Chesterton

Alex David Groce · 05 Aug 1998, 10:40 · from urth-v0017.mbox · original

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From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Chesterton
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 10:40:09
Message-ID: <urth-v0017-0088 at digest.urth.net>
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On Aug 5,  8:16am, Michael Straight wrote:
> Subject: Re: (urth) Chesterton
> On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, adam louis stephanides wrote:
>
> > On a completely different topic, I know that Wolfe admires Chesterton, =
but
> > Chesterton has never seemed "Wolfeian" to me, to employ a Borgesian
> > temporal inversion.  But in THE COLLECTED WORKS OF G. K. CHESTERTON vol.
> > 14, which contains hundreds of pages of unpublished short stories,
> > novelettes, and fragments, there is a short story, "Child Street," which
> > did strike me as very Wolfeian. It's an excellent story, and worth seek=
ing
> > out in a library or through interlibrary loan.  (The samw volume contai=
ns
> > another excellent unpublished short story, "Le Jongleur de Dieu," which=
 is
> > not particularly Wolfeian, but is strikingly un-Chestertonian.)
>
> I've always thought "The Man Who Was Thursday" was a bit Wolfean (albeit
> less subtle than Wolfe) in it's attempts at deliberately misdirecting the
> reader, and perhaps also in the really weird twist everything takes at the
> end.
>
> -Rostrum
>
	I think Chesterton's influence is more philosophical than literary.
 Wolfe has stated many times his vast admiration for Chesterton and Kipling=
 (as
well as Mark's Engineering Handbook), and I think that a lot of what he doe=
s at
shorter lengths could be described as writing Kipling stories with a
Chestertonian worldview.  Wolfe's portrayed universe is admittedly far dark=
er
in tone than Chesterton's.  But then, I think Borges once said that Chester=
ton
is really closer to Kafka than anyone thinks, he just hides it well.
	As to obvious influences, I think Wolfe's essays and interviews have a
very Chestertonian feel--Wolfe's always saying G. K.-ish things that at fir=
st
seem silly, then on reflection appear to possibly be profound truths.  And =
his
fondness for ideas like the return of cavalry or MX missles on wooden boats=
 is
very Chestertonian in the "cheat-the-prophet" sense.  In fact, such ideas s=
eem
to me a combination of Kipling's fondness for railroads & other engineering
feats and Chesterton's love of the wildly implausible...
	And if Silk in NIGHTSIDE isn't Father Brown redux, I'll eat my hat.


--=20
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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