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This morn­ing as I made break­fast, I decided to try lis­ten­ing to the The Man Who Was Thurs­day instead of to music. And I did, for about 20 min­utes, and it was better than I expected (the expe­ri­ence, that is — I’ve already read the book). Lis­ten­ing to audio­books is like being a kid again and snug­gling up with Mommy or Daddy while they read to you. Except with­out the snuggling. :)

Anyway, I haven’t really read any Chester­ton in the last four years, so it was nice to remem­ber how great he is. I really had to con­cen­trate to keep up with the story, though, because it’s deep. Here’s one of my favorite quotes so far, pulling from the Bartleby edition:

Gre­gory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile.

“And even then,” he said, “we poets always ask the ques­tion, ‘And what is Vic­to­ria now that you have got there?’ You think Vic­to­ria is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be like Vic­to­ria. Yes, the poet will be dis­con­tented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt.”

“There again,” said Syme irri­ta­bly, “what is there poet­i­cal about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poet­i­cal to be sea-​sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebel­lious may be the whole­some thing on cer­tain des­per­ate occa­sions; but I’m hanged if I can see why they are poet­i­cal. Revolt in the abstract is — revolt­ing. It’s mere vomiting.”

The girl winced for a flash at the unpleas­ant word, but Syme was too hot to heed her.

“It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poet­i­cal! Our diges­tions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foun­da­tion of all poetry. Yes, the most poet­i­cal thing, more poet­i­cal than the flow­ers, more poet­i­cal than the stars — the most poet­i­cal thing in the world is not being sick.”

That’s Chester­ton for you. :)

[tags]G.K. Chester­ton, audiobooks[/tags]