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G.K. CHESTERTON’S DETECTIVE FICTION CLASS # 1 Wednesday October 8, 2003 COURSE OVERVIEW.
I. COURSE OVERVIEW Detective Stories Everyone taking this course is familiar with and probably likes detective stories. Some few may have written dectection stories or be studying how to write them. Together we shall look at a fair number of such tales, mainly by Gilbert Keith Chesterton and of those mainly the collection of 48 “Father Brown” stories. Although this is a reading course and not a how-to course in writing, we shall certainly ask how Chesterton wrote his detective yarns. In particular we shall bear in mind the more than somewhat “religious” method and presuppositions about reality exhibited by a short, round, unprepossessing Englishman named Father J. Brown. We shall also glance at an earlier creation: retired Judge Basil Grant, Chesterton’s “first attempt to write what he called philosophical mysteries -- tales about crimes or seeming crimes that are interwoven with philosophical reflections,” as commentator Martin Gardner of Hendersonville, NC put it. Because the plots of the classic detective
stories were designed to vindicate good and to rebuke evil, Chesterton
saw them as modern morality tales. He saw the great fictional detective
as an urban version of a knight errant backing the cause of law and order
against the forces of crime and disorder. And he admired the detective
story writers for updating the country tales of brigands and blackguards
to create a new kind of adventure-romance or the cities.
Our general experience is that every conceivable sort of man has been a saint. And I suspect you will find, too, that every conceivable sort of man has been a murderer. In that sense, Chesterton saw the detective story as a parable of the doctrine of Original Sin. Even a good and saintly man is at base a mere man, a featherless, furless biped. He is perhaps slightly more inclined to do go good than evil. But his intellect is limited, his passions strong and his will often wavers. See http://www.chesterton.org/discover/nutshell/detectivestories.html
In this course we will mainly read and discuss selected detective stories by GKC and other contemporaries. For those of you who plan to write detective stories themselves, we will make sure that we understand Chesterton’s general philosophy for writing such tales and especially for the technique used by his unobtrusive, chubby little Englishman, Father J. Brown.
[And for further reading in Chesterton's works, see "A Defence of Detective
Stories," "How to Write a Detective Story," The Spice of Life; "On
Detective Novels." For these and other texts see http://www.chesterton.org
... the web site of The American Chesterton Society.]
II. CHESTERTON BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) made his mark on English letters during the first third of the 20th Century. C.S. Lewis took up Chesterton’s pen of Christian apologist said that he was an atheist in 1925 when he read GKC’s THE EVERLASTING MAN. Then ... for the first time saw the
whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed
to me to make sense . . . I already thought Chesterton the
most sensible man alive 'apart from his Christianity.' Now, I veritably
believe, I t thought that Christianity itself was very sensible 'apart
from its Christianity.
Chesterton produced nearly a hundred books, including the classics Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday, and biographies of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi. He wrote articles for about 125 periodicals, and was also a talented literary critic, mystery writer, economic and political analyst, social commentator, orator, humorist and poet. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1922.
For more internet biographic data seethe review of GKC’s works by Edward
Peters, a co-founder of the San Diego Chesterton Society
http://www.littleflower.co.uk/chesterton.htm
If you can’t find your favorite Chesterton book at the library or bookstore,
then please go to http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/ where
you can download all of his better known works.
On Biographies Maisie Ward's Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Sheed & Ward, 1944) was the first GKC biography. Read this life first (even before Chesterton's own Autobiography) and then you can better select among the many others. See also http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ27.HTM =-=-==-=-=-=-=-=--= III. B. GKC CHRONOLOGY (Following Thomas Nelson, Inc. year 2000
edition
--1874 GKC born in Kensington, May 20. Family religion is Unitarian. Not notably prejudiced against Roman Catholics. --1885 - 1899 (Age 11 - 25) As adolescent was tempted to suicide. Worldview was agnostic and pagan. Was prepared for St Paul’s School in London at Colet Court. Entered Saint Paul’s (whose students had included Milton, Marlborough and Pepys) at age 12. Had number of Jewish friends. Closest chums includian Lucian Oldershaw (future brother in law) and especially Edmund Clerihew Bentley. Founded and led the seminal Junior Debating Club. Studied in the Slade School of Art in London (1893 -1896). Successful illustrator. --1900 Collection, THE WILD KNIGHT AND OTHER POEMS. --1901 Marries devout Frances Blogg. --1902 Through marriage converts to High Church Anglicanism. --1905 HERETICS, THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES. Writes for Illustrated London NEWS. --1906 THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL. --1908 (age 34) ORTHODOXY. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. --1910 WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD. Defends distributism and "Small is Beautiful." --1911 - 1913 First FATHER BROWN stories. BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE. --1914 (age 40) Writes for Daily HERALD. THE FLYING INN. From November 1914 till June 1915 GKC was bedridden with heart problems. Often recognized no one. --1915 - 1921. Furiously productive writing for newpapers. Poetry. Fiction. --1922 Becomes Roman Catholic. --1925 THE EVERLASTING MAN. TALES OF THE LONG BOW. Begin's G.K.'s WEEKLY (1925 - 1936) --1926 THE INCREDULITY OF FATHER BROWN. --1927 THE SECRET OF FATHER BROWN. Biography of Robert Louis Stevenson. --1930 THE ECSTATIC THIEF and FOUR FAULTLESS FELONS. --1932 Biography of Chaucer. --1934 Roman Catholic Knighthood. --1935 THE SCANDAL OF FATHER BROWN. --1936 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Dies June 14,
1936 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.
IV. How GKC created "Father Brown"
The American Chesterton Society maintains
a vastly informative web site
Excerpts:
In 1909 Gilbert's brother Cecil Chesterton noted that as Gilbert was a philosopher as wellV. THE DETECTION CLUB Anthony Berkeley Cox wrote under his own name and under the pseudonym 'Francis Iles'. In 1925 he created 'Roger Sheringham', amateur sleuth. In 1929 Anthony Berkeley was busy founding THE DETECTION CLUB and knew that it had to include the creator of Father Brown. Accordingly Gilbert K. Chesterton soon became president (or Ruler). He described the club as "a very small and quiet onspiracy, to which I am proud to belong." GKC revealed its initiation ceremonies in an article "thereby setting a good example to the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, the Illuminati ... and all the other secrect societies which now conduct the greater part of public life, in the age of Publicity and Public Opinion." The club made an effort to create a code of conduct and set standards for good detective story writing. In the initiation ceremonies the Ruler Says to the Candidate: (excerpts) "Do you promise that your detectives shall
well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which
it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making
use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery,
Coincidence or Act of God?"
"Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader?" ... "Do you promise to observe a seemly moderation
in the use of Gangs, Conspiracies,
"Will you honour the King's English?" (Maisie Ward, GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON,
550-552)
M.N., do you as you hope to increase Sales, swear to observe faithfully all these promises which you have made, so long as you are a Member of the Club? Then the Candidate shall say: All this I solemnly do swear. And I do furthermore promise and undertake to be loyal to the Club, neither purloining nor disclosing any plot or secret communicated to me before publication by any Member, whether under the influence of drink or otherwise. Then shall the Ruler say to the Company: If there be any member present who objects to the Proposal let him or her so declare. If there be any Objector, the Ruler shall appoint a time and place for the seemly discussion of the matter and shall say to the Candidate and to the Company: Forasmuch as we are hungry and that there
may no unseemly wrangling amongst us, I
[see http://www.sfu.ca/english/Gillies/Engl38301/oath.htm]
In 1930 Gilbert was President/Ruler of the Detection Club. Its 28 members included
G.K. Chesterton
The "canon of the Detection Club oath: clarified for most readers then and now key and abiding features of the "true" detective story.
What makes a Detective Story a Good Detective Story?
--(1) Not murder and mayhem. --(2) Not thrillers about espionage and diplomacy. --(3) Not just adventures (a lot of Sherlock Holmes is simply this). --(4) It contains more than crime and punishment. --(5) Drama is not enough. In classical tragedy and comedy the AUDIENCE knows what the actors do not. READERS of a good detective story, however, need to see only what the story's characters are looking at. --(6) The first necessary condition is that the narrative create a puzzle, a mystery to be solved. --(7) The first principle of detecting
is to observe and notice as Kipling's Kim was taught to do in India.
Or in the wording of Sherlock Holmes, "there is nothing so
--(8) The good detective story then makes
it possible for the READER to solve the puzzle by scattering enough CLUES.
Much of Sherlock Holmes has the detective
--(9) The detective yarn is logical, rational. Chesterton in particular saw the detective story as one instance of a LOGICAL PUZZLE. An author devised the story both to attract, challenge and mystify the reader. At the end of a good detective story, the reader should say, "Of course! I had all I needed to see that!" Detective fiction is highly technical and
Chesterton was one of the first to investigate the techniques. There were
rules and they were approved as part of the code of the
--(10) Ideally the dective story is a SHORT story. Some detective novels are long, complex and have few clues and those few may be separated by a hundred pages. This can seem an unfair burden on the reader's memory. {NOTE: A good detective story, to me personally,
has the flavor of a New York TIMES
===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- VI “THE BLUE CROSS” ( THE COMPLETE FATHER BROWN 9 -23
This was the first Father Brown story that GKC wrote. It is included as such in the first collection, THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN. Summary: This is a story about a criminal mastermind (the Frenchman Flambeau) who leaves no clues and a priest (Father Brown) who deliberately leaves clues for a Frenchmaster detective (Valentine) to catch the thief. --(A) THE ART OF DETECTION: observations ----(p. 12) Detective Inspector Valentin succeeded by plodding. Yet “he understood the limits of reason.” There were noot yet enough facts about Flambeau to catch him using pure reason alone. “In such a naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.” “... he reckoned on the unforeseen.” “... he coldly and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable.” “... he systematically went to the wrong places. ...” “if one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop.” ----(p. 12) “He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal’s, which was true But he fully realized the disadvantage. ‘The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic,’... .” ----When clueless, what does a detective do? ----(p. 14) “in the universal darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed; and this finger was odd enough.” (re soup splashed on wall). ----(p. 15) “If you know what a man’s doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can do is to keep our eyes skinned for a queer thing.” (with two policeman atop a bus for Hampstead). ----(p. 16) The English Inspector demands
proof that thesmashed window leads to
----(19) Valentin could not trace the clues logically. “He had come to the end of his chase; yet somewhow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed (which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.” ----(21) Father Brown: where had he heard of the switching packages dodge? From a penitent. “... when I began to suspect you, I thought of this poor chap’s way of doing it at once.” ----22 “I wasn’t sure you were a thief. ... So I just tested you to see if anything would make you show yourself." You made no scene over salt in the coffee. You kept quiet. (23) You paid a bill three times too high. ----23 “as you wouldn’t leave any tracks
for the police, of course somebody had to. At
----24 you attacked reason. That’s bad
theology. How do I know all this? “Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I
suppose. ... Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing
but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?”
Both Valentin and Flambeau bowed to their master--Father Brown.
--(B) THE MAJOR ODDITIES OF THE BLUE CROSS --(1) p. 12 Salt in the sugar bowl. Sugar in the salt shaker. --(2) p. 13 “an odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the white-papered walls.” --(3) p.14 a shop: oranges
and nuts with their signs/prices reversed. “Best tangerine
--(3a) p. 14: two clergymen upset a greengrocer’s apples. “rolled ‘em over in the street.” --(4) p.15 a policeman: two clergymen--one stood in the street acting drunk. --(5) p. 16 window of a pub--”a big black smash, like a star in the ice.” --(6) p. 16 in the pub a waiter times overpaid three fold by smaller of two parsons --(7) p.17 Detectives enter a sweet shop. Young woman asks if they have come about “that parcel.” Two parsons in shop 1/2 hour earlier. Posted to Westminster. --(8) p. 20 Flambeau gives himself away as a pseudo-Catholic clergyman ----Flambeau does not believe in reason. (20) Flambeau: there might be universes in which “reason is utterly unreasonable.” Brown: “No... reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.” “Reason and justice grp the remotest and the loneliest star. ... “don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”
----
--(C) CONVERTING ODDITIES INTO CLUES
--(3) p. 14 a clergyman (one of a pair) upset a heap of apples in a shop. --(4) p. 15 two clergymen boarded a bus for Hampton --(6) p. 17 parson pays for window “The one I’m going to break.” --(6) p. 17 4s. to 14 s. --(7) p.18 If parcel shows up, post
it to this address.
--(D) SUPPLYING MISSING BACKGROUND INFORMATION --p. 18 Enquiries by Valentin had established: that Father Brown from Essex was bringing up to Eucharistic Congress “a silver cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable value.” --22 Brown to Flambeau: I began to suspect you from the bulge up your sleeve with the spiked bracelet. I learned it from three of my little flock in Hartlepool. I also learned the trick of mailing a parcel
to a friend from a penitent. He’s now in a
+++++++++++++++
--(E) DESCRIPTION in "The Blue Cross" OF FATHER BROWN ----10 “There was ... a very short
Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex
----19 (As interpreted by Inspector Valentin)
“such a silly sheep as the man with the
----(19) “the word ‘reason’ recurring in a high and almost childish voice.” ----21 Flambeau: give me that sapphire “you little celibate simpleton.” ----22 Flambeau: “ I don’t believe a bumpkin like you could manage all that. ----23 Brown to Flambeau: 3 policemen are at hand. I brought them “we have to know twenty such things when we work among the criminal classes!” -OOO- 10/01/2003 |