[continued from previous message]   
      
   12/20/24 issue of the MT VOID, Wesley Brodsky writes:   
      
   Hooray for Hannah Arendt!  I read her excellent book THE ORIGINS   
   OF TOTALITARIANISM [published 1973] and wrote a review of it for   
   Amazon September 2023.  The title of the review was "URGENT: U.S.   
   citizens should read this book immediately, before the presidential   
   elections continue!"  I did not go into my own preferences for   
   political candidates.  I merely urged U.S. citizens to read this   
   book before making their own decisions.  [-wb]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
   TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)   
      
   THE EVERYMAN CHESTERTON by G. K. Chesterton (Everyman's Library,   
   ISBN 978-0-307-59497-6) is a collection of Chesterton's works, but   
   not the better-known ones.  In the Introduction, Ian Ker says this   
   is intentional: works such as "The Ballad of the White Horse", THE   
   MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, and THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL are so well   
   known and easy to find that it would be redundant to include them.   
      
   I was reminded of the first book the New England Science Fiction   
   Association published that was not a small volume as a souvenir   
   book for a Guest of Honor at Boskone: THE BEST OF JAMES   
   E. SCHMITZ.  Afterwards, people told them they should have   
   included A, or B, or V.  But NESFA realized they had painted   
   themselves into a corner, because they could hardly publish a book   
   titled "The Second Best of James E. Schmitz".   
      
   (Actually, there are authors who could have such a book   
   published, because they are known are quirky people who love a   
   good joke.  But *they* have to make that decision.)   
      
   NESFA never made that mistake again.  All of their future author   
   collections were the complete works (or at least the complete   
   short fiction), even if it took multiple volumes.   
      
   All this was to point out that, effectively, the editor is saying   
   that this book is "The Second Best of Chesterton".  So, back to   
   Chesterton.   
      
   The section on Dickens was written just a hundred years ago.   
   Chesterton claims that in Dickens's era only Dickens created   
   characters that would be instantly recognizable by name.  (The   
   only exception he acknowledges is Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.)  And   
   he does a comparison with another popular of the time, Rudyard   
   Kipling.  Who would recognize Learoyd or Mrs. Hawksbee?  But then   
   he lists Dickens's characters: Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp, Smauke, Sam   
   Weller, and Podsnap.  And I would claim that these are now equally   
   unrecognizable.  (Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes keeps chugging along.)   
      
   Chesterton chose characters from THE PICKWICK PAPERS.  Without   
   choosing title characters, I would say that there might be a few   
   recognizable characters from Dickens's later novels: Barkis,   
   Micawber, and of course Fagin (whose name has fallen into common   
   use as someone who exploits children).  Still, what this goes to   
   show is that it is hard to judge literary immortality too close to   
   the work itself.  (People at the turn of the century thought James   
   Fenimore Cooper was going to be the literary author best   
   remembered and read in a hundred years, and Arthur Conan Doyle was   
   just a writer of popular fiction.)   
      
   Chesterton also seems to not understand how the word "sensibility"   
   was used in Jane Austen's time.  Chesterton writes that sense and   
   sensibility are not "in a kind of opposition to each other.  "...   
   not only are they not opposite word: they are actually the same   
   word.  They both mean receptiveness or approachability by the   
   facts outside us."  Maybe now, but in Jane Austen's time,   
   "sensibility" referred to being particularly susceptible to   
   emotions and feelings, which are hardly "facts outside us".   
   Marianne's problem in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is not the facts, but   
   her emotions. When she has to leave Norland, she sobs that she   
   could never love a place as much as Norland, then when she is away   
   from Barton, she misses it terribly, and then she adores Delaford.   
     She is reacting to external facts (having to move, etc.), but in   
   a dar more emotional way than Elinor, who looks at the estates   
   with a more practical and factual eye (i.e., their size, cost, and   
   so on).   
      
   And once again I have drifted far afield, not just from Chesteron,   
   but from his topic, Charles Dickens.   
      
   Strangely, Chesterton has little to say about Dickens's best-known   
   books: DAVID COPPERFIELD, OLIVER TWIST, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, A TALE   
   OF TWO CITIES.  He is, rather, enamored of THE PICKWICK PAPERS,   
   and of Dickens's other early works.   
      
   And in describing Dickens's work, Chesterton writes (in CHARLES   
   DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY, 1911), "Nature is as free as air; art   
   is forced to look probable."  He doesn't credit Mark Twain, who   
   wrote in 1897 in FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, "Truth is stranger than   
   fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to   
   possibilities.  Truth is."   
      
   Because THE EVERYMAN CHESTERTON is so long, and includes many   
   different works, I will end these comments here, and (probably)   
   write another column or two on some of the other sections. [-ecl]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
                         Mark Leeper   
                         mleeper@optonline.net   
      
      
              Recipe: a series of step-by-step instructions for   
              preparing ingredients you forgot to buy, in utensils   
              you don't own, to make a dish the dog won't eat.   
                                              --Unknown   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)