G.K. Chesterton's Classic Essay on a Piece of Chalk.
The Essential Chesterton Essay If one had to recommend to a muggle, that is, to someone who lives outside the secret wizardly universe of GK Chesterton, which is the first and best and most essential essay of Chesterton’s to read, I would select the following, which appeared in the book HERETICS.
Fads and Public Opinion by G.K. Chesterton. Fads and Public Opinion is Chesterton's observations about the difference between English and American humor, Walt Whitman's poetry, and the beauty of older women, among other topics. It was published in his collection of essays, What I Saw In America (1922).
It is quite true that it was not I, G. K. Chesterton, who pulled the beard of an Irish chieftain by way of social introduction; it was John Plantagenet, afterwards King John; and I was not present. It was not I, but a much more distinguished literary gent, named Edmund Spenser, who concluded on the whole that the Irish had better be exterminated like vipers; nor did he even ask my advice on so.
Essays and criticism on G. K. Chesterton, including the works The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Ball and the Cross - Critical Survey of Long Fiction.
In this essay, Chesterton sings the praise of nonsense in literature. He says, nonsense adds beauty, imagination, and enjoyment to a literary piece. Without a dose of nonsense, literature will lose its charm, and wilL become dull. Our Puranas, Mahabharat and Ramayana have a heavy mix of nonsense that makes them so very fascinating.
Chesterton’s wit and mental nimble nature are on full display in this collection of essays from the British thinker. Most of the essays tally 4-6 pages each so this is an excellent book to be able to read in short snippets and the range of his topics is wide enough for several country roads to carry, but even as many roads may seem to take us to different places many can and often do deposit.
G.K. Chesterton was a master essayist. But reading his essays is not just an exercise in studying a literary form at its finest, it is an encounter with timeless truths that jump off the page as fresh and powerful as the day they were written.