet, when the next Auberon Waugh conference might be, but I'll keep you posted.

Comments

[John Kasaian]

Waugh's comments indeed seem out of touch. Chesterton. If I'm not mistaken was the older component of the "Chesterbelloc" and a more outspoken Distributist than friend Belloc. Also, if he drank himself into obesity our Mr Chesterton would be---a drunkard! That notion is profoundly contrary to GKC's ethos and for Chesterton to write as he did with a massive bunch of alcohol induced dead brain cells would be a puzzelment if not an impossibility.
I cannot say with certainty but Waugh's "observations" look a wee bit like sour grapes.

[Patrick]

Has anyone ever read a preface or introduction that was worth reading? I used to try dutifully to read them, but became so disgusted as to almost never read them now. Does the introduction ever add anything?

This is a perfect illustration. Why should anyone read commentary on an author *before* actually reading the author themselves and, you know, doing a little thinking? For the first-time reader, this opinion gets in the way of interacting with the work. For the longtime fan, this opinion gets in the way of enjoying the work. That Waugh has a disagreeable opinion about Chesterton is beside the point: I can't see any scenario where an introductory opinion is ever adding anything to a reader's interaction with the work.

(Since we're devoted to TLBC, I'll mention that Hilaire Belloc wrote his own introduction, "Praise for This Book", in his book "The Road to Rome", which I thought was funny and exactly absurd in the way introductions are absurd. When Belloc agrees, you're in good company.)

[M. B.]

I've always been intrigued by these folks who just seem to entirely "miss" Chesterton altogether. I have a psychological theory to explain it. There is one purely frivolous plain -- those who dwell here are shallow and superficial, but usually cheerful and love jokes. These are those annoying people who only watch fluffy comedies, and if they do watch a serious movie, it is only to make jokes about it.

Then there is a second, deeper (or higher, if you prefer) leve. Folks here see through the shallowness of the first level, and though they may offer weak smile from time to time, they believe they have uncovered what the first level is too dumb to see -- that the world is a sad and vain place. Think emo teenagers, who pride themselves on not being as shallow as their typical peers. Think Waugh and other jaded "intellectuals." There is a Catholic species of this type as well, those who see earthly existence as a vale of tears and nothing but a vale of tears.

Finally, there is a level that is deepest of all. Here are folks like Chesterton. They have fuond that turnign away from superficiality leads to seeing the world in more sober and graver terms -- but they have kept going and discovered that beneath the layer of sober gravity, one finds a level of deep and profound joy. Folks here can dwell happily on the second level, but they aren't trapped there.

Folks on the second level who try to understand the third, however, just can't get it. For them, reading Chesterton's discussion of joy would be like someone who had never left Kansas reading about the ocean. He understands the words, but just doesn't understand the reality being expressed -- and, because the closest experience to the ocean he knows is a bathtub, he thinks that such a small picture is all Chesterton means and dismisses him.

Next post... Lewis offers some thoughts...

[M. B.]

The reason for such a long post is because I was already thinking along these lines when I read this post. Last night I read a passage in C. S. Lewis' "Letters to Malcolm" which expresses the same point I made above about why Chesterton just doesn't work for some:

"I know that my tendency to use images like play and dance for the highest things is a stumbling-block to you... You feel it a brutal mockery of every martyr and every slave that a world-process which is so desperately serious to the actors should ... be seen in terms of frivolities.

I do not think that the life of Heaven bears any analogy to play or dance in respect of frivolity. I do think that while we are in this 'valley of tears' ... certain qualities that must belong to the celestial condition have no chance to get through ... except in activities which, for us here and now, are frivolous. For surely we must suppose the life of the blessed to be an end in itself, indeed The End: to be utterly spontaneous; to be complete reconciliation of boundless freedom with order -- with the most delicately adjusted, supple, intricate, and beautiful order?

It is only in our 'hours-off', only in our moments of permitted festivity that we find an analogy. Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here, for down here is not their natural place. Here they are a moment's rest from the life we were placed her to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which [here] would be a truancy is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of heaven."

[Shakespeare's Cobbler]

Introductions are meant to make things clear to those who don't understand.

The translations of the Mass were supposed to make its actions and prayers clear to us poor Americans who struggle to understand the Mystery of the Faith (as if that weren't natural, it's being a mystery).

In both cases, what happens is that people who themselves do not understand are doing the translation into non-understood-ese, and so the end result, rather than being a clarification, is a caricature. We are told that people must be able to understand the Mass, and are given a bad understanding in order to fulfill that. We are given an introduction to shed light on Chesterton, and the introduction does nothing but gawk at the fact that Chesterton stood on his head, having apparently been too busy gawking to hear when Chesterton explained why that makes this messed up world clearer.

This is why the new translation is going to use more direct words even though they're harder (but still not nearly as hard as the real Mystery that any words in the Mass ought to bring us into contact with, so I think anyone who complains is _really_ missing the point)... and why Chesterton fans go about introducing people to Chesterton via his own words and not the words of the very worldly people he so well critiqued.

(Yeah, I know TLBC isn't WDTPRS [What Does The Prayer Really Say], I just had a lightbulb moment regarding both things.)

[Tim J.]

Hey, Shakespeare's Cobbler, don't forget to add to your list the footnotes of the New American Bible! Truly a marvel of obfuscation.

[Shakespeare's Cobbler]

So I've been told. Heard a story once, don't know if it was the NAB or what, but some footnote on the sky going dark at Christ's death suggested, "An eclipse?" and some grade school kid in the inner city pointed out that the Passover is celebrated near a full moon, which means no solar eclipses... Apparently some things could be improved by picking kids up off the street and having them proofread it. It's a wonderful modern age we live in, eh?