Totally parenthetical, but I'm pretty sure Chesterton and Sayers never hung out. I'm not certain that even Lewis ever met Chesterton, whose writing he idolized.

(And, parenthetically to the parenthetical remark, TBH, once I read Chesterton it was really hard to go back to Lewis -- once I'd immersed myself in one of his stylistic heroes, it became so painfully clear how much of what I'd loved about his own style was imitative. Really competently, lovingly imitative, but not a patch on the real thing.)

(There's also a whole huge dissertation on all the gigantically problematic things about Chesterton and his worldview (not to mention the persistent threads of solidarity with the working, non-working and totally shat on poor, and the Occupy-friendly EAT THE RICH sentiment glimmering through all the gigantically problematic parts) and looking at old works through a modern lens, but now I'm about to make myself late for work. I will say, though, that for all his racism and sexism and all the other -isms, Chesterton was an incalculably huge part of pushing me into straight-up progressivism.)

(But still pretty sure he and Sayers never met.)

I've never read any Chesterton, but I've always wondered about him. Where should I start?

Where should I start?

JZ's busy at work on a Tuesday morning, but I'm sure she'd recommend The Man Who Was Tuesday as that's her favorite.

(It's also very accessible and funny.)

Is this the Chesterton who wrote The Rich are Different?

You are right the Chesterton was not part of the Inklings. Don't know why I thought he was. Apparantly Sayers was not really a member being a woman, but did socialize with them and was sometimes considered an informal member. [link]

But if Chesterton was pro-working class it was in a very odd way. [link]

I will add that the Rebecca West link is the essay in which she made the statement often quoted: "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what Feminism is: I only know that people call me a Feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." [link]

I think the man was actually Thursday.

Oooh, it looks like loads of Chesterton is available for Kindle, for free.

I think the man was actually Thursday.

Oh, you are entirely correct.

Now my wife will chastise me.

Typo, I'm well aware that he talked a shitload of nonsense, much of it indefensible, and my best guess from the context of the rest of his writings is that he went off half-cocked in the essay West is responding to, working himself up into a lather over incomplete information that he didn't bother to investigate and that left him with a general impression that, rather than resolving the strike or directly helping the striking families, rich people were stepping in to forcibly separate children from unwilling families.

There's no excuse for the sloppiness, and no excuse for the anti-Semitism, but the impulse behind it is that he thought someone had judged struggling working-class families unfit to raise their own children, and that the best solution to class struggle was to remove the kids. Which, to be fair, a lot of high-minded people all over the world haven't for a second hesitated to do to working class, poor and indigenous families all over the Western world since time out of mind.

Deplorably sloppy, sexist, anti-Semitic, and the actual essay I'm sure is totally indefensible, but I've read probably 500-some-odd pages of his essays and I feel on pretty solid ground guessing that this particular one started with a half-read, half-understood story that punched his "Fuck you, you smug fucks, the people you're kicking ARE PEOPLE" triggers.

And, yep, Man Who Was Thursday. Emphatically not for everyone, possibly not even for many people at all (though Gaiman, PTerry and Mark Leyner love it so I'm at least not in bad company), but it pretty near saved my life many years ago when I was drowning in despair and immobility and poisonous brain chemicals. It was a gleeful, anarchic, joyous lifeline, and reading it over and over kept me tethered to a world outside my own head. As wretched as many of his beliefs are and as complicated and qualified and hedged in as my ability to recommend him is, I owe him one fuck of a debt for that one story.