Introducing Gilbert Keith

I can't stop thinking about GK Chesterton these days. Some friends of mine were studying a book of his on St Thomas Aquinas, and while I also plan to read that, I skimmed over some of GKC's other books that I already had on my hard drive, among them the Father Brown stories and some essays of his. These essays discussed the hard-hitting issues of his time, and while some people may consider them obsolete (he wrote about the dangers to be faced by a society which entertained abortion and contraception, for example. And guess what! All of the things he predicted/reasoned would happen have now come true!), but his arguments will always, always be valid. I'm planning to post a lot of blogs about his work, so I suppose I'd better start with a good introduction.

There is a short, and sufficiently juicy, introduction of him at the American Chesterton Society's website: http://www.chesterton.org/discover/who.html. My favorite part is when you scroll down a bit and read what follows. I've pasted it here: (I don't think the Society would mind me posting this, since they're just as rabid as I am to make GKC known to the general populace.)

Why haven’t you heard of him?

There are three answers to this question:

I don’t know.
You’ve been cheated.
Chesterton is the most unjustly neglected writer of our time. Perhaps it is proof that education is too important to be left to educators and that publishing is too important to be left to publishers, but there is no excuse why Chesterton is no longer taught in our schools and why his writing is not more widely reprinted and especially included in college anthologies. Well, there is an excuse. It seems that Chesterton is tough to pigeonhole, and if a writer cannot be quickly consigned to a category, or to one-word description, he risks falling through the cracks. Even if he weighs three hundred pounds.
But there is another problem. Modern thinkers and commentators and critics have found it much more convenient to ignore Chesterton rather than to engage him in an argument, because to argue with Chesterton is to lose.

Chesterton argued eloquently against all the trends that eventually took over the 20th century: materialism, scientific determinism, moral relativism, and spineless agnosticism. He also argued against both socialism and capitalism and showed why they have both been the enemies of freedom and justice in modern society.

And what did he argue for? What was it he defended? He defended "the common man" and common sense. He defended the poor. He defended the family. He defended beauty. And he defended Christianity and the Catholic Faith. These don’t play well in the classroom, in the media, or in the public arena. And that is probably why he is neglected. The modern world prefers writers who are snobs, who have exotic and bizarre ideas, who glorify decadence, who scoff at Christianity, who deny the dignity of the poor, and who think freedom means no responsibility.

But even though Chesterton is no longer taught in schools, you cannot consider yourself educated until you have thoroughly read Chesterton. And furthermore, thoroughly reading Chesterton is almost a complete education in itself. Chesterton is indeed a teacher, and the best kind. He doesn’t merely astonish you. He doesn’t just perform the wonder of making you think. He goes beyond that. He makes you laugh.