Literary Giants Literary Catholics by Joseph Pearce Read Free Book Online Page A

Years later C. S. Lewis drew a surprising parallel between The Man Who Was Thursday and the works of Franz Kafka:
Is the difference simply that one is “dated” and the other contemporary? Or is it rather that while both give a powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each one of us encounters in his (apparently) single-handed struggle with the universe, Chesterton, attributing to the universe a more complicated disguise, and admitting the exhilaration as well as the terror of the struggle, has got in rather more; is more balanced: in that sense, more classical, more permanent?
    In the light of Lewis’ comments it is interesting to note that Kafka was familiar with The Man Who Was Thursday .
    Discussing both Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday , Kafka remarked that Chesterton “is so gay, that one might almost believe he had found God. . . . In such a godless time one must be gay. It is a duty.”
    Another admirer of Chesterton’s first two novels is Terry Pratchett, the modern author of popular comic fantasy:
It’s worth pointing out that in The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill he gave us two of the most emotionally charged plots in the twentieth century: one being that both sides are actually the same side; it doesn’t matter which side we’re talking about, both sides are the same. This has been the motor of half the spy novels of this century. The other plot can’t be summarised so succinctly, but the basic plot of The Napoleon of Notting Hill is that someone takes seriously an idea that wasn’t intended to be taken seriously and gives it some kind of nobility by so doing.
    Chesterton’s religious faith, which was present only implicitly in his first two novels, was much more to the fore in The Ball and the Cross . The two heroes, a devout Catholic and a militant atheist, are ennobled by their arguments and by their adherence to the ideals they espouse. Their nobility stands in stark contrast to the cynical indifference of the world they inhabit. On one level The Ball and the Cross can be seen as a parable of Chesterton’s arguments and relationship with George Bernard Shaw. Chesterton and Shaw disagreed passionately on most of the issues of the day but remained good friends. Their relationship was a living embodiment of the stricture to “love thine enemy”.
    Manalive is often overlooked when Chesterton’s novels are discussed and is arguably his most underrated work. It contains the charm, mystery and adventure of The Man Who Was Thursday and The Ball and the Cross but also has a depth beyond either of these, especially in its characterization of women. In Chesterton’s earlier novels, female characters play a peripheral role, whereas in Manalive they are not only central to the plot but possess a mystique that is absent, or at least only hinted at, in the earlier books. As The Ball and the Cross can be read as a parable of Chesterton’s relationship with Shaw, Manalive can be read as a parable of Chesterton’s relationship with Frances, his wife. The parallels between fact and fiction are obvious. The novel’s hero, Innocent Smith, was Chesterton, trying always to stir the world from its cynical slumber, while the heroine, Mary Gray, was Frances, the silence on which he depended utterly, the power behind the throne. On another level Manalive was a further affirmation of Chesterton’s philosophy of gratitude that had found its fulfillment in Christian orthodoxy. Ultimately, the novel’s whole raison d’être was to illustrate that the intrinsic wisdom of innocence was unobtainable to the naively cynical. This, of course, was the motive behind Chesterton’s creation of Father Brown, and it is no coincidence that the first volume of Father Brown stories, appropriately entitled The Innocence of Father Brown , appeared within months of the publication of Manalive .
    Another noteworthy novel of Chesterton’s was The Flying Inn , published in 1914, a romp