[Daylight and Nightmare, by G.K. Chesterton]

From “The Angry Street”:

“And you?” he cried terribly. “What do you think the road thinks of you? Does the road think you are alive? Are you alive! Day after day, year after year, you have gone to Oldgate Station…”

My rage at Culvert seems judgmental to me now and perhaps also a little excessive, but I can tell (since these are my own words) that the anger also stems from my resentment towards my adolescent peers who thought that the source of all the problems in the world came from authority and that everything would be solved if we could simply do whatever we wanted.

[Tales of the Long Bow, by G.K. Chesterton]
[Babel Tower, by A.S. Byatt]

Also from “The Unobtrusive Traffic of Captain Pierce”:

The over-powering charm which pigs exercise upon us at a certain time of life; when we hear their trotters in our dreams and their little curly tails twine about us like the tendrils of the vine—

Prepare yourselves for an incoherent rant. I’ve been reading Babel Tower and Babbletower, the latter of which is the book-within-a-book inside the former. Culvert, the “visionary” of a utopia where everyone is free and there are no servants or masters and people can pursue their own pleasures, is the most ridiculous and stupid excuse for a sensualist I’ve ever seen. Why not be honest and say directly, “I want to have sex”? Why does he have to say that he’s emancipating mankind from oppression? I mean, do poverty and wretchedness disappear just because this group of rich, spoiled brats have now decided they will do whatever they want without any regard for the rules? I know Byatt wrote it as a criticism, but oh, did she succeed all too well in making me hopping mad.

Culvert proposes (idiot that he is) that they should engage in dramatic performances that represent their “new social order” on a regular schedule. But what if everyone decides to follow their own desires and refuse to put on any play whatsoever? And why doesn’t he just say, “I want to go watch an orgy every week”? And that whole, “let’s preach universal tolerance, but we want to murder the colonel because he has ‘blood on his hands’” incident was even more infuriating. If they are supposed to follow their instincts and live in perfect harmony, what on earth are they supposed to do if they have a secret homicidal maniac in their midst? After all, the would-be murderer only fulfills his desire by cutting someone’s throat. I am not speaking of murder that comes from anger or malice, but the sheer love of violence that is the one instinct of which these inhabitants of La Tour Bruyarde refuse to speak. (I think they all sink into a pit of sadomasochism later in the book. Serves them right.)

I really despise Culvert. I don’t even hate him. He irritates me like a fly I want to squash but can’t because he’s in a book. I hope he ends up miserable and wretched as a beggar rolling in the blood left on the streets of Paris after the Terror. Let him preach his visions there! I could have cheered when Colonel Grim asked who was going to clean out the latrines in the new utopia. For you see, in all these declarations of freedom, the bathroom really is key. I don’t object to your principles, though I may think them ridiculous. What I really object to is your utter neglect of details, the small things that end up making your life a living hell if they go wrong.

For real comfort, you need order and discipline. And all it requires is an occasional temporary delay in self-gratification. Culvert is a blithering idiot, and I hope his Babbletower collapses on him soon.

(Yes, I do realize that my reaction is the entire point of the book, and possibly of the book-within-a-book as well. I’m not supposed to like Culvert. Still, this is supposed to be tempered by a begrudging half-admiration for the man who is constantly described as “intelligent” and “brilliant”. But there is no such ambiguity on my part. I am a fanatic. I despise Culvert and all other fools like him, and I most decidedly disagree with the assessment that he is “brilliant”. He is simply inventing a whole social theory to justify the fact that he’s obsessed with sex, something which is neither original nor impressive. Self-righteous moron.)

[Tales of the Long Bow, by G.K. Chesterton]

I’ve been going off on a G.K. Chesterton reading rampage, and I have a funny quote, from “The Unobtrusive Traffic of Captain Pierce”:

“I have every reason to believe,” affirmed Pierce solemnly, “that Gurth the Swineherd made use of this identical building. I have no doubt it is in fact far older. The best authorities believe that the Prodigal Son stayed here for some time, and the pigs—those noble and much maligned animals—gave him such excellent advice that he returned to his family. And now, Mr. Oates, they say that all that magnificent heritage is to be swept away. But it shall not be. We shall not so easily submit to all the vandals and vulgar tyrants who would thus tear down our temples and our holy places. The pig-sty shall rise again in a magnificent resurrection—larger pig-stys, loftier pig-stys, shall yet cover the land; the towers and domes and spires of statelier and more ideal pig-stys, in the most striking architectural styles, shall again declare the victory of the holy hog over his unholy oppressors.”

I finished The Man Who Was Thursday last night, and I reaffirm my goal to try to write like G.K. Chesterton. I really can’t describe the book adequately, but it was like one of those dreams where you’re terrified or wildly delirious but you don’t want to wake up because you want to know what happens next. Chesterton’s prose is vivid and dramatic, but just a little bit tongue-in-cheek so that you don’t know whether to hide under your blankets or to just laugh out loud. It’s surreal and yet believable at the same time—you’re sort of sucked in by the story until you find yourself a million miles from where you began. And I sound like the back cover of a cheap paperback.

[The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton]

Oh, and The Man Who Was Thursday is really an absolutely wonderful book. For example:

And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.

(It has just occurred to me that it may not be self-evident why this particular sentence is so wonderful, but it’s too much trouble trying to explain it. Also, explaining things tend to take the flavor out of them. Let it suffice to say that I read this sentence and felt delighted, though it was indeed surreal and slightly frightening, “nightmare” that it is.) I have decided that one of my life’s goals will be to write like G.K. Chesterton.

The Deer and the Cauldron, vol. 1, by Louis Cha (trans. John Minford): Louis Cha is the English pseudonym of the popular wu xia novelist Jin Yong. The Deer and the Cauldron is one of his works that is available in English. The translation is most definitely for people who don’t know anything about the Chinese language, and considering this audience, I’d have to say that the translator did a good job. Of course, one might be annoyed by the fact that several characters’ names are translated literally (for example, Xiaobao becomes Trinket) but I think that it does convey a nuance that English readers might otherwise miss. Also, the translator takes pains to explain every possible reference, even at the cost of interrupting the story, and there’s a very comprehensive glossary at the beginning that explains nearly everything else. The story itself is very humorous, detailing the adventures of Trinket, a young rascal who was born in a brothel and (at the moment) ends up masquerading as a eunuch in the palace. The setting is early Qing dynasty, when the Han Chinese, especially in the South, were still feeling resentful and rebellious toward their Manchu conquerors. (Trinket hails from such a Southern province.) In the Brotherhood of River and Lake, the underworld in which so many wu xia stories take place, the Triad Society (or more accurately the Society of Heaven and Earth) are among many who conspire to overthrow the Manchus and restore the Ming. Trinket makes for an unexpected hero, although well within the Chinese storytelling tradition (I suppose one could compare him to the monkey king in Journey to the West?), and he’s hilariously foulmouthed, tactless and yet somehow compelling. I hesitate to draw any larger conclusions at the moment, since there are two more volumes to the work, but it’s definitely a lot of fun to read.

Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, by G.K. Chesterton: In a sense, this book is not simply a hagiography of Thomas Aquinas, but rather Chesterton’s reaction to “modernism”: his explanation of why he turns to Catholicism to find answers that modern philosophy cannot provide. Very gently done of course because Chesterton never quite preaches at the reader; instead he presents his opinions in a delightfully subversive way, overturning the usual stereotypes about Christian religion and Catholicism in particular. One of his points, which struck me as particularly important, is that Christianity is essentially a religion that celebrates life. It is easy to forget this fact considering tendencies within the Church to emphasize asceticism and original sin, but Chesterton argues that asceticism is in many ways a natural emotional impulse, which the structure and dogma of the Church holds in check. He writes that the Church’s traditionalism is what prevents it from embracing extremes, that keeps it professing the innate goodness of all creation. Faith is complex and shifting, but religion provides a structure in which it can remain healthy instead of stagnant. Chesterton’s perspective is clearly far from conventional, but I felt that he articulated what it means to be Catholic.

Chesterton also does an excellent job, by the way, of putting Aquinas in a historical context: the renewal taking place within the Church, the rise of new monastic orders (the Dominican and Franciscan friars), the Manichaean heresy, Albertus Magnus, the revival of Greek classics via the Muslims in the East, Aristotelianism and Church theology. I appreciated the originality of his interpretations—he really has a way of turning one’s view of history topsy-turvy—although I will say that Chesterton has a tendency to generalize in order to fit things into a clear pattern (dialectic?—although he himself would deny that he poses any dialectics). He makes an interesting comparison between Buddhism and Christianity, saying that the two are similar precisely because their philosophies are exact complements: they describe the same contours so to speak but are nonoverlapping. In other words, where Buddhism ends with Self, Christianity posits a Creator, although that sounds a bit too glib. Not exactly a groundbreaking insight in itself, since the grandmothers at my church say essentially the same thing (our parish, being Korean-American, has a unique relationship with Buddhist tradition), but nonetheless meaningful. I don’t quite agree with the way Chesterton draws sweeping conclusions about the East—particularly since I’m Asian myself—but other than that, I must say that his conception of spirituality is very much my own. I really do recommend the book, if only to get a better understanding of theology. It’s very easy to read one or two books, or even worse, listen to one or two people, and believe you know what Christianity is about, but I find that everyone complicates the issue with their own personal psychologies (and no one less than Catholics themselves) and forgets the simplicity of the message underneath. Chesterton returns to that simplicity and explains the exterior complications with remarkable lucidity. His explanation of Augustine, or rather Augustinianism and its influence on Church theology, was eye-opening for me.

I find it very difficult to discuss religion directly—it is, after all, intensely personal, not to mention difficult to verbalize—but I think the following quote explains best my own reason for theism:

“Things change because they are not complete; but their reality can only be explained as part of something that is complete. It is God.”

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde: I read the sequel Lost in a Good Book first, so I had the disadvantage of already knowing, in a loose sense, what was going to happen in this book. This may have biased my reaction to it, of course. I think I enjoyed the sequel more, although I’m not sure if that’s because Fforde’s writing has improved since his first novel, because I dislike Jane Eyre more than Great Expectations or because Fforde’s cleverness can only last for the duration of a book and a half before growing tiresome. The uncharitable part of me would say it’s the last. I do appreciate the whole setup with all the details of this alternate world from the obsession with literature to the not-so-secret tyranny of the Goliath Corporation, and I didn’t even mind the worst of the puns, but at a certain point, I felt that Fforde was just throwing clever idea after idea at me without much substance to back it up. Frankly, his writing at its best is only average. There were a few moments when I was quite appalled at how awful the dialogue was and wondered what sort of editor would let him get away with that. Also, the characters are amusing as flat caricatures but there is absolutely no development whatsoever. One might ask, is there supposed to be, but when Acheron Hades utterly fails to come across as particularly evil other than Fforde’s insistence that he is, the story falls flat. I do acknowledge that Fforde is parodying certain literary stereotypes, but in Acheron’s case, he failed to make it amusing. Thursday also doesn’t work as a character for the simple reason that she isn’t one person, but ten. She keeps changing her personality to suit the situation—hardened veteran at one point, rejected lover at another—but she becomes completely amorphous as a result. Again, I suspect that this lack of effective character development is at least partly intentional, but I’m still left with the impression that Thursday is a badly executed Mary Sue that takes itself a little too seriously to be funny. Oh, I adore all of Fforde’s ideas, and I’ll freely admit that he’s clever beyond belief, but there’s still something missing. I can’t remember if Lost in a Good Book managed to acquire that something or not, but nonetheless I’ve lost all desire to track down the sequels.