Thursday, August 14, 2008

Chesterton in a horror novel?

I have been working on a horror novel (working title: "Swedenborg").

I bring it up here because in one section I will be talking about Distributism! The "good guys" will be discussing the issue at a party with Professor Staples (could his first name be Clive?), the wise scholar and Christian apologist who's dying of cancer, and one of his admirers, a rotund but brilliant grad student (wonder if I should give him a moustache and a walking stick?) who befriends the protagonist. The party scene is coming up - after the hospital scene where the mentally ill and very sick can see the dead souls besieging the living.

Hmm. Did Chesterton ever talk about Swedenborg and his ideas?

How about ...

"An atheist stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal and offensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in their souls that they are divided." - Orthodoxy, Chapter 8

I also think he mentioned him in connection with Aquinas in some way - but can't remember exactly where. Any help with this one - or any other G. K. mentions of Swedenborg?

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