| alivingdog.com |
Books |
 |
 |
GKC in St. Paul Thoughts on the 25th Annual Chesterton Conference |
| A Wournal (Web
Journal) by Gord Wilson |
(The twelve talks
from the conference are available from the ACS (see link) on CD for $8
each or $75 for all twelve. I briefly describe them below).
 |
 |
 |
| Gord and Dale Ahlquist |
Adam Schwartz |
Carl Olson |
"The Best of All Impossible Worlds"
was the theme of the 25th Annual Chesterton Conference sponsored by the
American Chesterton Society, and held June 15-17 at the University of
St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Having far more in common with St.
Thomas than St. Paul, I doubted it would work out to go, but against
all odds it somehow did and Eric (EW) and I made the trek from the
Northwest. With many others we found room and board at the U of St.
Thomas, and after the conference Kathleen kindly put us up on her floor
until our return flight.
The conference logo depicted Charles Dickens and GKC, on the anniversary of the latter having written a bio of the former. That occasioned the talk by Jill Kriegel on "A Chestertonian Reading of Dickens' "Dombey and Son." The other talks tended to be titled "Chesterton and ____," so that you didn't even need to know who GKC was to be interested ( even knowing who he was some of the titles intrigued me).
Dale Ahlquist, president of the ACS, kicked off the proceedings Thursday night with "Abandon All Hopelessness, Ye Who Enter Here". He was followed by John Peterson, the founding publisher of Gilbert Magazine, the official publication of the ACS, on "Chesterton and Marshall McLuhan". McLuhan was the '60s media critic who made the witty observations "the medium is the message" and "the medium is the massage". I even managed to find a used McLuhan book on one of the many book tables.
Friday after Jill Kriegel's talk Father Stanley Jaki held forth on "Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin: The Two Who Never Met". He also had a book table. I bought Chesterton: A Seer of Science. A long time ago I read Jaki's book, Brain, Mind and Computers, which won the Templeton Prize. Geir Hasnes came from Norway to present his talk, "Trials and Triumphs of a Chesterton Bibliographer." It focused on his efforts to compile a definitive and exhaustive bibliography of all things Chesterton. His powerpoint presentation was itself exhausting, although enlivened by Geir's sparkling and ironic sense of humor. He has searched minutaie wordwide in this monumental task which, when completed, will be a time warp in Chesterton scholarship.
Kurt Griffen compared and contrasted De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" with GKC's "What I Saw in America," although his bio billed him as "an opera singer in a rock band." Later at the banquet he fortunately regaled us with the latter talent. "Chesterton Unplugged" was the title of Christopher Check's talk, although he was far too animated to be considered a "speaker" and it was far to explosive to be termed a "talk". Absolutely Chestertonian in that regard. What else to expect from the Executive Vice President of the Rockford Institute? We also had the opportunity to subscribe to their publication, Chronicles, at an absurdly low rate (so I did).
After dinner (for those of us who threw for room and board), Joseph Pearce, the inexhaustible biographer of anyone you can name, held forth on "Chesterton and C.S. Lewis". Some of the material touched briefly on his book, "C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church", which was all fine with me as I found that a delightful read. And really, how could he not draw from his own books, which nearly took up an entire table in the foyer? The highlight of Friday night was a performance of GKC's play, "The Surprise." Dale Ahlquist's daughter did an amazing job as the princess. Apart from that I don't know any of the actors, but I'm quite sure that info will be on the ACS website (see link).
Saturday David Beresford, billed as
a "scientist and farmer and columnist for Gilbert magazine," gave what
I think was one of the best talks, "The Limitless Possibilities of
Limits". Limits and boundaries were a favorite topic of Chesterton's,
but he took his talk in places I found fascinating. I took as many
notes as I could; a few follow. "For things to be things they must have
limits. Limits allow things the freedom to be themselves. A species can
be defined by its niche or environment. But none of this variety (and
the great number of species) could exist without limits. Responding to
its environment is what enables a thing to stay in its species.
Creation is an experiment in the limitless possibilities of things with
limits.
He identified two modern mistakes: 1. that man is a thing, neither male nor female, and 2. that man is an animal. Man is not a breeeder like a chimpanzee, he said, calling modern culture "serial polygamy". The reason for long life, he noted, is life-long learning. Regarding marriage, he said that pair-bonds get tighter the longer they continue. This also has an ancient reason: hunting could not go on if humans mated outside the pair-bond. He also spoke in favor of maintaining genetic diversity. Destroying it leaves nothing for the unforseen future. Altogether amazng and a lot of food for thought.
I greatly enjoyed Adam Schwartz' talk on "Chesterton and Malcolm Muggeridge" and his small group discussion on the Inklings. Being in the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, that was one of the draws for me of the conference. I have far too many notes to quote. He's the author of a giant scholarly tome called The Third Spring which is about Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson and David Jones and the Catholic Literary revival in Britain, the Second Spring being associated with Newman). Amazon's price for this book is $65, to no fault of Adam's. I suggest in my Amazon review to view it as four biographies at about $15 each (it's certainly that much reading). I also suggest skipping the scholarly intro. and diving right into the Chesterton part (chapter one). At any rate, after his talk I went to the UST library and dove into his book.
"Chesterton and the DaVinci Code" was the arresting title of the talk by Carl Olson, author of "The DaVinci Hoax" and "Will Catholics Be Left Behind?" Carl writes a lively column in The National Catholic Register which, like his talk, evidences his quick mind and sharp wit. The last talk by Steve Miller was also one of the most popular, relating to another current cultural phenom, "GKC vs. CSI by Steve Miller, "a Minneapolis labor attorney and detective fiction expert". There was also a small group seminar time when one could choose from five discussions (I went to Schwartz and the Inklings).
The banquet was a lot like GKC's view of the Inn, replete with music, jokes, a catered feast, wine and bon homie. There was also a contest for clerihews, that odd limerick-like form invented by GK and E. Bentley and taking the form AABB. Each evening we night people stayed up nearly all night drinking beer and smoking cigars, hopefully observing GK's dictum, that "we should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them." One night I jumped into a great talk with Joseph Pearce and Carl Olson on punk rock and gospel rock, one of my favorite topics. There was also iced tea and homemade wine provided in the daylight hours, along with crackers and cheese. I very much enjoyed the New York contingent who not only seemed to supply an infinite amount of beer but put on a midnight barbeque with dogs on the grill. As GK probably wouldn't say, jolly good show! -Gord Wilson.
The conference logo depicted Charles Dickens and GKC, on the anniversary of the latter having written a bio of the former. That occasioned the talk by Jill Kriegel on "A Chestertonian Reading of Dickens' "Dombey and Son." The other talks tended to be titled "Chesterton and ____," so that you didn't even need to know who GKC was to be interested ( even knowing who he was some of the titles intrigued me).
Dale Ahlquist, president of the ACS, kicked off the proceedings Thursday night with "Abandon All Hopelessness, Ye Who Enter Here". He was followed by John Peterson, the founding publisher of Gilbert Magazine, the official publication of the ACS, on "Chesterton and Marshall McLuhan". McLuhan was the '60s media critic who made the witty observations "the medium is the message" and "the medium is the massage". I even managed to find a used McLuhan book on one of the many book tables.
Friday after Jill Kriegel's talk Father Stanley Jaki held forth on "Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin: The Two Who Never Met". He also had a book table. I bought Chesterton: A Seer of Science. A long time ago I read Jaki's book, Brain, Mind and Computers, which won the Templeton Prize. Geir Hasnes came from Norway to present his talk, "Trials and Triumphs of a Chesterton Bibliographer." It focused on his efforts to compile a definitive and exhaustive bibliography of all things Chesterton. His powerpoint presentation was itself exhausting, although enlivened by Geir's sparkling and ironic sense of humor. He has searched minutaie wordwide in this monumental task which, when completed, will be a time warp in Chesterton scholarship.
Kurt Griffen compared and contrasted De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" with GKC's "What I Saw in America," although his bio billed him as "an opera singer in a rock band." Later at the banquet he fortunately regaled us with the latter talent. "Chesterton Unplugged" was the title of Christopher Check's talk, although he was far too animated to be considered a "speaker" and it was far to explosive to be termed a "talk". Absolutely Chestertonian in that regard. What else to expect from the Executive Vice President of the Rockford Institute? We also had the opportunity to subscribe to their publication, Chronicles, at an absurdly low rate (so I did).
After dinner (for those of us who threw for room and board), Joseph Pearce, the inexhaustible biographer of anyone you can name, held forth on "Chesterton and C.S. Lewis". Some of the material touched briefly on his book, "C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church", which was all fine with me as I found that a delightful read. And really, how could he not draw from his own books, which nearly took up an entire table in the foyer? The highlight of Friday night was a performance of GKC's play, "The Surprise." Dale Ahlquist's daughter did an amazing job as the princess. Apart from that I don't know any of the actors, but I'm quite sure that info will be on the ACS website (see link).
 |
 |
| Gord, Dale, Dorothy
Schlinger, Erich (EW) |
The Tremblays of
Texas and Gord |
He identified two modern mistakes: 1. that man is a thing, neither male nor female, and 2. that man is an animal. Man is not a breeeder like a chimpanzee, he said, calling modern culture "serial polygamy". The reason for long life, he noted, is life-long learning. Regarding marriage, he said that pair-bonds get tighter the longer they continue. This also has an ancient reason: hunting could not go on if humans mated outside the pair-bond. He also spoke in favor of maintaining genetic diversity. Destroying it leaves nothing for the unforseen future. Altogether amazng and a lot of food for thought.
I greatly enjoyed Adam Schwartz' talk on "Chesterton and Malcolm Muggeridge" and his small group discussion on the Inklings. Being in the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, that was one of the draws for me of the conference. I have far too many notes to quote. He's the author of a giant scholarly tome called The Third Spring which is about Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson and David Jones and the Catholic Literary revival in Britain, the Second Spring being associated with Newman). Amazon's price for this book is $65, to no fault of Adam's. I suggest in my Amazon review to view it as four biographies at about $15 each (it's certainly that much reading). I also suggest skipping the scholarly intro. and diving right into the Chesterton part (chapter one). At any rate, after his talk I went to the UST library and dove into his book.
"Chesterton and the DaVinci Code" was the arresting title of the talk by Carl Olson, author of "The DaVinci Hoax" and "Will Catholics Be Left Behind?" Carl writes a lively column in The National Catholic Register which, like his talk, evidences his quick mind and sharp wit. The last talk by Steve Miller was also one of the most popular, relating to another current cultural phenom, "GKC vs. CSI by Steve Miller, "a Minneapolis labor attorney and detective fiction expert". There was also a small group seminar time when one could choose from five discussions (I went to Schwartz and the Inklings).
The banquet was a lot like GKC's view of the Inn, replete with music, jokes, a catered feast, wine and bon homie. There was also a contest for clerihews, that odd limerick-like form invented by GK and E. Bentley and taking the form AABB. Each evening we night people stayed up nearly all night drinking beer and smoking cigars, hopefully observing GK's dictum, that "we should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them." One night I jumped into a great talk with Joseph Pearce and Carl Olson on punk rock and gospel rock, one of my favorite topics. There was also iced tea and homemade wine provided in the daylight hours, along with crackers and cheese. I very much enjoyed the New York contingent who not only seemed to supply an infinite amount of beer but put on a midnight barbeque with dogs on the grill. As GK probably wouldn't say, jolly good show! -Gord Wilson.