Gilbert Keith Chesterton

So I just picked up a reader of Mr. Chesterton and it is incredible. First essay is the story form of the shift from paganism to Christian gothic to modern realism. "The old Greeks summoned godlike things to worship their god. The medieval Christians summoned all things to worship theirs, dwarfs and pelicans, monkeys and madmen. The modern realist summoned all these million creatures to worship their god; and then have no god for them to worship. Paganism was in art a pure beauty; that was the dawn. Christianity was a beauty created by controlling a million monsters of ugliness; and that in my belief the zenith and the noon. Modern art and science practically mean having the million monsters and being unable to control them; and I will venture to call that the disruption and the decay. ... Christianity, with its gargoyles and grotesques, really amounted to saying this: that a donkey could go before all the horses of the world when it was really going to the temple."

And then he picks up in the next essay with a criticism of modern decor. He is thankful for being laid up in bed so he can star at the empty ceiling rather than the ridiculous wallpaper surrounding him. (He is actually pondering the possiblity of using a broomstick to draw on the ceiling). The man is a Brit from 1910 and he says the following about wallpaper: "I found the wall-paper to be already covered with very uninteresting images, all bearing a ridiculous resemblance to each other. I could not understand why one arbitrary symbol (a symbol apparently entirely devoid of any religious or philosophical significance) should thus be sprinkled all over my nice walls like a sort of small-pox. The Bible must be referring to wall-papers, I think, when it says 'Use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do.'"

There is tons more hilarity ... he goes on about the evil in the world and he says it is never better described than in the horror of having to listen to loud music while eating dinner at a resteraunt. I should include more, but for time sake, this is all I got for now. I expect Chesterton will come up now and again though.