The resurgence of the subversive G. K. Chesterton

The resurgence of the subversive G. K. Chesterton: "

David Paul Deavel, an associate editor of LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and a contributing editor to Gilbert Magazine, traces the 25-30 year history of the rediscovery and renewed appreciation of Chesterton:

A prophet is never welcome in his own hometown. For a long time after the tumult of the Sixties, G. K. Chesterton's writings seemed to have lost a welcome anywhere, except, perhaps, among the detective fiction enthusiasts who have kept the Father Brown tales in circulation continuously on both sides of the Atlantic. According to Denis J. Conlon, an English literary scholar who has specialized in Chesterton for many years, much of Chesterton's work is still out of print and hard-to-get in his own merry England. A friend of mine studying in Rome a few years ago told me that the English and Irish Catholic seminarians he met almost universally regarded Chesterton a pre-modern, pre-Vatican II embarrassment. The situation was about the same in America for a long time. As of 1985 there were probably fewer than ten of Chesterton's books in print, and those were, aside from his detective fiction, mostly published by small and often obscure Catholic presses.

The situation was bound to change, however, as this particular prophet still had his faithful remnant, about thirty-five of whom (at most) met throughout the Eighties and early Nineties in Milwaukee every year and exchanged news and views in a little rag called the Midwest Chesterton News. On the more scholarly side, Ian Boyd, a priest and literary scholar, had since 1974 been running the Chesterton Review, a literary quarterly that printed forgotten pieces by Chesterton as well as scholarly essays on his life, thought, and interlocutors. Ignatius Press, a small but growing outfit run by Joseph Fessio, sj (one of Joseph Ratzinger's doctoral students), decided to publish a collected works with scholarly introductions and footnotes that will eventually number roughly 50 volumes. And newly emerging publications like Crisis, New Oxford Review, and First Things quoted Chesterton incessantly and sometimes ran articles about him. He even began popping up in Christianity Today, where he had fans in Philip Yancey and Charles Colson.

Here one might briefly note the role of Christian rock in the revival of Chesterton in America. One of the younger people traveling to Milwaukee in those lean years was a young Baptist named Dale Ahlquist. While in college in the late Seventies, Ahlquist spent some time at the home of his sister and then brother-in-law working for the summer. His sister's husband, the so-called godfather of Christian rock, was the late Larry Norman. Norman found Ahlquist reading a book by C. S. Lewis and asked if he was familiar with Chesterton. Upon discovering that he wasn't, Norman cryptically remarked that after reading Chesterton one doesn't even "need" Lewis anymore.

Read the entire piece on the Books & Culture site. Ahlquist's interview with Larry Norman is available online.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Excerpts and Articles




• Chesterton and Orthodoxy | Carl E. Olson and Dale Ahlquist


• Seeing With the Eyes of G.K. Chesterton | Dale Ahlquist


• Recovering The Lost Art of Common Sense | Dale Ahlquist


• Common Sense Apostle & Cigar Smoking Mystic | Dale Ahlquist


• Chesterton and the "Paradoxy" of Orthodoxy | Carl E. Olson


• The Attraction of Orthodoxy | Joseph Pearce


• The Emancipation of Domesticity | G.K. Chesterton


• The God in the Cave | G.K. Chesterton


• What Is America? | G.K. Chesterton


• Mary and the Convert | G.K. Chesterton


• Chesterton and Saint Francis | Joseph Pearce


• Chesterton and the Delight of Truth | James V. Schall, S.J.


• The Life and
Theme of G.K. Chesterton | Randall Paine | An Introduction to The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton


• Hot Water and Fresh Air: On Chesterton and His Foes | Janet E. Smith


• ChesterBelloc | Ralph McInerny

"