Schoolboy humour at it's finest.

[davywavy]

Staying with the literary theme of last week, I was thinking over the weekend about another author whom I consider overrated, namely GK Chesterton. Chesterton is one of those authors with an agenda which he attempts to use his writing to inform you of and ultimately convert you to his point of view and I reckon you have to be a pretty good author to carry this off without coming across as preachy and so alienating me as an reader. Not many authors are good enough to both push an agenda and tell a cracking story at the same time and whilst Chesterton has some good ideas, he certainly isn't a good enough writer to acheive his aims.
As an author there are two agendas which he pushes; firstly is the superiority of Catholicism over other religious and philosophical viewpoints. This agenda led to the creation of the supremely irritating Father Brown, the impossibly good and wise priestly detective who solves thefts and murders by finding out who isn't Catholic and then demonstrating through reason that they must have done it. Needless to say, the smug, eminently-punchable Brown is always right, the know-it-all little git.
Chesterton's second agenda is one of his era: writing in the 1920's he was an anti-imperial advocate and believed that the structures of Empire were inherently corrupt. This is the basis of his book The man who knew too much, in which appalling crimes by high ranking public figures are covered up 'for the good of the Empire'. Living, as we do, in an era wherein John Prescott can have made public a twenty-year record of sexual harrassment and not lose his job or the benefits thereof this attitude on the part of Chesterton just seems charmingly dated and naive. I'd only recommend The man who knew too much if you're having difficulty sleeping.

If Chesterton did write a good book, it is his The Club of Queer Trades. In this book, the young Charles Swinbourne and his friend, the detective Basil Grant, investigate a succession of odd events and people only to find that there is not only a perfectly innocent explaination for each thing, but also that each is the result of someone pursuing an extremely odd but legitimate livelihood, such as an Estate Agent for treehouses or a man who arranges games akin to those played by Michael Douglas in The Game.
In the decades since the book was written, the meaning of the word 'Queer' has changed somewhat, which can lead to some humourous misunderstandings about what one is reading on the bus. With this in mind, I'm half tempted to propose a sequel to Chesterton. I'd think about calling it The Trade of Queer Clubs.

Swinbourne sat opposite Basil Grant with an air of despondency. "I simply cannot make head nor tail of it", he said. "I cannot for the life of me imagine what the fellow does for a living."
Grant passed him a drink. "Perhaps you ought to go through your clues. What do you know about the man?"
Swinbourne nodded. It seemed a good idea. "Well, I know he was in the Navy during the last war."
"How do you know that?"
"He told me he'd sent a lot of seamen to the bottom. And a lot of sailors had come to a sticky end at his hands."
"Hmn. And? What else?"
"I know he isn't in one of the professions. I'm told he can't use the front door when he pays social visits."
"He uses the tradesman's entrance, then?"
"Yes, I suppose you might say that. Beyond that? I'm at a loss."
"Well", replied Basil. "Perhaps I can help. Background checks suggest that he worked in the wrapping department of Thorntons last Christmas, putting sugar candies into parcels."
"Hmn. I wonder what one might call that particular line of work?"
"I wouldn't know, I'm sure."
"Well, that's certainly interesting."
"So, does that give you any clues what the fellow does for a living?"
Swinbourne shook his head. "Frankly, old friend, I'm buggered if I know."

Comments

[cavalorn.livejournal.com]

As chance would have it, I've only just discovered Father Brown. I rather like the stories. There's a sort of ornate tiny music-box-with-a-ballerina-on-it feel to them, with so much crammed by necessity into a small space; a crime, several red-herring characters, a Clever Solution, a pious metaplot, and more evocative description of setting than there quite seems to be room for.

That kind of workmanship cannot hope to pass itself off as realistic, so it has to settle for happy acquiescence in the rules of the form; what would otherwise seem contrived is instead presented as knowingly artificial, a sort of subclass of fantasy. It's iconography as opposed to portraiture.

Personally, I enjoy Chesterton most when he's being openly polemic. Tremendous Trifles is jolly good stuff. It contains the best description of a railway station that I have ever read.

'He directed me to a small silent station (I cannot even remember the name of it) which stood well away from the road and looked as lonely as a hut on the Andes. I do not think I have ever seen such a type of time and sadness
and scepticism and everything devilish as that station was: it looked as if it had always been raining there ever since the creation of the world. The water streamed from the soaking wood of it as if it were not water at all, but some loathsome liquid corruption of the wood itself; as if the solid station were eternally falling to pieces and pouring away in filth.'

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Father Brown irritates me so much because I can't help but feel his quiet piety covers up an immense underlying smugness at his spiritual superiority. Of course, as a fictional character this can't be true, so I map my prejudices onto the author.
I once read a skit of Father Brown in which various figures like a Mafia Don, Torquemada and Cortez are accused of a foul crime, but Brown 'proves' the villain was the local CofE rector because he's the only one who lacks the guidance of the Church of Rome. It's the attitude which the skit mocks which irritates me about Chesteron.

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

"Our father who art in heaven, show us who dunnit."
[giant hand points out murderer]
"All right, it's a fair cop, but society is to blame."
"Right, we'll arrest them instead."

I'd like to throw The Count of Monte Cristo into the mix. It promises a descent of one man into vengeance and destruction, but the omnipotence and omniscience of the Count just gets annoying, and he becomes a God-like advancer of Providence, only to rail agains the same thing at the final furlong.

It just hangs too much on coincidence to be the testament to deviousness, cunning and malevolence than it should be.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The Count of Monte Christo is an odd one; TV and film adaptations, through the cutting required of the medium, tend to produce a snappier, better story than the book. However, what's lost is the writing, which is brill. The French TV adaptation with Ornelia Muti (worr) is probably the best version I've seen.

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

I don't think you get the sense of age in a TV adaptation. Because it's the same actor playing Dantes at 19 and in his late thirties, it's harder to understand how he can chat to his old comrades and them not notice him. I was disappointed as to how little time, bearing in mind Dumas' reputation of writing by volume, was spent in the Chateau d'If, or in relating how Dantes became so learned other than "Oh, I was in the Orient," as if that explained everything.

You also, in a TV adaptation, can't take such detailed sidelines such as Albert and Franz's Italian adventure which let you think "Who the hell are these guys?" before the denouement kicks in. It's the Halloran kick from The Shining, although largely used by William Goldman - build a character into the tightest, most brightly defined study of humanity, and then kill them ignominiously.
'Brothers', the sequel to Marathon Man, does it exceptionally (although annoyingly) well.

[(Anonymous)]

Some people love Chesterton's descriptive writing, but I just can't see it. Martin Gardner (in The Annotated Father Brown) raves about a description of an evening sky fading "from peacock green to peacock blue" around "the sublime vulgarity of man", which Gardner regards as marvellous writing, but (to me) just reads as if Chesterton had fished a load of superlatives out of his adjective box and tacked them together one after another without regard to euphony or half-tones. Max Beerbohm once (brilliantly in my view) described Chesterton's writing as "death by a thousand blows, not one of which quite hits the nail on the head." Apparently he (GKC) studied as an artist at the Slade, and even without ever having seen one of Chesterton's paintings, I can picture them exactly from his writing - unsuccessful cariacatures and "exuberant" sub-Whistler daubs with just a bit too much "fiery" gold and crimson everywhere as if he just didn't know quite when to stop.

H

[ksirafai.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read The Man Who Was Thursday? It's a spectacularly bemusing wander around biblical allegories, communist plots and pre-war Agatha Christie set dressing. I quite like it... :)

(I actually have the CoQT in my bag at the moment to read when I'm done with the other bits of tat I have floating around. It's very comforting book. :) )

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I haven't read TMWHT as I have a basic rule that any book which reduces sister to incoherence with rage for a week or so is one which is best avoided.

It's odd - Club of Queer Trades is just such a better book than anything else he put out it's almost possible to think it was by a different author. Have you read The Napoleon of Notting Hill? Awful, just plain awful.

[(Anonymous)]

If you thought that was incoherent rage, you should have seen me after "Manalive"

H