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.

I’ve started reading Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and it’s good (though it seems to have a slightly different tone from Alice in Wonderland — I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I like it). The absurdity is very well-done, in a Chestertonian fashion. With things absurd you have to be very careful, because it’s easy to blow it and come out as just stupid. But when it’s done right, it’s hilarious, and it makes you think. I love all the wordplays, by the way. So far there aren’t as many in Looking-Glass as in Wonderland, but that’s okay.

As far as the title of this post goes, we visited Tryst Press (a local fine printing shop here in Provo, though the website appears to be rather out-of-date) on Tuesday for my History of the Book class, and one of the books we got to see was a small edition of “Jabberwocky.” Quite cool. While reading it last night, I got a hankering to make my own edition, illustrated and all. We’ll see… Speaking of which, I’ve got to get started with some Riverglen Press editions. Having my laptop break has been a temporary obstacle, but I think I’ll still be able to make things happen.

If you go to ChristianAudio.com and click on the big orange button labeled “Free Download,” you can get a nice audiobook of G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. (It’s five MP3s of about 35 megs each.)

From the blog of the American Chesterton Society, this bit by Chesterton on journalism:

“Nothing looks more neat and regular than a newspaper, with its parallel columns, its mechanical printing, its detailed facts and figures, its responsible, polysyllabic leading articles. Nothing, as a matter of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure, more hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils, random compromises, or barely averted catastrophes.

“Seen from the outside, it seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as silently as the dawn. Seen from the inside, it gives all its organisers a gasp of relief every morning to see that it has come out at all; that it has come out without the leading article upside down or the Pope congratulated on discovering the North Pole.”