In the Picture, But Standing, Not Seated

Here are a few snippets from a recent article on Maurice Baring by Ralph McInerny:

It is a name one encounters in reading about others ... always it seems a background figure, in the picture, but standing, not seated, famous by association rather than achievement.
...
He flourished in a time when the entertainment to be found in books occupied a far larger portion of people's lives than it does today. Would his essays now be wasted on the desert air of a televised talk show? Baring himself saw how "what is called Education" was depriving the world of readers.
...
From youth he was given to triolets and later composed telegrams of them... He also exchanged verse letters with his dear friend Belloc.

The full article can be accessed HERE (Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format).

"in the picture, but standing, not seated" refers to the painting by Sir James Gunn. It can be viewed HERE.

Quotes About Quotes

A reader who browses through the fourteenth edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations will learn on page 918 that the General Motors pavilion at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago ("A Century of Progress") was inscribed with this quotation from Tremendous Trifles (slightly misquoted): "The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder." On the next page of Bartlett's, readers are told that in a notebook dated 1945, John F. Kennedy ascribed to Chesterton the following: "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up." This alludes to the idea expressed by Chesterton in the opening paragraph of "The Drift from Domesticity," which is chapter IV of The Thing.

Hot Water & Fresh Air

Yesterday IgnatiusInsight.com reprinted a 1998 article by Dr. Janet Smith titled "Hot Water and Fresh Air: On Chesterton and His Foes."

I believed Chesterton labored so hard to debunk the foolishness of his times, because he knew that all of us, himself included, are prone to latch on to the trendy. In Orthodoxy, he lays out his own personal odyssey of discovering the truth and calls it an "elephantine adventure in pursuit of the obvious." He acknowledges, "I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it." For my part, I am with Chesterton in praying for the grace to recognize the obvious. I have seen too many get entangled in subtleties and nuances to the point where they become incapable of breathing fresh air and eventually asphyxiate themselves.

Perhaps reading Chesterton would be the cure, for he is always a breath of fresh air.

LINK

Janet Smith herself has worked tirelessly to debunk the foolishness of our times. She wrote Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later, edited Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader, and recorded Contraception: Why Not? - her talk that many thousands have heard. Go to One More Soul for more info on Dr. Smith.

Aslan on the Move: Navasota, TX

Third Annual Southwest Regional Retreat of the C.S. Lewis Foundation and The Hill Country Institute for Contemporary Christianity

“Aslan on the Move: Narnia Revisited”

Date: November 18 – 20, 2005

Location: Camp Allen Episcopal Retreat Center, Navasota, Texas

...

This year’s retreat will feature commentary on C.S. Lewis’ wonderful collection of stories for both children and adults, The Chronicles of Narnia are a wonder of delight for both young and old, and, as in 2004, we will offer programs for both adults and children.

Our speakers for the adult portion of the weekend will be Dr. Louis Markos of Houston Baptist University and Dr. Paul Ford of St. John’s Catholic Seminary in Camarillo, California. They will lead us into the wonderful world of Narnia and explore the characters, themes and timely lessons Lewis developed in this Christian fantasy world, where Aslan moves and breathes unexpected life. You need only bring a desire to learn, live, and grow. Lewis believed we needed more good Christian stories to be told, and we can use his insights and skill to bless others as we learn about Christian storytelling with purpose and continue our own spiritual journeys.

LINK

Thursday on Thursday, no.7

"I should think very little of a man who didn't keep something in the background of his life that was more serious than all this talking — something more serious, whether it was religion or only drink."

- Gabriel Syme, in GKC's The Man Who Was Thursday

Thursday's Trifles

A new "Thursday" blog appeared yesterday called Thursday's Trifles:

I am a 19 year old male University Student, studying Physics and Math. I am completely and utterly in love with the Catholic Church. I am a "Macaddict," though I do use windows for some work. One of my greatest heros is G.K. Chesterton, who gave me the inspiration for this blog. Something else you will see me write about a good deal is Firefly/Serenity. Firefly was a short lived T.V. show on Fox. Serenity is the film version which opens 9.30.05.

Hypocrisy

Keeping in mind that these are only allegations:

Before Monsignor Eugene Clark became embroiled in a sex scandal of his own, he made headlines in 2002 when he blamed gays for sex scandals in the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, Eastchester resident Philip DeFilippo is accusing Clark of having an affair with his wife, Laura DeFilippo, Clark's longtime secretary. The allegations surfaced in divorce papers filed last week in Westchester County Family Court.
...
Clark has served on the boards of several organizations, including the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture at Seton Hall University.

[Ernie Garcia. LINK. Aug 11, 2005]

G.K. Chesterton has a few words about hypocrisy:

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity. We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot. And the more we approach the problems of human history with this keen and piercing charity, the smaller and smaller space we shall allow to pure hypocrisy of any kind.

[GKC. Heretics, Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants. 1908]

Gresham and Jack

I haven't followed much hoopla about the upcoming Narnia movie -- only the few items that I've posted here. But this article is good; it talks about co-producer Douglas Gresham's relationship with C.S. Lewis.

Gresham knew C.S. Lewis (Jack) personally when he was a child; Douglas Gresham is one of two stepsons of C.S. Lewis from Lewis's marriage to Gresham's mother, Joy Davidman. One of Gresham's fondest memories of him was Jack's sense of humor and wit.
...
"The one thing that is always lost in recollections of Jack in movies and biographies about Jack is his enormous humor and vibrancy of his wit. You couldn't be with Jack for more than five or ten minutes without roaring with laughter. One of the great hallmarks of the Inklings meetings was the gales of laughter that came as they discussed each other’s work," said Gresham.

LINK [Ginny McCabe. WorldNetDaily. August 13, 2005]

G.K. & Brews in the News

Christopher Orr wrote August 9th at the New Republic Online about the Thin Man movies of the 1930s and 1940s. The six mystery films starred William Powell and Myrna Loy as the detectives Nick and Nora Charles. Orr has some insightful comments about Hollywood, social life, and drinking:

[T]hese days what is perhaps most striking about Nick and Nora is not their easy blend of comedy and drama or their balanced sexual dynamic, but rather their carefree booziness. In modern American movies, the consumption of alcohol is limited largely to fraternity pledges, lost souls, and the occasional Billy Bob Thornton character. The idea that discerning, well-adjusted adults would on occasion choose to have a few drinks in the company of like-minded friends is almost heretical unless it is accompanied by suitably catastrophic consequences — a fist-fight, adulterous affair, or car accident.

Some would argue, no doubt, that any onscreen hint that drinking can be fun must be avoided for the sake of the children — though how this problem is solved by limiting portrayals of the activity to plastered high-schoolers and collegians is not quite clear. Sadly, I suspect Hollywood's dim view of sociable drinking has just as much to do with its dim view of sociability. The activity that accompanies alcohol consumption most frequently, after all, is not wife-swapping or vehicular homicide but rather conversation, and conversation of a particular kind: banter, chitchat, idle musing, or witty repartee. With relatively few exceptions, American movies today have little use for talk that has no purpose beyond itself, that doesn't move the plot forward or reveal some hidden character trait but rather consists merely of two or more people taking pleasure in one another's company and inviting us to do the same, as the Charleses do with such genial ease. G. K. Chesterton once wrote that "Americans do not need drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing." Were he alive today, I suspect he would find this observation more true than ever.

LINK

Prophet

"It appears, then, that the two processes are going on side by side, the decline of Church membership and the decline of dogma; the evacuation of the pew and the jettisoning of cargo from the pulpit."

Ronald Knox (1927)

This passage shouldn't prompt me to refer to Knox as a prophet. He merely saw toward its beginning something that we see wholesale today: the religions (or sects or individual parishes) that water down their teachings lose members.

Thursday on Thursday, no.6

"Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree."

- Gabriel Syme, in GKC's The Man Who Was Thursday

"We called the dog Indiana"

The Stone Table is an online forum for fans of C.S. Lewis. It appears to be put together due to the upcoming Narnia movie. Here are a couple items from the site's frequently asked questions page:

How do I contact C.S. Lewis?
Sadly, Lewis died in 1963.
So unless you know the number of a really good medium, unfortunately contacting him is not possible.

Why is C.S. Lewis sometimes called Jack?
As a child he disliked the name Clive and after his dog Jack was run over in Ireland, he took that name. He was called Jack by all his family and friends.

GKC and Islam

From The Sunday Telegraph 08-07-2005, "Faith on its knees." Section: Features; Letters To The Editor:

Apropos Niall Ferguson's stimulating thoughts on religion, G K Chesterton also wrote: "It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.'' Would Islam pass the test today?

Adrian Longley London SW11

The Authorised Biography of Fr Brown and Obi-Wan

Alec Guinness, most famous for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, played Father Brown in the 1954 film The Detective. Piers Paul Read's Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography was released June 21 by Simon & Schuster. Katherine Powers reviewed the biography at the Boston Globe.

Where Read is uniquely good and perceptive is in his treatment of Guinness's cruel tongue, his bullying — there is no other word for it — of his wife and son, his castigation of himself for his sins and inadequacies, his battle against existential bleakness, and his Catholicism. The last is of immense importance in the actor's life. Read (correctly, I'm sure) notes that Guinness's embrace of Catholicism in its English version had a snobbish element. ("After a few months in the arch-diocese of Archbishop Spellman," he wrote from New York, "I have a lot of sympathy with anti-Catholicism.") But his faith was primarily his hedge against despair. To quote what, according to Read, was his favorite passage from G. K. Chesterton, "The Church is the one thing that prevents a man from the degrading servitude of being a child of his own time." Surely it is that contrariness that lay at the heart of Guinness's genius.

LINK

Correction: More Clerihew

A correction has been made to the More Clerihew post of July 30. Thank you, Mr. Peterson, for catching this.

The clerihew about Cervantes/Dante was from the pen of G.K. Chesterton.

On page 43 of the facsilile edition of "the notebook" (The First Clerihews) it is associated with the gavel, and that was Chesterton's icon in the notebook.

~ John Peterson

Hefty Book Meme

Eric Scheske at The Daily Eudemon, and blogfather of Chesterton & Friends, has created a hefty book meme and has tagged me for it. Mr. Thumos has cleverly called it the "Textual Defense Initiative (TDI)."

1. Name your three biggest non-reference books (excluding the Bible and text books).

2. Name your three biggest reference books.

3. Tag three others.

By “biggest,” we’re not looking for number of words. We’re looking for weight. Heft. Something you’d drop on invaders while defending a castle.

I own few hefty books. To stop an intruder I would push over a bookshelf.

non-reference:

Laszlo Polgar. Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games. In my collection this wins the Fewest Words award as well as Most Heft.

The Riverside Shakespeare.

Cervantes. Don Quixote. An English translation with lots of commentary. Monty Python of the early 1600s.

Honorable Mention (because they are loved by my children and are reasonably thick): Bill Bennett (ed.). Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass. These are great books to read aloud after dinner to children ages 2 to 102.

reference:

Orchard, Bernard et al. (eds.). A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture. Published by Nelson and Sons in 1951. I found my copy via www.abebooks.com. The bookplate shows that it was previously owned by a nunnery in California. Hopefully they tossed it because they already had plenty of other copies on hand.

Frederick Copleston. History of Philosophy, Book 1 (Vol 1-3).

I, too, had a "Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary" ... and it was huge. Guests would gasp when they saw it. But after several words could not be found in it, but only in my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the "Webster's" "Unabridged" was tossed into the trash.

tag three others:

atheling2 at The Pugil Stick
Robert Pearson at New Victorian
Michael Vooris at Thursday

Inkling Conference

Hillsdale College's Center for Constructive Alternatives is holding a conference entitled, "C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings" in September. Speakers include Walter Hooper, Gilbert Meilaender, and Thomas Shippey. All lectures are free. I plan to attend, since the College is only an hour from my house.

For more information: Link.

Carpenter on GKC on CSL

In his 1979 study of the Oxford Inklings, Humphrey Carpenter concludes that the mind of C.S. Lewis had two aspects, the poet and the Debater, and when the debater was in ascendancy, Carpenter says interestingly enough that Lewis showed the mark of Chesterton. [The Inklings, Houghton Mifflin, p. 221]

Thursday on Thursday, no.5

"There are many kinds of sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt, do you mean what you say? No. When you say 'the world is round,' do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don't mean it. Now, sometimes a man ... really finds a thing he does mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says more than he means — from sheer force of meaning it."

- Gabriel Syme, in GKC's The Man Who Was Thursday

Suppression of Silence

Rob Woutat recently wrote about the 'Suppression of Silence':

It's getting harder to find music-free zones these days. Libraries have held out, and most doctors' offices, the state ferries, and so on. But Italian restaurants have long piped in "That's Amore" to trick us into believing we're in Italy, to make us feel we're having an authentic Italian experience, even it it's fabricated in part by red-and-white-checked table covers and the crooning of Dean Martin, that old Italian from Steubenville, Ohio. As British essayist G.K. Chesterton said, music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the musician.

[LINK. Kitsap Sun. July 31, 2005]

My experience with doctors' offices is that they usually have a television blaring CNN, Fox News, or Cartoon Network. Woutat deals with blaring televisions in his article as well. I agree with Eric who proposes adding Noisiness to the list of capital sins. Yep, right after Lust.