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G. K. Chesterton: Difference between revisions
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[[File:GKC.jpg|frame|<small>"[[Father Brown|His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million]]."</small> ]]
{{quote|''"He is so happy! I can almost believe he has found God."''|'''[[Franz Kafka]]'''}}
'''Gilbert Keith Chesterton''' (1874-1936) was an English author and Catholic apologist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Though best known for his ''[[Father Brown]]'' mysteries, he wrote prodigiously in a number of genres, both poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction (the American Chesterton Society reckons that if you wanted to write as many essays as he did you'd have to write one every day for around eleven years).
Chesterton's writing is characterized by a vivid style, with much use of word-play and paradox, and by an often polemical though nearly always hugely good-natured tone. (Typically, he would mock his own large girth and [[Drunken Master|heavy drinking]].) Common themes in "GKC's" writing include the romance of everyday life, the superiority of traditional to modern ideals, and the dignity of the common man and ordinary pleasures such as smoking and drinking, especially as contrasted with the puritanical ''élites'' of either capitalist conservatives or socialist progressives (whose opposition to each other he considered largely a sham). His swashbuckling attitude toward life was exemplified as well in his personal appearance by the brigandly [[Awesome Anachronistic Apparel|broad hat, cape, and sword-stick]] devised for him by his [[Heroes Want Redheads|adored wife, Frances]].
Chesterton had a great influence on many writers, especially in the early twentieth century. He was for many years president of The Detection Club, an organization for writers of [[Mystery Fiction]] (the oath of which, devised by GKC, demanded that members write only [[Fair Play Whodunnit|Fair Play Whodunnits]]); such writers as [[Agatha Christie]], Fr. Ronald Knox, and [[Dorothy L. Sayers]] were co-members. Chesterton's fellow Roman Catholics Hilaire Belloc ([[Heterosexual Life Partners|Chesterton and Belloc]] were collectively nicknamed the [[Portmanteau Couple Name|Chesterbelloc]] by Chesterton's "friendly enemy" [[George Bernard Shaw]]) and [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] were admirers, and GKC's apologetic writings (especially ''Orthodoxy'' and ''The Everlasting Man'') helped inspire [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]] to (re-)convert to Christianity. Golden Age mystery author John Dickson Carr was such a strong admirer that he modeled his most famous character, Dr. Gideon Fell, on Chesterton's appearance. More recently, [[Neil Gaiman]] modeled a character in ''[[The Sandman]]'' after him, got his inspiration for [[Neverwhere|London Below]] from ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'' (as he relates [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/6915542/Neil-Gaiman-introduces-Neverwhere.html here]), and Gaiman and [[Terry Pratchett]] dedicated ''[[Good Omens]]'' "To G.K. Chesterton: A Man Who Knew What Was Going On."
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* [[Above Good and Evil]]: The claim of the Communist in "The Unmentionable Man" (in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond.'')
* [[
* [[Bored with Insanity]]: Andrew Home in "The Conversion of an Anarchist".
** As well as Gabriel Syme in ''The Man Who Was Thursday''.
* [[Colour-Coded for Your Convenience]]: A character with '''{{color|maroon|red}}''' hair is ''almost'' always [[Redheaded Hero|Good]] in Chesterton. Less frequently, [[Blond Guys Are Evil]] -- especially if the blondness looks somehow artificial ("'''{{color|yellow|gilded}}'''").
** Which may have something to do with the fact that [[Author Appeal|Chesterton's beloved wife was a redhead]].
** Although [[Alliterative Name|Gabriel Gale,]] the protagonist of ''The Poet and the Lunatics'', is blond.
** As far as redheads go, ''The Man Who Was Thursday'' had it both ways: Gregory's sister is the symbol of all that is good, and Gregory, equally red-headed, is not good at all. Their red hair is seen as part and parcel to their respective goodness and evilness.
{{quote|{{spoiler|"[[Evil Redhead|My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world ... ]]" }}}}
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* [[Expy]]: Rupert Grant in ''The Club of Queer Trades'' has been called a parody of [[Sherlock Holmes]].
* [[Gainax Ending]]: Most noticeably at the end of ''The Ball and the Cross'' and ''The Man Who was Thursday.''
* [[Gentleman Thief]]: [[Father Brown|Flambeau]] and "The Ecstatic Thief" in ''Four Faultless Felons'' are examples.
* [[God]]: Is always lurking in the background in GKC's stories, and comes very near to the foreground in some. The Author in ''The Surprise'' is one (partial) example.
* [[Golden Mean Fallacy]]: The Duke in ''Magic'' embodies this trope.
* [[Gorgeous Period Dress]]: In ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', King [[Meaningful Name|Auberon]] forces the representatives of various London districts to dress in mediæval-style robes and to be accompanied by heralds and halberdiers. Also, a plot point in "The Three Horsemen of Apocalypse" in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond''.
* [[The Greatest Story Never Told]]: The plot of ''The Judgement of Dr. Johnson''; the stories of the Club of Misunderstood Men in ''Four Faultless Felons'' -- GKC was very fond of this trope.
* [[Happily Married]]: Very common in Chesterton -- no doubt reflecting his own happy marriage. There are, for instance, the Gahagans in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond''.
* [[Happy Ending]]: In keeping with his basic theme of the essential goodness of life, Chesterton nearly always ends his works happily.
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* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]: In ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', King Auberon is modeled on English author Max Beerbohm. Chesterton himself was later subject to this; his friend and opponent [[George Bernard Shaw]] caricatured him as "Immenso Champernoon" in an unproduced portion of ''Back to Methuselah''.
* [[Obfuscating Insanity]]: {{spoiler|''Manalive''.}}
* [[One Scene, Two Monologues]]: In ''The Return of Don Quixote'', Herne and Archer talk about the play ''Blondel the Troubadour''. One is discussing his chances to show off in it; the other is discussing its philosophical underpinnings. Neither of them figures out that they are talking past each other.
* [[Poisonous Friend]]: Marshal Grock to the Prince in "The Three Horsemen of Apocalypse" in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond''.
* [[Pull a Rabbit Out of My Hat]]: In ''Magic'' Patricia Carleon imagines conjurors must be able to provide meals for themselves inexpensively by pulling rabbits out of their hats.
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* [[Revealing Coverup]]: The conspiracy of "The Word" in "The Loyal Traitor" in ''Four Faultless Felons. ''
* [[Rightful King Returns]]: The republic in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond'' is in danger of this.
* [[Rock Beats Laser]]: In ''The Return of Don Quixote'', mediaeval recreationists go out to arrest some people, with halberds rather than guns, and are scorned as foolish. They succeed.
* [[Royal Blood]]: Royalty abounds in GKC's from his earliest to his latest works -- and, oddly, for such a fan of the French Revolution, is very often treated with real sympathy, as in "The Unmentionable Man" in one of Chesterton's last books, ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond.'' (''See also the next entry''.)
* [[Ruritania]]: "The Loyal Traitor," in ''Four Faultless Felons,'' takes place in the mythical Teutonic kingdom of Pavonia (specifically stated not to be in the Balkans while directly referencing Hope's novel). There are also two unnamed rival Balkan kingdoms in "The Tower of Treason."
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* [[Trouble Entendre]]: Subverted in "The White Pillars Murder."
* [[Two Rights Make a Wrong]]: One of the ''Paradoxes of Mr Pond'', "The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse", concerns a field marshal whose soldiers were too eager to obey his orders, with the result that the orders were not carried out. If only one man had been that loyal it would have worked, but with two soldiers determined to fulfill his orders to execute a poet, the man ends up released.
* [[Unaccustomed as I Am to Public Speaking]]: Referenced in ''Magic'' -- and, indeed, in nearly every context, GKC was fond of referencing his own debility. Did he not ''know?''
* [[Vitriolic Best Buds]]: With [[George Bernard Shaw]] in [[Real Life]].
{{quote|'''Chesterton:''' George, you look like you just came from a country in a famine!
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* [[Would Not Shoot a Civilian]]
* [[Writer on Board]]: Common with GKC, as in ''The Ball and the Cross'', when Father Michael (a Bulgarian monk) and Evan MacIan (a Scottish Highlander) both talk at times suspiciously like an English ''literateur''.
* [[Ye Goode Olde Days]]: GKC was (and is) often accused of over-romanticizing the past, though he claimed he was merely correcting a falsely "progressive" view of history.
* [[Zeerust]]: Deliberately averted in ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', in which the future is the same as the 1904 present, only more so. This is justified in the foreword, wherein GKC explains a game people play, called "Cheat the Prophet", wherein they listen politely to what clever men say about what will happen in the future, wait until the clever men are dead, and then go and do something completely different; as the only thing that has not been guessed is that nothing will change, the people...don't.
** Except that Chesterton himself ''just got through predicting it'' -- this probably also qualifies as a preemptive [[Lampshade Hanging]] on the impending obsolescence of his prediction.
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