GKC Wednesday

Background: When I was the editor of Gilbert Magazine, 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.

Chesterton Short(s)

Novelist John O'Hara was 23 years old in 1928 and trying to break into New York City journalism. Noel Busch of Time Magazine gave him a try-out, asking O'Hara to review Bennett Doty's Legion of the Damned and G. K. Chesterton's Robert Louis Stevenson. O'Hara failed the test, apparently, as neither review was published. [Matthew Bruccoli, The O'Hara Concern, New York: Random House, 1975]

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I find it interesting that GKC's Robert Louis Stevenson would've merited a review by Time. I have nothing against GKC's RLS, of course, but looking back from a 100 years later, it would seem to rank low among GKC's important works. Nonetheless, it was considered important at the time. No doubt a testament to GKC's popularity at the time, as well as to our mass media's constant, relentless, thirsty quest for articles to fill their pages.