The Man Who Was G. K. C.

Book Reviews Halperin makes his basic point, and Novelists in Their Youth is certainly a pleasant and sometimes informative read. But, at least from this writer's point of view, it is not more than that. Stephen Έ. Tabachnick University of Oklahoma The Man Who Was G. K. C. Michael Coren. Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton. New York: Paragon Press, 1990. χ + 304 pp. $22.95 IF YOU ARE LOOKING for a quick read of some 280 pages (with large print) and general information on the life of the prolific writer G. K Chesterton (1874-1936) who reflected—even if he did not always reflect deeply—on the events of his era; or, if you are seeking an apologia for the CathoHcism of Chesterton who, Michael Coren tries to convince us, was not really the anti-Semitic person that general opinion and some poetry and prose written by Chesterton himself might suggest to the contrary; then Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton is for you. If, however, your interest is in the scholarly precision of research, careful documentation, and the dispassionate criticism of a literary scholar, of sources that go significantly beyond Chesterton's autobiography and some letters and reminiscences of friends, then this book is not for you. If you become aggravated by too much quotation from one source—on occasion I wondered why Coren did not simply edit Chesterton 's autobiography—or become aggravated when a biographer quotes some eighty-eight lines of prosaic poetry introductory to the volume, and substitutes it for critical commentary, then you might want to look elsewhere for a study of Chesterton. Or, if you want to record for the future the promise of a good journalist who, having written his first biography, is rapidly pursuing the writing of a second one—on H. G. Wells—then read and enjoy, because Gilbert is a good, if sometimes jejune (Coren's own word to describe his effort), general introduction for the non-speciafist. Coren does not write as if he cares about the classical debate over whether a work should aspire either for the scholar's bookshelf or the coffee table of the general reader: he has clearly chosen the general reader. In fact, Coren adapts Chesterton's own less than scholarly biographical style, commenting: "The absence of notes in the book is a deliberate policy. In my jejune way 95 ELT: VOLUME 34:1, 1991 I have attempted to follow in the tradition of my subject, and paint a picture as weU as teU a story of a great life." G. K. Chesterton, a proHfic writer almost as well-known in his day for his Falstaffian girth and drinking as for his writing, is almost forgotten today, even by those who watch the Father Dowling mysteries currently on prime time television in the United States and vaguely remember that Chesterton wrote a series of detective stories about the Catholic Father Brown—which were based on Chesterton's good friend, Father John O'Connor. Coren Hsts in an appendix some eighty-five pubUshed Chesterton volumes, even though many are not discussed in the text. Most of the titles are now out of print, but the Ignatius Press is currently proceeding, however slowly, to re-issue them. In addition to novels, more than a dozen book-length biographies (beginning with Robert Browning in the EngHsh Men of Letters series), and various works commenting on EngHsh Hfe, Chesterton wrote approximately 1600 essays over thirty years for the "Our Notebook" column of the Illustrated London News; and he served in various reviewing and editorial capacities , perhaps the most notable of which were his formative experience with the pubHsher T. Fisher Unwin and his later editorship of G. K's Weekly. The twenty-seven photographs included enhance the reader's visual appreciation of Chesterton and some of his contemporaries. Chesterton as a biographer was notable in his day for creating vivacious and readable studies that more academic biographers might have questioned. An early biography, on Robert Browning (1903), was more readable than meticulously precise; and Chesterton candidly admitted that he did not understand the various works of WUHam Blake, the subject of another biography. But...