G.K. Chesterton died 75 years ago this year. Perhaps that is the occasion for two new major works on him to appear in 2011:
Ralph C. Wood, Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God (Baylor University Press, 2011).
BUP’s description:
The literary giant G. K. Chesterton is often praised as the “Great Optimist”—God’s rotund jester. In this fresh and daring endeavor, Ralph Wood turns a critical eye on Chesterton’s corpus to reveal the beef-and-ale believer’s darker vision of the world and those who live in it. During an age when the words grace, love, and gospel, sound more hackneyed than genuine, Wood argues for a recovery of Chesterton’s primary contentions: First, that the incarnation of Jesus was necessary and reveals a world full not of a righteous creation but of tragedy, terror, and nightmare; and second, that the problem of evil is only compounded by a Christianity that seeks progress, political control, and cultural triumph.
Wood’s sharp literary critique moves beyond formulaic or overly pious readings to show that, rather than fleeing from the ghoulish horrors of his time, Chesterton located God’s mysterious goodness within the existence of evil. Chesterton seeks to reclaim the keen theological voice of this literary authority who wrestled often with the counterclaims of paganism. In doing so, it argues that Christians may have more to learn from the unbelieving world than is often supposed.
“The finest study of Chesterton in many years. It is precisely because Wood has not turned a blind eye to Chesterton’s faults that he has succeeded so powerfully in demonstrating Chesterton’s genius and continued importance for us today.”
—David Bentley Hart, author of Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies
“Who better to make sense of G. K. Chesterton’s quarrel with secular humanism? Wood brilliantly helps us navigate the trail Chesterton blazed through our modern Inferno.”
—Daniel McInerny, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Honors College, Baylor University
“Wood has triumphed once again. He shows how great Christian art is often paradoxically dark when conveying the light and he is a superb guide through the gloomy and yet glimmering wonderland of Chesterton’s work.”
—Joseph Pearce, Associate Professor of Literature, Ave Maria University and author of Wisdom of Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton
Introduction
1. Man as Holy Monster: Christian Humanism, Evolution, and Orthodoxy
2. Patriotism and the True Patria: Distributism, Hymns, and Christendom in Dublin
3. Militarism and the Church Militant: Lepanto, Defense of World War I, and “The Truce of Christmas”
4. The Waning of the West and the Threat of Islam: The New Jerusalem and The Flying Inn
5. Tyrannical Tolerance and Ferocious Hospitality: The Ball and the Cross
6. The Bane and Blessing of Civilization: Torture, Democracy, and The Ballad of the White Horse
7. The Nightmare Mystery of Divine Action: The Man Who Was Thursday
Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 2011).
OUP’s description:
G. K. Chesterton is remembered as a brilliant creator of nonsense and satirical verse, author of the Father Brown stories and the innovative novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, and yet today he is not counted among the major English novelists and poets. However, this major new biography argues that Chesterton should be seen as the successor of the great Victorian prose writers, Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, and above all Newman.
Chesterton’s achievement as one of the great English literary critics has not hitherto been fully recognized, perhaps because his best literary criticism is of prose rather than poetry. Ian Ker remedies this neglect, paying particular attention to Chesterton’s writings on the Victorians, especially Dickens. As a social and political thinker, Chesterton is contrasted here with contemporary intellectuals like Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells in his championing of democracy and the masses. Pre-eminently a controversialist, as revealed in his prolific journalistic output, he became a formidable apologist for Christianity and Catholicism, as well as a powerful satirist of anti-Catholicism.
This full-length life of G. K. Chesterton is the first comprehensive biography of both the man and the writer. It draws on many unpublished letters and papers to evoke Chesterton’s joyful humour, his humility and affinity to the common man, and his love of the ordinary things of life.
“Any biography of this size is bound to have some elements of dry, encyclopedic chronology; but in Ker’s book, they are far more the exception than the rule. On just about every page, one will find extended quotes from Chesterton, of the kind that display his personality and overall joie de vivre. The author made me rediscover my early love of Chesterton and his perspective on the world, and for that I am deeply grateful.”
—Michael Potemra, National Review Online
“There are some genuinely good books on Chesterton. . . But the need for a proper critical biography has long been acknowledged, and Ker has supplied it. Now, and for the foreseeable future, for any true understanding of the scope of G.K. Chesterton’s achievement, which captures not only the sage but the good, gentle, generous man, Ker’s biography will be indispensable.”
—The Weekly Standard
