Kevin O'Brien slated to do audio of Pope's new encyclical for Ignatius Press

This exciting news is hot off the presses.

H/T: Mark C.

Manalive: The Movie

Synopsis

In all my years as a detective, I have never had a case like this one. I'm searching for a man... No... I'm HUNTING a man! A man who calls himself "Innocent Smith." He abandoned his wife and embarked on a worldwide crime spree that includes murder and burglary. This man shoots at university professors, breaks into homes and even hypnotizes young women into going away with him. And what has become of these poor women? Nobody knows. I dare say, perhaps they were murdered! But I'm about to bring this man to justice. I have it on good authority that Innocent Smith is hiding out at a nearby boarding house. So I'm going there to arrest him. What could possibly go wrong?

Detective Cyrus Pym

Principal photography for Manalive begins on March 2.

When Authors Speak for Themselves: Chesterton included

The Wall Street Journal speaks again about Chesterton, this time he is included in a collection of audio CDs of famous authors who are recorded saying something. Chesterton reportedly speaks on "The Spices of Life":

'G.K. Chesterton, too, comes off well. He starts out with precisely the sort of absurd gambit that one would expect from a writer of his impressive wit: "But while I should resist the suggestion that we must eat beef without mustard," he intones, "I do recognize that there is now a more subtle danger: that men may want to eat mustard without beef." What follows is an amusingly disjointed ramble about the "spices of life."'

The Flying Stars is Quoted!

I got my Christmas issue of Gilbert (we'll talk about this fantastic issue later) and I find myself quoted (twice!) on the internet. First, by Kathy Shaidle, at Five Feet of Fury, where she is quoting another blogger, The Other McCain: Unspeakable Truth, Mandatory Lies who read the latest Gilbert.

Both of them picked up on my opening paragraph of my latest The Flying Stars column, titled: An Author Accused:

Our current culture holds the twin paradoxical views that racial diversity is gloriously wonderful, but racial descriptions of individuals are taboo. Celebrating diversity is good; describing diversity is bad. We should acknowledge that people are of different races and be glad, but not glad enough to wonder what those races are.

Which is cool, thanks both of you!

Complete Searchable Chesterton?

H/T: Ellen

It looks like there may be a searchable Chesterton database available. Has anyone ordered this or is anyone familiar with it?

Among many other things, it claims to have the "complete" works (112 books) of Chesterton on it, searchable by keyword, etc.

It looks like a terrific product.

Chesterton on American Independence

Collected Works Volume 21: What I Saw in America; The Resurrection of Rome; Sidelights

I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger - the moment when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.

How can one not love a man who starts by turning the old "travel broadens the mind" phrase on its head, and ends with a duel?

This weekend, I invite you to sit back, relax, enjoy your freedom and independence, watch the fireworks, and read Chesterton. The perfect choice, shown above as a teaser, is What I Saw in America available in Collected Works 21. Happy 4th of July!

Calling More Chesterton Academics

Another opportunity to talk about Chesterton to the Literary world:

I received good news: I [Jill Kreigel] have been asked to chair a panel in February 2009 at the NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) conference. The complete CFP for all sessions will available online in June. My specific call will read the same as it does for MAPACA, in the interest of keeping the panel open to any and all aspects of Chesterton's work. Perhaps, you will consider submitting one for MAPACA and another for NeMLA. I hope you will help me spread the word. This conference will take place in Boston. This large and secular venue is also welcoming Chesterton for the first time; thus, I so hope we can introduce his undeniable common sense to another group who could so benefit from his wisdom.
Contact me if interested: Jill

Looking for a Game of Gype? Head to London!

I received this from Holly:

I'm writing from the Hide and Seek festival; we have monthly events in London where we play interesting games, and on 10 May we're going to be running a night of Chesterton-influenced and inspired games at BAC (the Battersea Arts Centre, not far from where Chesterton lived in Battersea).

We're always keen to have new designers and players, and I wondered whether any of your London-based readers might be interested in running a game at the event. We're keen on pretty much any type of game or playful activity: grown-up versions of playground games, games where the players work together to create something, scavenger hunts, quiet card games, anything that involves the overlap of games and other art forms, and just general exciting stuff along the lines of the Adventure and Romance Agency from Chesterton's "Club of Queer Trades". There's a little more information about it here and on the rest of the website, but anyone who's interested can contact me.

If you think your readers might be interested, I'd be grateful if you could pass the information on to them.

Regards, Holly

Doesn't this make you wish you lived near Battersea?

Chesterton and Trademark Law

This is a very cool little Tremendous Trifle sent to me by alert reader Ryan (H/T):

I was reading my casebook for a class on Trademarks and Unfair Competition this morning when I stumbled across the following quotation:

"...where a color serves a significant non-trademark function -- whether to distinguish a heart pill from a digestive medication or to satisfy the "noble instinct for giving the right touch of beauty to common and necessary things," G. Chesterton, SIMPLICITY AND TOLSTOY 61 (1912) - Courts will examine whether its use as a mark..."

The case was Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., Inc., 514 U.S. 159 (1995), and it was authored by none other than Justice Breyer, a Jewish man, who wrote the opinion Stenberg v. Carhart rejecting Nebraska's attempt to categorically ban partial birth abortions as unconstitutional. Needless to say, he didn't quote Chesterton in that opinion.

Just thought it was interesting and figured you might, too. Ryan