HERETICS by G. K. Chesterton

This weekend I FINALLY finished reading Heretics by G. K. Chesterton — and I say FINALLY not at all because it was some long book that was a drag to get through, but because it was actually a short book (133 pages) packed with gems. Although it was written over a century ago, it’s as relevant for us “postmoderns” as it was for Chesterton’s “moderns.” We just happen to have more technology and even more absurdity.

I simply cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book. I’d like to rattle off a string of my favorite Chesterton quotes, just to show you how awesome it was, but quoting Chesterton is a difficult task, because once you start quoting a sentence, you find you need to include the whole passage — and once you’ve got a passage, you might as well post the whole chapter. I read it on my Kindle and had to stop myself from highlighting too frequently, because there’s not much point in it if you highlight the entire text.

Chesterton picks on several thinkers/writers/artists of his day (the Heretics of the title), including George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, and H. G. Wells. These are not ad hominem attacks of any kind, but rather analyses of their worldviews, done in a light-hearted yet deeply insightful way. Chesterton is hilarious — I burst out laughing, or cracked a smile, at least once every time I sat down to read — but in the midst of all the jokes, you sense how he understands things with a sort of clarity that confounds and refreshes at the same time. He is fond of chiasmus and paradox, as his critics have noted and his fans have celebrated. He also celebrates the apparently simple and ordinary as poetic — even mystical — as when he writes,

If you think the name of “Smith” prosaic, it is not because you are practical and sensible; it is because you are too much affected with literary refinements. The name shouts poetry at you. (p. 15)

…with the explanation that

Even the village children feel that in some dim way the smith is poetic, as the grocer and the cobbler are not poetic, when they feast on the dancing sparks and deafening blows in the cavern of that creative violence. (p. 13)

Even now I have to stop myself from quoting the rest of the passage, even if it is brilliant, because of the aforementioned need to avoid quoting an entire chapter. In any case, Chesterton is always taking what you think you know and turning it inside-out. Heretics is a series of surprises that turn to delights, and these surprises have inspired me to look at things with more childlike wonder and reverence. To end on a very Chestertonian quote:

The man who said, “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed,” put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth is “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.”