Catholic Fiction

Michael Dirda, a Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for the Washington Post, has recently authored a book called Classics for Pleasure, about the abiding joy of reading “duh classics,” as Tony Curtis would say. Included in Dirda’s book is an essay on G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, which G.K. fans should be pleased-as-punch about. In an interview publicizing Dirda’s book, he spoke to his love of Chesterton’s Father Brown series and Thursday:

“I’m a great Chesterton fan, and own perhaps 40 of his books. Indeed, some years back I spoke at two successive Chesteron conferences in Toronto. The books you mention are his best fictions–along with The Napoleon of Notting Hill–and he’s probably not known because his style is so rich, dense with paradox, and because he espouses unpopular views, eg. he is religious, Catholic, and a supporter of an economic system called distributism. Not least, he was slightly tarred–wrongly so, for the most part–as anti-Semitic because of his association with Hilarie Belloc and his brother Cecil Chesterton, both of whom were, more or less.

But he’s an amazing writer–just the most brilliant journalist imaginable.”

As they say, it’s nice to have one’s opinion backed up by a competent authority.

Here’s the interview.

Dirda’s book also includes essays on Edward Gorey, Daphne du Maurier, Cicero, Erasmus, Dashiell Hammett, and a whole host of others. Sounds like a great read, and I love his eclectic selection of reading material.