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# GKC Short
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/29411/
- Published: 2013-09-25T07:12:16.000Z
- Updated: 2013-09-25T07:12:16.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Miscellaneous, #wpChunk

**Background**: When I was the editor of *[Gilbert Magazine](http://www.chesterton.org/explore-the-acs/gilbertmagazine/?ref=thedailyeudemon.com)*, I was responsible for the "Tremendous Trifles" column. It was occasionally hard to find a sufficient amount of interesting GKC material to fill the page, so John Peterson sent me a file full of Chesterton ancedotes. They were idiosyncratic, historical, and Chestertonian. He gave me permission to use them here. I hope y'all find them as interesting as I have over the years. Most of them have never been published.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ea/fd/eafdb338-c9b6-4f87-8363-78ab94cc3a18/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Chesterton-Mug-235x300.jpg "Chesterton Mug")

Chesterton Short(s)

The American critic Malcolm Cowley, attempting to define the so-called "Lost Generation," once drew up a list of "literary childhood diseases" which he published in *Canby's Literary Review* of October 25, 1921\. These afflictions begin with "a bad case of Chesterton," contracted at about age sixteen; Oscar Wilde is a complication; and before the patient recovers he is "overwhelmed" by Bernard Shaw. Health is not restored until the patient has "dipped into Freud and Marx." \[Hans Bal, *Malcolm Cowley*, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993, pp. 182-83\]

\[TDE Editorial comment: Yikes, I don't know anything about Cowley, nor do I want to.\]