Just an informal survey, but what is your favorite Chesterton work? If you want to say why, that would be great, too.
My personal favorite is Lepanto. Because I love it. I love the rhyme, the rhythm, the musicality of it, I love the story, and the triumph of faith.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
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Do the complete Father Brown Mysteries count as a single "work?" If so, that's my favorite. "The Chief Mourner of Marne" is my favorite Father Brown story.
ReplyDeleteWell, I have not read his entire corpus yet; thus far my favorite is The Ball and the Cross. Why? Because that is my preference :)
ReplyDeleteHeretics, because it was the first of GKC's work that I read. His sparkling prose and whithering takedowns of nutty thinkers was a godsend to me in my sophomore year of college at Wacky U.
ReplyDeleteI quite like his ILN essay "On Pouring Boiling Water on Snails," which took a line from a local lecture and ran with it. I think it went "Professor Gibblethwaite declared that snails were quite suitable for food. By pouring boiling water on snails, they were ready for food immediately."
It's a very hard choice, but at the present moment I'd have to answer The Man Who Was Thursday if only for the exhilaration felt upon first reading the sudden reversal when the Council of Days minus two were finally cornered by the Secretary. Maybe others could see it coming, but I didn't.
ReplyDeleteI read The Man Who Was Thursday right before 911 happened. And as I watched the Twin Towers crumble, it suddenly occured to me that Chesterton wrote about this, or at least about the mindset behind it. That book was The Man Who Was Thursday. I immediately read it again; and again; and again. It is the one book I always recommend to Chesterton newbies.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite of his works is the short story, "How I Found the Superman," which is the finest short story, craftwise, that I have ever read. Forget rapiers; Gilbert lays down some sniper-rifle wit in this one. You owe it yourself to check it out. It's available at Martin Ward's site, or at my blog (click homepage link on this comment, then search in top bar for "hagg").
ReplyDelete"The Napoleon of Notting Hill" was my introduction to Chesterton, so I can never really forget that one.
ReplyDeleteOrthodoxy -- which I discovered in college. I was the furthest thing from orthodox or religious at the time, but it prodded, no, hurled me in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI think my favourite is a little story he wrote early on called Basil Howe. He just seems to understand so much about people without being in the least pessimistic about them.
ReplyDeleteAnd (sorry, I can't help putting two) The Ball and the Cross. It has everything: humour, theological debates, romances, friendship, war, two very lovable antagonists, and Chesterton's ubiquitous beautiful sunsets. (My favourite was the one like a cathedral dome painted in gold and "unflaked with clouds.")
I think my favourite is a little story he wrote early on called Basil Howe. He just seems to understand so much about people without being in the least pessimistic about them.
ReplyDeleteAnd (sorry, I can't help putting two) The Ball and the Cross. It has everything: humour, theological debates, romances, friendship, war, two very lovable antagonists, and Chesterton's ubiquitous beautiful sunsets. (My favourite was the one like a cathedral dome painted in gold and "unflaked with clouds.")