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The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 15: Chesterton on Dickens

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Written in 1906 and 1911 and bound as this affordable paperback, Chesterton's two volumes of Dickens criticism remain superb, and have seldom been bettered by the academic industry's vast output. Although Chesterton's addiction to paradox can challenge or annoy readers unfamiliar with his style, a brief immersion dispels the difficulty, and further reading yields a mine of insights into Dickens as man and writer unsurpassed even by the publication of J. Hillis Miller's pathbreaking book of 1958. And: whereas Miller enjoyed not only the advantages of time and distance but also his rigorous training in academic criticism and scholarship, Chesterton wrote "simply" as one of those invaluable late Victorian and Edwardian "men of letters." In addition, he took on Dickens during the first fifty years after his death in 1870, when criticizing "The Inimitable" meant jousting with a National Institution. Writing as what we would call an "amateur," Chesterton perceptively celebrates Dickens's virtues with a love unblinded by a shrewd awareness of Dickens's faults. Some readers may find Chesterton's orthodox Catholic world view annoying, particularly when it obtrudes itself occasionally into his prose. But as a "simple," lifelong "Bible" Christian, Dickens would almost certainly have considered a relgious point of departure a matter of course -- although he would also almost certainly have deplored Chesterton's occasional narrowness. Those who bear with him for a single chapter will almost certainly be seduced by his penetrating and thought-provoking analyses; amateur and professional Dickensians alike should find this volume a perfect introduction to a deeper understanding of the novels and the man.

If you love Dickens and Chesterton, you want this book. It's just that simple. Chesterton's insights and analyses may strike you as quirky at the beginning, but there is plenty in here to stimulate a LOT of long-term thought.

Just as one question of many: do we really want literature with realistic characters that change with time, or do people hanker after a "mythology" in which giant, unforgettable characters never change?

If the answer to the question above is the first choice, then just how do we explain Dickens' enormous popularity, which staggered observers even in his own time? When "real life" was just something to pass time while waiting for the next installment of "Pickwick?"

Few critics of Dickens wrote with more sympathy, perspicuity, and literary grace than G. K. Chesterton. The essays collected here--practically everything GKC ever wrote on Dickens--offer the double pleasure of renewing acquaintance with an author now more admired than read and with the incomparable though less generally known Chesterton. Be warned that the latter's is an apologetic reading, intended to defend Dickens against his detractors in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, GKC's views are never uncritical: When his thinks Dickens misses his own best mark, he declares that and gives his reasons for it. That best mark, for this critic, was "Pickwick," which, though Chesterton finds flawed, is assessed with love that flows from the pages. The blemishes that criticism then and now call Dickens to account--for instance, his novels' outsized characters--GKC typically turns inside-out, inviting the reader to consider them as his subject's triumphs. Even if you do not hold Dickens in the same affection as did Chesterton, this book repays careful attention in a day when much literary criticism is mesmerized by theory. Chesterton demonstrates that a lover of literature can generate some of the finest criticism. And it is a perennial pleasure to romp with GKC, a brilliant thinker and stylist, who disagrees with many but abuses none.

You can never go wrong with Chesterton. Chesterton can help you think, even if you're not good at it.