Somebody drew my attention to an opinion piece in the latest Sunday Independent, criticizing the recent proposal to ban smoking in private cars. The author begins by mentioning Chesterton:
STUCK on holiday recently with nothing to read but a dusty copy of the collected articles of GK Chesterton, I was soon glad there was nothing more appealing to pass the time, or I would never have discovered what great company the crusty old Edwardian essayist and novelist was.
Crusty? Surely not!
The entire article can be found here. (At the time of writing, anyway; some newspapers' websites allow non-subscribers access to only the most recent articles.)
Crusty was probably the one word you could never use to describe Chesterton. But it's good to see a member of the 'liberal' media recognizing Chesterton's greatest quality - the fact that he doesn't date.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like a bizarre choice of word to me, too. One of Chesterton's main criticisms of the modern world's hedonism and faddishness was that there was really no joy or fun in it, at bottom. Someone who was known to amuse children by throwing bread rolls in the air and catching them in his mouth was hardly crusty-- unless you're talking about the crust on the bread rolls...
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