GKC Wednesday

Chesterton Short(s)

Petty good piece at the Imaginative Conservative on GKC and Norman Rockwell.

"Humility is particularly necessary in the case of Norman Rockwell, because his work itself has become trite. We think we know the pictures, so we do not ever bother to look. If they are to do their work of prompting us to a fresh perspective, and helping us to recover the things that have become trite, we will need to actually attend to them.

"Once we start to look at the pictures, we can see that they do give us a fresh perspective on the world. Another quick turn to Chesterton is called for. Consider how Chesterton describes Charles Dickens:

Herein is the whole secret of that eerie realism with which Dickens could always vitalize some dark or dull corner of London. There are details in the Dickens descriptions–a window, or a railing, or the keyhole of a door–which he endows with demoniac life. The things seem more actual than things really are. Indeed, that degree of realism does not exist in reality: it is the unbearable realism of a dream (Charles Dickens, 65)."