G.K. Chesterton: Favorite Father Brown Stories

Having recently read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon at Philip Ward's suggestion, I give him credit for placing this item after it in the Lifetime of Reading. The two bear comparison, and in that comparison the charms of Chesterton's work are apparent in a way that they might not be on their own.

Conan Doyle is clearly the better detective writer. Not only is Holmes a more polished character, his partnership with Watson makes more sense than Father Brown's odd-couple pairing with the criminal Flambeau. It is tempting to look at Chesterton as a member of the same species as Conan Doyle, but of an inferior genus. It even feels at times like he is copying that more famous writer, a contemporary of his.

Doyle often makes the mistake of seemingly putting the cart before the horse--that is to say thinking of a gimmick first and constructing a story around it. Chesterton seems to be guilty of a similar crime, pulling an empty cart. Unlike Doyle, it is Chesterton's mysteries that seem incidental and after-the-fact. One good example is in "The Blue Cross". The mysteries of the spilled apples, the thrown soup etc. detract from the fascinating story of a Priest and an Arch-Criminal discussing ontology. What seems to merit the most focus and possess the most interest is given the least time.

If one acts on the assumption that the writer is a good one (and why not do so?), the question is why make such an odd choice? Why bother to write a mystery when one's real intent is to write philosophy?  This is again the case in "The Sign of the Broken Sword". Chesterton is almost didactic in his philosophy, and one wonders why he bothers. It doesn't help that the potentially vivid character of Father Brown himself never quite takes off the ground.

These two flaws point in a rather unflawed direction, however. Chesterton's philosophy is clearly the real point of the writing, and Brown is never more than a vehicle for it. His intention is obvious: to piggyback on the popularity of his contemporary Conan Doyle, and the interest in the detective genre that he generated. In such a vehicle, Chesterton could reach the masses with something far beyond their normal scope of thought.

That something is an almost mystical approach to ontology. A good reader looks for repeated words or ideas that seem out of place, and Chesterton's favorite is "Fairyland". Each of the mysteries takes on a surreal quality, and Brown often wonders if any of it is really happening. " . . . we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry," he remarks in "The Sins of Prince Saradine". "The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else." Chesterton's persistent underlying question is "What does it mean?", something that Conan Doyle would not bother asking. Holmes' comparative solidity as a character serves him: the mysteries almost seem to have taken place in our reality, and a subculture has developed to embrace the "gentle fiction", as Leslie Klinger puts it, of Holmes actual existence. In the same way, Brown's haziness serves Chesterton's themes. Conan Doyle seems to ask "What if this happened?"; Chesterton's question is, "What if none of this happened?"