Kurt Griffen's discussion of neck ties in the Lunacy & Letters section of the latest Gilbert magazine was, well, probably more in the "lunacy" part than the "letters" part. Anyway, it seems Kurt is anxious to prove that he owns more than one tie. OK then, since I'm a Star Wars fan, I'd like to see that Star Wars tie at the next Chesterton event, Kurt, ok? Very Chestertonian, I agree, to have character neck ties. But then, I wouldn't know much about that, not ever having worn a tie yet in my lifetime.
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Kurt's tie letter was the funniest letter we've gotten in a long time.
ReplyDeleteNote to GM readers: SEND US LETTERS! They will get printed, believe me. In my three-and-a-half years with the magazine, I have only rejected one letter, and that was because it contained an incredibly obscene reference to Bill Clinton.
Why not GKC with a light saber?
ReplyDeleteHe'd make logical mince-meat (perfect at this time of year!) from that "Only the Sith deal in absolutes!"
Oy. Where's Isaiah when you need him?
Hear, o ye distant galaxies, and submit, ye Sith and ye Jedi alike:
"Every argument begins with an infallible dogma, and that infallible dogma can only be disputed by falling back on some other infallible dogma; you can never prove first statement or it would not be your first."
[GKC Daily News June 22, 1907 quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox]
Or, to put it another way:
"There are two kinds of people in the world: the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic."
[GKC Generally Speaking 22]
Note to Hollywood: Read some Chesterton. It might hurt going down at first, but it sure will help.
After seeing Star Wars III, I was on the side of the Sith.
ReplyDeleteWhat was meant, I think, by 'only the Sith deal in absolutes' is that the Sith are in essence a Jedi heresy, and they prefer, as GKC succinctly put it, 'their truth to the truth.' They're not willing to adapt their fundamental teaching to the complexity of the real world. Remember those Franciscans who almost made Francis a heresiarch?
ReplyDeleteLucas actually made Star Wars to bring back the absolutes, in the sense of the eternal verities. In a way, it was a penance for an earlier script he wrote...Apocalypse Now.
And, Mrs. Brown, I, too, heartily approve of this Star Wars necktie; there was a lecture on television tonight on the Human Genome project, and the speaker had a tie with a DNA double-helix on it. One could easily wax Chestertonian about the sight of a thoroughly professorish little old man with his almost heraldic necktie.
RE the Sith: they may have meant anything but what they said was hilarious!
ReplyDeleteWell, I hope that DNA tie was better than the billboard of a "double helix" for some college I saw last night. They're setting back molecular biology a century or so!
But regarding an attire matching one's subject: this actually happened when GKC was in America:
He was a lean brown man, having rather the look of a shabby tropical traveller, with a grey moustache and a lively and alert eye. But the most singular thing about him was that the front of his coat was covered with a multitude of shining metallic emblems made in the shape of stars and crescents. I was well accustomed by this time to Americans adorning the lapels of their coats with little symbols of various societies; it is a part of the American passion for the ritual of comradeship. There is nothing that an American likes so much as to have a secret society and to make no secret of it. But in this case, if I may put it so, the rash of symbolism seemed to have broken out all over the man, in a fashion that indicated that the fever was far advanced. Of this minor mystery, however, his first few sentences offered a provisional explanation. In answer to his question, touching my business in Oklahoma, I replied with restraint that I was lecturing. To which he replied without restraint, but with an expansive and radiant pride, 'I also am lecturing. I am lecturing on astronomy.'
[GKC WISIA CW21:172]