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The Club of Queer Trades
British writers have long enjoyed inventing preposterous clubs with eccentric members, unusual qualifications for membership and zany rules of behavior. The brilliant and gifted G. K. Chesterton was no exception, and the entertaining short stories in this volume revolve around just such an institution. In The Club of Queer Trades , candidates qualify for admission by creating a thoroughly original profession and proving they can make a living from it.
Six marvelously funny episodes with improbable plots are made especially pleasurable through Chesterton's vivid descriptions of late Victorian London, sly pokes at the legal system, and a characteristic gift for delicious nonsense. In each story, a bizarre crime — such as kidnapping of a respected clergyman in "The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit" — seems in the process of being committed. Actually, the events are all frenzied activities traceable to club members or would-be members. Here are intriguing tales of a little old lady imprisoned in a gloomy private dungeon; of prim and proper matrons bent on committing evil deeds; of a former British army officer and his extremely unusual residence; and a host of other incredible characters and situations.
Admirers of Chesterton's work will be delighted to learn that this edition contains all 32 of the author's own original illustrations — the first republication to do so. In addition, a new Introduction on Chesterton's life and art and an appreciation of the special qualities of this work.
Six marvelously funny episodes with improbable plots are made especially pleasurable through Chesterton's vivid descriptions of late Victorian London, sly pokes at the legal system, and a characteristic gift for delicious nonsense. In each story, a bizarre crime — such as kidnapping of a respected clergyman in "The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit" — seems in the process of being committed. Actually, the events are all frenzied activities traceable to club members or would-be members. Here are intriguing tales of a little old lady imprisoned in a gloomy private dungeon; of prim and proper matrons bent on committing evil deeds; of a former British army officer and his extremely unusual residence; and a host of other incredible characters and situations.
Admirers of Chesterton's work will be delighted to learn that this edition contains all 32 of the author's own original illustrations — the first republication to do so. In addition, a new Introduction on Chesterton's life and art and an appreciation of the special qualities of this work.
146 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1905
215 people are currently reading
1783 people want to read
About the author
G.K. Chesterton
4,643 books5,743 followersGilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
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May 6, 2025
I found this title after harvesting at the library for the next few weeks. These novels inevitably all present an unexpected profession. It's pretty funny, sometimes far-fetched. The character of Basil, a former magistrate considered mad, seems particularly improbable with his ability to see the reality of personalities immediately. But it's excellent and quick to read, a delightful interlude.
I only knew of Gilbert Keith Chesterton from a few surveys by Father Brown I read a long time ago—finally, an author to remember when the need to smile through books arises.
I only knew of Gilbert Keith Chesterton from a few surveys by Father Brown I read a long time ago—finally, an author to remember when the need to smile through books arises.
October 12, 2021
These six short stories are light and amusing, but not shallow. Swinburne relates adventures with his friend Basil Grant, who is a retired and reclusive former judge, described as mad, mystical, and a poet, with almost no friends, but who “would talk to any one anywhere”. They discover people with a peculiar (“queer” in the old sense) and unique way of making a living, which makes them eligible for the select and secretive club of the title. I love the concept, and I enjoyed the individual cases.
Each character is delightfully and distinctly drawn, especially in their manner of speech, and the fifth story has a linguistic angle.
Chesterton’s writing is sometimes similar to Wodehouse, though I’m not sure either would appreciate the comparison. In “Mr. Mulliner Speaking”, PGW wrote “The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like GK Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.”. There are also Wildean flourishes of counter-intuitive epigrams and philosophical musings on truth, logic, and meaning.
The stories unfold with nods to detective fiction, especially when Basil’s much younger brother, Rupert, is involved: he's a private detective.
1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown, 5*
Major Brown, “a man with the natural beliefs and tastes of an old maid” and a passion for pansies (the flowers) comes to them with “one of the most astounding stories in the world”. That’s setting the bar high! But it is an extraordinary sequence of increasingly odd, alarming, puzzling, and surreal events: a shocking message spelled out in flowers, a mysterious woman, inexplicable references to property deeds and jackals, a violent attack, things vanishing, a letter, and an itemised bill.
Grant rejects the narrator’s obvious explanation:
“I never could believe in that man - what's his name, in those capital stories? - Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree.“
The revelation is both fantastical and realistic. Brilliant. The biggest surprise is that what was imagined in 1905 now happens for “real” in the digital world:
“There is no element in modern life that is more lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to seek all artistic existence in a sedentary state. If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book…”
2. The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation, 2*
This opens with good and thoughtful descriptions of “the real horror of the poor parts of London, the horror that is so totally missed and misrepresented by the sensational novelists”, Dickensian darkness and gaslight, and the excitement of a glimpse of “the wickedest man in England”. But soon there was too much running around, with too many brief appearances of characters that I didn’t really distinguish, all for a less-interesting revelation. A disappointment after the first story.
Image: "Basil bent suddenly down and tore a paper out of Sir Walter's breast-pocket." (Source.)
3. The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit, 4*
A “flappy and floppy” and excessively apologetic elderly clergyman turns up on an urgent matter of life and death, just as Swinburne is dressing to go out for dinner.
“I have never been forcibly dressed up as an old woman and made to take part in a crime in the character of an old woman.”
That tickles Swinburne’s interest, but by the end of Rev Ellis Shorter’s tale, Swinburne is baffled, and they both go to Basil Grant’s to figure it out, which Basil does, instantly. As a detective story, it’s weak: there isn’t a trail of clues and red-herrings. But as an amusing character study and a delightfully unexpected “queer trade”, I enjoyed it.
4. The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent, 4*
“He was a man who told the kind of adventures which win a man admiration, but not respect.”
Drummond Keith is an “elegant”, “nomadic”, and “very impecunious” middle-aged retired lieutenant who continually changes lodgings, and is “a teller of tall tales”. A house-agent finds him a house. A green house, that is very inconspicuous. Extraordinarily so. Or maybe just extraordinary.
“When you are guessing about any one who is sane, the sanest thing is the most likely; when you are guessing about any one who is, like our host, insane, the maddest thing is the most likely.”
5. The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd, 4*
Professor Chadd is an ethnologist with an interest in primitive culture and languages. Yes, the terminology is dated, but the underlying attitudes are more benevolent.
Basil Grant asserts that Zulu culture is not evolutionarily inferior. “Suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?”, and he goes on to assert that “you know more about Zulus in the sense that you are a scientist, I know more about them in the sense that I am a savage”. The next day, Grant is summoned by Chadd’s sisters, who are distraught that he seems to have gone mad. It’s a very original story, with a thought-provoking angle for those interested in linguistics.
Image: "Basil Grant talking to Mr Bingham of the British Museum." (The original caption is a spoiler.)) (Source.)
6. The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady, 4*
Rupert Grant is prone to “long fantasias of detective deduction” and “with this mad logic in his brain, seeing a conspiracy in a cab accident”. He spots a suspicious milkman and follows him, with Swinburne in tow. What they find is unexpected, and the reaction to their intervention even more so. Unusually, this mystery isn’t solved until months later. This is the last story in the collection, so the final section wraps up the book.
So what are the six queer trades?
1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown
Image: "The cries appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the pavement.." (Source.)
2. The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation
3. The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit
This particular “queer trade” is one I would use occasionally, if I could afford it.
4. The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent
5. The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd
6. The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady
Quotes
• “He welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds.”
• “The peculiar speech, which consisted of only saying about a quarter of each sentence, and that sharply, like the crack of a gun.”
• “She was a graceful, green-clad figure, with fiery red hair and a flavour of Bedford Park.” and “one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf.”
• “The most perfect place for talking on earth—the top of a tolerably deserted tramcar. To talk on the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the top of a flying hill is a fairy tale.”
• “‘No, thank you, no, thank you; not just now,’ he repeated with that hysterical eagerness with which people who do not drink at all often try to convey that on any other night of the week they would sit up all night drinking rum-punch.”
• “Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction… for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”
• “A solitary old gentleman… He had an egglike head, froglike jaws, and a grey hairy fringe of aureole round the lower part of his face; the whole combined with a reddish, aquiline nose. He wore a shabby black frock-coat, a sort of semi-clerical tie worn at a very unclerical angle, and looked, generally speaking, about as unlike a house-agent as anything could look, short of something like a sandwich man or a Scotch Highlander.”
• He “had remained throughout the proceedings in a state of Napoleonic calm, which might be more accurately described as a state of Napoleonic stupidity.”
• “Buttering his toast with an energy that was somewhat exultant.”
• “A livid sunset seemed to look at us with a sort of sickly smile before it died.”
• “[We] exchanged a few words about the weather. Then we had talked for about an hour about politics and God; for men always talk about the most important things to total strangers.”
• “Miracles should always happen in broad daylight. The night makes them credible and therefore commonplace.”
• “His reasoning is particularly cold and clear, and invariably leads him wrong. But his poetry comes in abruptly and leads him right.”
• “The house… stood up ponderous and purple against the last pallor of twilight. It looked like an ogre's castle.”
• “I know of nothing that is safe… except, possibly - death”
Other humorous short stories
I read the first of these in Paul Merton’s anthology, Funny Ha Ha, and enjoyed it so much, I sought out the rest. See my review of Funny Ha Ha, HERE), for other such stories, by 60 different authors.
You can read all six stories on Gutenberg.org, HERE.
Each character is delightfully and distinctly drawn, especially in their manner of speech, and the fifth story has a linguistic angle.
Chesterton’s writing is sometimes similar to Wodehouse, though I’m not sure either would appreciate the comparison. In “Mr. Mulliner Speaking”, PGW wrote “The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like GK Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.”. There are also Wildean flourishes of counter-intuitive epigrams and philosophical musings on truth, logic, and meaning.
The stories unfold with nods to detective fiction, especially when Basil’s much younger brother, Rupert, is involved: he's a private detective.
1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown, 5*
Major Brown, “a man with the natural beliefs and tastes of an old maid” and a passion for pansies (the flowers) comes to them with “one of the most astounding stories in the world”. That’s setting the bar high! But it is an extraordinary sequence of increasingly odd, alarming, puzzling, and surreal events: a shocking message spelled out in flowers, a mysterious woman, inexplicable references to property deeds and jackals, a violent attack, things vanishing, a letter, and an itemised bill.
Grant rejects the narrator’s obvious explanation:
“I never could believe in that man - what's his name, in those capital stories? - Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree.“
The revelation is both fantastical and realistic. Brilliant. The biggest surprise is that what was imagined in 1905 now happens for “real” in the digital world:
“There is no element in modern life that is more lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to seek all artistic existence in a sedentary state. If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book…”
2. The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation, 2*
This opens with good and thoughtful descriptions of “the real horror of the poor parts of London, the horror that is so totally missed and misrepresented by the sensational novelists”, Dickensian darkness and gaslight, and the excitement of a glimpse of “the wickedest man in England”. But soon there was too much running around, with too many brief appearances of characters that I didn’t really distinguish, all for a less-interesting revelation. A disappointment after the first story.
Image: "Basil bent suddenly down and tore a paper out of Sir Walter's breast-pocket." (Source.)
3. The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit, 4*
A “flappy and floppy” and excessively apologetic elderly clergyman turns up on an urgent matter of life and death, just as Swinburne is dressing to go out for dinner.
“I have never been forcibly dressed up as an old woman and made to take part in a crime in the character of an old woman.”
That tickles Swinburne’s interest, but by the end of Rev Ellis Shorter’s tale, Swinburne is baffled, and they both go to Basil Grant’s to figure it out, which Basil does, instantly. As a detective story, it’s weak: there isn’t a trail of clues and red-herrings. But as an amusing character study and a delightfully unexpected “queer trade”, I enjoyed it.
4. The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent, 4*
“He was a man who told the kind of adventures which win a man admiration, but not respect.”
Drummond Keith is an “elegant”, “nomadic”, and “very impecunious” middle-aged retired lieutenant who continually changes lodgings, and is “a teller of tall tales”. A house-agent finds him a house. A green house, that is very inconspicuous. Extraordinarily so. Or maybe just extraordinary.
“When you are guessing about any one who is sane, the sanest thing is the most likely; when you are guessing about any one who is, like our host, insane, the maddest thing is the most likely.”
5. The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd, 4*
Professor Chadd is an ethnologist with an interest in primitive culture and languages. Yes, the terminology is dated, but the underlying attitudes are more benevolent.
Basil Grant asserts that Zulu culture is not evolutionarily inferior. “Suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?”, and he goes on to assert that “you know more about Zulus in the sense that you are a scientist, I know more about them in the sense that I am a savage”. The next day, Grant is summoned by Chadd’s sisters, who are distraught that he seems to have gone mad. It’s a very original story, with a thought-provoking angle for those interested in linguistics.
Image: "Basil Grant talking to Mr Bingham of the British Museum." (The original caption is a spoiler.)) (Source.)
6. The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady, 4*
Rupert Grant is prone to “long fantasias of detective deduction” and “with this mad logic in his brain, seeing a conspiracy in a cab accident”. He spots a suspicious milkman and follows him, with Swinburne in tow. What they find is unexpected, and the reaction to their intervention even more so. Unusually, this mystery isn’t solved until months later. This is the last story in the collection, so the final section wraps up the book.
So what are the six queer trades?
1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown
Image: "The cries appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the pavement.." (Source.)
2. The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation
3. The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit
This particular “queer trade” is one I would use occasionally, if I could afford it.
4. The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent
5. The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd
6. The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady
Quotes
• “He welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds.”
• “The peculiar speech, which consisted of only saying about a quarter of each sentence, and that sharply, like the crack of a gun.”
• “She was a graceful, green-clad figure, with fiery red hair and a flavour of Bedford Park.” and “one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf.”
• “The most perfect place for talking on earth—the top of a tolerably deserted tramcar. To talk on the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the top of a flying hill is a fairy tale.”
• “‘No, thank you, no, thank you; not just now,’ he repeated with that hysterical eagerness with which people who do not drink at all often try to convey that on any other night of the week they would sit up all night drinking rum-punch.”
• “Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction… for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”
• “A solitary old gentleman… He had an egglike head, froglike jaws, and a grey hairy fringe of aureole round the lower part of his face; the whole combined with a reddish, aquiline nose. He wore a shabby black frock-coat, a sort of semi-clerical tie worn at a very unclerical angle, and looked, generally speaking, about as unlike a house-agent as anything could look, short of something like a sandwich man or a Scotch Highlander.”
• He “had remained throughout the proceedings in a state of Napoleonic calm, which might be more accurately described as a state of Napoleonic stupidity.”
• “Buttering his toast with an energy that was somewhat exultant.”
• “A livid sunset seemed to look at us with a sort of sickly smile before it died.”
• “[We] exchanged a few words about the weather. Then we had talked for about an hour about politics and God; for men always talk about the most important things to total strangers.”
• “Miracles should always happen in broad daylight. The night makes them credible and therefore commonplace.”
• “His reasoning is particularly cold and clear, and invariably leads him wrong. But his poetry comes in abruptly and leads him right.”
• “The house… stood up ponderous and purple against the last pallor of twilight. It looked like an ogre's castle.”
• “I know of nothing that is safe… except, possibly - death”
Other humorous short stories
I read the first of these in Paul Merton’s anthology, Funny Ha Ha, and enjoyed it so much, I sought out the rest. See my review of Funny Ha Ha, HERE), for other such stories, by 60 different authors.
You can read all six stories on Gutenberg.org, HERE.
February 18, 2024
Not queer as in LGBTQXYZ or whatever
At the time Chesterton wrote these stories, queer was a useful and perfectly acceptable word meaning odd, strange, unusual, etc. It was highjacked, beginning in about the 1920's with the word applied to themselves by homosexuals. The meaning changed to one of scorn and insult and has now changed to be again used by some(?) homosexuals as self description.
These stories are strange adventures and quasi mysteries. Well written as would be expected from Chesterton's pen, they do require more suspension of disbelief than his Father Brown stories. The trades invented by Chesterton in the six stories are illustrative of his wonderful imagination. All make sense upon denouement.
Addendum 3/17/24: Amazon has removed this review.
At the time Chesterton wrote these stories, queer was a useful and perfectly acceptable word meaning odd, strange, unusual, etc. It was highjacked, beginning in about the 1920's with the word applied to themselves by homosexuals. The meaning changed to one of scorn and insult and has now changed to be again used by some(?) homosexuals as self description.
These stories are strange adventures and quasi mysteries. Well written as would be expected from Chesterton's pen, they do require more suspension of disbelief than his Father Brown stories. The trades invented by Chesterton in the six stories are illustrative of his wonderful imagination. All make sense upon denouement.
Addendum 3/17/24: Amazon has removed this review.
March 16, 2011
How even to review this? And what exactly is the point? For that matter, what was the point of it being written? It certainly wasn't a necessary book. I don't believe the great Catholic ever sat down and said, "How to save England and the rest of the world? Ah, this will do the trick." And if I'm mistaken, if he did utter such a phrase, it wasn't about this book. Perhaps he simply needed to stretch the legs of his mind--indeed, I shall take that as the excuse (it will serve as well as any other), and now, allow me to invite you to accompany him in his hike, for the air has the smell of salt, yet there are mountains, valleys, dark close woods and expansive vistas unfolding as vast as the very designs of God.
How does one take words--I dare say he employed none that I am not on intimate terms with--and craft such glories as this book with them? I love words (and use them interminably), but they do not perform for me the way they do for him. I would give all I own to be able to see the world with the eyes of Chesterton—wait: no, this isn't true. I would not. Were I to receive his vision it would terrify me, and I would probably give all I own to be restored to my blind state. Indeed, what would a man give to restore the roof of the sky if it were at a moment rent away?
It is no wonder that we build house-boxes to enclose our souls so that the four corners of the world do not tear them apart. We build fences and post signs and do all we can to make the world a safe, a soft place, when there is nothing quite so suddenly savage or terrible as a dandelion or a daffodil, and a dragon is no more awesome (though grown somewhat less common) than a dragonfly. Yet we seek to finally and fully conquer nature through knowledge: we seek to tame the world with science.
But Chesterton did not. He wanted the world to be wild, and he rebelled at the tired, grey apathy of sin that disguises itself in the guise of respectability and wisdom. So, he carried a brace of loaded pistols, a dagger, a sword cane and a cape, and he laughed as loudly and often as a child. For the world was not a safe place, and he was not a safe man.
Indeed, Chesterton was a man, who, with N. D. Wilson, would not be afraid that he would fall off a cliff, but that he would jump.
How does one take words--I dare say he employed none that I am not on intimate terms with--and craft such glories as this book with them? I love words (and use them interminably), but they do not perform for me the way they do for him. I would give all I own to be able to see the world with the eyes of Chesterton—wait: no, this isn't true. I would not. Were I to receive his vision it would terrify me, and I would probably give all I own to be restored to my blind state. Indeed, what would a man give to restore the roof of the sky if it were at a moment rent away?
It is no wonder that we build house-boxes to enclose our souls so that the four corners of the world do not tear them apart. We build fences and post signs and do all we can to make the world a safe, a soft place, when there is nothing quite so suddenly savage or terrible as a dandelion or a daffodil, and a dragon is no more awesome (though grown somewhat less common) than a dragonfly. Yet we seek to finally and fully conquer nature through knowledge: we seek to tame the world with science.
But Chesterton did not. He wanted the world to be wild, and he rebelled at the tired, grey apathy of sin that disguises itself in the guise of respectability and wisdom. So, he carried a brace of loaded pistols, a dagger, a sword cane and a cape, and he laughed as loudly and often as a child. For the world was not a safe place, and he was not a safe man.
Indeed, Chesterton was a man, who, with N. D. Wilson, would not be afraid that he would fall off a cliff, but that he would jump.
July 15, 2023
Born into a middle-class family, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a British writer of both fiction and nonfiction, much of the latter on religious subjects. (He was a staunch advocate for classical Christianity, ultimately converting to Roman Catholicism from High Anglicanism in 1922.) Artistically talented, as a young man he considered becoming an artist, and did take college art classes (as well as classes in English literature); but he never took a degree, and wound up becoming a journalist instead, which led into other forms of writing. In the person of his series protagonist Father Brown, he created the first of the mystery genre's many 20th-century clerical sleuths. His prose style is characterized by exuberant humor, joi de vivre, love of paradox, and a really zany imagination.
These qualities are never more in evidence than in this short (159 p.) collection of six stories. They're unified by having the same narrator, “Swinburne,” who relates (fictional) experiences he had with his friend Basil Grant, a retired judge, and often shared with Basil's younger brother Rupert, a private detective of sorts. All of these experiences revolve around members of the eponymous Club of Queer Trades, who, in order to be eligible, “...must have invented the method by which he earns his living. It must be an entirely new trade. ....it must not be a mere application or variation of an existing trade. ....the trade must be a genuine commercial source of income, the support of its inventor.” Each of the six stories introduces the narrator to one of these trades, invented by Chesterton with a remarkable fertility of imagination, and unfolded to the reader through a series of wild and bizarre plots that are sometimes seemingly surreal, but which make perfect sense once they're explained. (That's not to say that they don't require very considerable suspension of disbelief.... :-) )
Calling the tales “general fiction” seemingly stretches the definition. True, they're set in the author's Edwardian present, and in or around London, not in a fantasy world. Neither magic nor hitherto unguessed discoveries of science are involved. But the events are so genuinely outre' and off the wall that it's hard to characterize them as descriptions of “everyday life.” Chesterton's humor here, though, is consistently of a whimsical and good-natured sort. Even though I'd previously read and liked other Chesterton works, this one wasn't on my radar until it was nominated for a common read in one of my Goodreads groups, and I only read it because it was picked for that. It did prove to be entertaining, but that's the best that can be said for it. The stories aren't characterized by deep, serious messages, and break no new literary ground; and I wouldn't recommend them as a first introduction to the author's work. For that, I'd recommend a nonfiction work like Orthodoxy, either of the novels The Man Who Was Thursday or The Napoleon of Notting Hill, or (especially) his mystery stories. But even a second-string book by Chesterton has its rewards!
These qualities are never more in evidence than in this short (159 p.) collection of six stories. They're unified by having the same narrator, “Swinburne,” who relates (fictional) experiences he had with his friend Basil Grant, a retired judge, and often shared with Basil's younger brother Rupert, a private detective of sorts. All of these experiences revolve around members of the eponymous Club of Queer Trades, who, in order to be eligible, “...must have invented the method by which he earns his living. It must be an entirely new trade. ....it must not be a mere application or variation of an existing trade. ....the trade must be a genuine commercial source of income, the support of its inventor.” Each of the six stories introduces the narrator to one of these trades, invented by Chesterton with a remarkable fertility of imagination, and unfolded to the reader through a series of wild and bizarre plots that are sometimes seemingly surreal, but which make perfect sense once they're explained. (That's not to say that they don't require very considerable suspension of disbelief.... :-) )
Calling the tales “general fiction” seemingly stretches the definition. True, they're set in the author's Edwardian present, and in or around London, not in a fantasy world. Neither magic nor hitherto unguessed discoveries of science are involved. But the events are so genuinely outre' and off the wall that it's hard to characterize them as descriptions of “everyday life.” Chesterton's humor here, though, is consistently of a whimsical and good-natured sort. Even though I'd previously read and liked other Chesterton works, this one wasn't on my radar until it was nominated for a common read in one of my Goodreads groups, and I only read it because it was picked for that. It did prove to be entertaining, but that's the best that can be said for it. The stories aren't characterized by deep, serious messages, and break no new literary ground; and I wouldn't recommend them as a first introduction to the author's work. For that, I'd recommend a nonfiction work like Orthodoxy, either of the novels The Man Who Was Thursday or The Napoleon of Notting Hill, or (especially) his mystery stories. But even a second-string book by Chesterton has its rewards!
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April 11, 2021I read a lot of Chesterton in my late teens and early 20's. Chesterton's penchant for paradox shows up in these stories. However, Chesterton would sometimes paint himself into a corner alluding to paradox too often in his books defending Christianity and Catholicism.
Chesterton's narrator here is Swinburne. That can't be a coincidence. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was big in his day, but is a now a forgotten Victorian poet and novelist who Chesterton liked to cite in debates about Christianity.
In his own time, Swinburne may have been best known as author of the poem "Hymn to Proserpine" (1866), with the famous lines...
"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death."
It was supposed to be a riff on the dying words of Emperor Julian "the Apostate." But it was also riff against what Swinburne hated about Victorian Christianity.
Swinburne expresses his defiance thus with words attributed to Julian...
"Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end."
Swinburne set his hopes on the collapse of Christianity, which we now know is the case in the UK today.
====
Another thing that stood out for me in these stories was Chesterton making fun of Sherlock Holmes.
In defending himself against being considered just another eccentric Victorian, with many interests and hobbies, one character, Rupert Grant, says....
"I am and have been for some time," said Rupert, with some dignity, "a private detective.”
However, it his brother Basil, a retired judge with a penchant for the mystical, and often a paucity of evidence, who solves crimes, not brother Rupert bungling around with his Holmesian methods.
In response to a verbose witness (which we learn later was intentional) narrator Swinburne says...
"He uttered all this not only with deliberation, but with something that can only be called, by a contradictory phrase, eager deliberation. He had, I think, a vague memory in his head of the detectives in the detective stories, who always sternly require that nothing should be kept back."
And editorializes more specifically....
"I never could believe in that man— what's his name, in those capital stories?— Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up— only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars."
From what I know from Chesterton, he would never have been comfortable being limited to the Holmes method, although I doubt Arthur Conan Doyle's later involvement in spiritualism would have met with Chesterton's approval either.
It's been a long time since I've read the Father Brown mysteries. But I do recall that he is not a Sherlock Holmes with a clerical collar. He's closer to these queer trade stories in mixing in intuition and even mysticism.
==============
Chesterton is regarded as the hub that directly influenced the Christians profiled in the book at this link. (I've read most of the books by those being profiled). Chesterton was a medieval romantic, as was Lewis and Tolkien.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
But it seems the influence has not lasted in the U.K. Today, only 3.7% of the English people are evangelical. And the Church of England membership is half of that.
The influence is also waning in the U.S.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
==================
for more of what's in the Queer Trades book, I recommend Cecily's review...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Chesterton's narrator here is Swinburne. That can't be a coincidence. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was big in his day, but is a now a forgotten Victorian poet and novelist who Chesterton liked to cite in debates about Christianity.
In his own time, Swinburne may have been best known as author of the poem "Hymn to Proserpine" (1866), with the famous lines...
"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death."
It was supposed to be a riff on the dying words of Emperor Julian "the Apostate." But it was also riff against what Swinburne hated about Victorian Christianity.
Swinburne expresses his defiance thus with words attributed to Julian...
"Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end."
Swinburne set his hopes on the collapse of Christianity, which we now know is the case in the UK today.
====
Another thing that stood out for me in these stories was Chesterton making fun of Sherlock Holmes.
In defending himself against being considered just another eccentric Victorian, with many interests and hobbies, one character, Rupert Grant, says....
"I am and have been for some time," said Rupert, with some dignity, "a private detective.”
However, it his brother Basil, a retired judge with a penchant for the mystical, and often a paucity of evidence, who solves crimes, not brother Rupert bungling around with his Holmesian methods.
In response to a verbose witness (which we learn later was intentional) narrator Swinburne says...
"He uttered all this not only with deliberation, but with something that can only be called, by a contradictory phrase, eager deliberation. He had, I think, a vague memory in his head of the detectives in the detective stories, who always sternly require that nothing should be kept back."
And editorializes more specifically....
"I never could believe in that man— what's his name, in those capital stories?— Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up— only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars."
From what I know from Chesterton, he would never have been comfortable being limited to the Holmes method, although I doubt Arthur Conan Doyle's later involvement in spiritualism would have met with Chesterton's approval either.
It's been a long time since I've read the Father Brown mysteries. But I do recall that he is not a Sherlock Holmes with a clerical collar. He's closer to these queer trade stories in mixing in intuition and even mysticism.
==============
Chesterton is regarded as the hub that directly influenced the Christians profiled in the book at this link. (I've read most of the books by those being profiled). Chesterton was a medieval romantic, as was Lewis and Tolkien.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
But it seems the influence has not lasted in the U.K. Today, only 3.7% of the English people are evangelical. And the Church of England membership is half of that.
The influence is also waning in the U.S.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
==================
for more of what's in the Queer Trades book, I recommend Cecily's review...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
November 5, 2023
2.5 stars. This is a small collection of interconnected stories that highlight a particular "queer" trade that in the contemporary world would be considered odd at best and crazy by most. Some of the stories were delightfully funny but others fell flat for me. Most put our narrator and his two friends on what would seem like a wild goose chase only to have the puzzle solved at the end of each story. I will say the final denouement in the last story was a surprise to me!
This was my first foray into the work of Chesterton and I admit I haven't even seen any of the Father Brown mysteries on TV. Although I had this small volume for almost a week, it can be read in a day.
I have read Werner's review of this work and have tagged it for those interested in reading a wonderful more erudite review than mine!
This was my first foray into the work of Chesterton and I admit I haven't even seen any of the Father Brown mysteries on TV. Although I had this small volume for almost a week, it can be read in a day.
I have read Werner's review of this work and have tagged it for those interested in reading a wonderful more erudite review than mine!
June 10, 2018
<< Πρόκειται για μια εκκεντρική μποέμικη λέσχη που θέτει μόνο έναν αλλά αποκλειστικό όρο για την εγγραφή, ότι ο υποψήφιος πρέπει να έχει επινοήσει αυτός ο ίδιος τον τρόπο με τον οποίο κερδίζει τα προς το ζην. Πρώτον δεν πρέπει να πρόκειται για απλή εφαρμογή ή παραλλαγή ενός ήδη γνωστού επαγγέλματος. Δεύτερον, το επάγγελμα πρέπει ν’ αποτελεί γνήσιο πόρο εισοδήματος για τον επινοητή του >>
Έτσι ξεκινάει η Λέσχη Αλλόκοτων Επαγγελμάτων και ύστερα απ’ αυτό το πρώτο κεφάλαιο, μπορεί να διαβαστεί με οποιοδήποτε τρόπο επιθυμούμε. Κάθε κεφάλαιο είναι σχεδόν μια ανεξάρτητη, αυτοτελής ιστορία, καρυκευμένη με το σαρκασμό και τις αντίθετες αλήθειες του Τσέστερτον που πάντα έχει κάτι να πει για την εποχή, τα ρεύματα, τις εκάστοτε μόδες που ακολουθούνται σα θρησκείες και προπάντων την τυφλότητα μας.
<< - Μια πρώτη εντύπωση είναι ίσως λιγότερο χειροπιαστή από τα γεγονότα
- Μα σε τι άλλο στηρίζεται ο κόσμος μας πάρεξ στις πρώτες εντυπώσεις; Τι θα μπορούσε να ‘ναι πιο χειροπιαστό; Η φιλοσοφία αυτού του κόσμου, φίλτατε, βασίζεται ίσως στα γεγονότα, οι δουλειές όμως στηρίζονται σε καταστάσεις κι εντυπώσεις πνευματικές. Πώς επιλέγεις ή απορρίπτεις έναν υπάλληλο; Του μετράς το κρανίο; Ανατρέχεις σε κάποιο εγχειρίδιο να βρεις στοιχεία για τη φυσιολογία του; Βασίζεσαι καθόλου σε γεγονότα; Ούτε κατά διάνοια. Προσλαμβάνεις έναν υπάλληλο που θα σώσει ίσως την επιχείρηση σου – απορρίπτεις έναν που ίσως θα έκλεβε το ταμείο, αποκλειστικά και μόνο βάσει αυτών των άμεσων μυστικιστικών εντυπώσεων, υπό το κράτος των οποίων τελώντας κι εγώ δηλώνω με απόλυτη σιγουριά και ειλικρίνεια ότι ο άνθρωπος αυτός που περπατάει στο δρόμο πλάϊ μας, είναι μασκαράς κι απατεώνας >>
Στο μεγαλύτερο μέρος του κειμένου το απόσπασμα παραπάνω είναι μια απ’ τις βασικές ιδέες που αποτελούν καύσιμο των κεφαλαίων. Ένας αγώνας να αποδειχτεί πως τα γεγονότα μας κρύβουν την σημαντικότατη ίσως απ’ όλες τις αλήθειες, πως στην πραγματικότητα τα αγνοούμε και άγονα αποφασίζουμε ψυχανεμιζόμενοι. Σκέψου τις φορές που δεν πήρες μια θέση, έχοντας ίδια προσόντα μ’ έναν άλλο υποψήφιο. Ας μην το πάμε στις ξεχωριστές κατηγορίες που ‘’ανταγωνίζεσαι’’ με μια όμορφη κοπέλα, ή με μια πρόθυμη, ούτε στην περίπτωση ενός πολύ όμορφου άντρα, ή της ύπαρξης γνωριμιών. Ας πούμε πως είστε δυο ίσης απήχησης εμφανισιακά ή ενδυματολογικά άνθρωποι. Γιατί εκείνος κι όχι εσύ; Επέκτεινε το στην καφετέρια. Γιατί η κοπέλα που σερβίρει τον καφέ είναι συγκρατημένη μαζί σου κι αμέσως ανοίγεται σ’ έναν άλλο πελάτη και χαριεντίζεται; Ναι να αγνοήσεις πάλι τις προηγούμενες περιπτώσεις. Βλέπουμε, αλλά δε βλέπουμε, συνυπολογίζουμε αλλά δε συνυπολογίζουμε.
Το βιβλίο είναι φρέσκο, ζωηρό, πικάντικο και ελαστικό. Πουθενά δε σε αφήνει να καταλάβεις πως είναι γραμμένο 113 χρόνια πριν. Και χρησιμοποιεί τη γνωστή φόρμα που τόσο αγαπάει να εκδικείται ο συγγραφέας, αυτή του αστυνομικού μυθιστορήματος και του λαϊκού ρομάντζου. Αυτή τη φορά κεντρικός χαρακτήρας είναι ο Μπέϊζιλ Γκραντ που άνετα θα μπορούσαμε να τον δούμε σα διασταύρωση του Ντοστογιεφκικού Ηλίθιου Πρίγκιπα, με τον Ντοϋλικό Σέρλοκ Χολμς. Κι αυτά τα διαπιστευτήρια, θαρρώ αρκούν.
<< Γραφείο περιπετειών και ειδυλλίων ΕΠΕ >>
Μου είχε αρέσει πολύ μια ταινία νομίζω με το Ντάγκλας, που πραγματεύεται μια στημένη περιπέτεια για να του ανακινήσει το αίσθημα να θέλει να ζήσει. Η ιδέα μου είχε φανεί πολύ πρωτότυπη. Που να ‘ξερα…
<< Η άποψη ότι ο πολιτισμός δεν είναι ποιητικός είναι φρεναπάτη των πολιτισμένων >>
Το έκτο και τελευταίο κεφάλαιο είναι ίσως το σημαντικότερο του βιβλίου, ικανό να μας θυμίσει αρκετά πράγματα για την ανθρωπιά και την ηθική και που είναι προάγγελος αρκετών κεφαλαίων της εμμονής του Καμύ στον Επαναστατημένο Άνθρωπο με την πολύ σωστή άποψη πως η εκλαίκευση μπορεί να οδηγήσει απ’ την τύφλωση, μέχρι και το θάνατο. Και σ’ άλλα βιβλία του Τσέστερτον, έχω ιχνογραφήσει απόψεις που αναλύονται στον Επαναστατημένο Άνθρωπο και είναι ίσως πολύ χαρακτηριστικό ότι δυο συγγραφείς φαινομενικά άσχετοι, ο πατέρας του Παραλόγου ως υπερκόσμιος κριτής των αιτιών που οδήγησαν στην πολιτισμική απίσχναση με κορυφές τους πολλούς εμφυλίους και τους δυο παγκοσμίους πολέμους και ο πατέρας του Παράδοξου, ως προφήτης των ίδιων αιτιών που ακόμη δεν είχαν οδηγήσει στον πιο θανατηφόρο απ’ τους πολέμους, είναι τόσα κοντά μεταξύ τους, που δημιουργεί μια ανησυχαστική ιδέα ασφάλειας για την επαναληψιμότητα της ιστορίας ακριβώς επειδή διαρκώς ξεχνάμε.
<< Όταν ο κόσμος μιλούσε για την πτώση του ανθρώπου, ήξερε τουλάχιστον ότι μιλούς για ένα μυστήριο που δεν καταλάβαινε. Τώρα που μιλάνε για την επιβίωση του ισχυρότερου, νομίζουν ότι το καταλαβαίνουν, ενώ όχι μόνο δεν έχουν ιδέα τι είναι αλλά έχουν και μια περί διαγραμμάτου λανθασμένη ιδέα του τι σημαίνουν αυτές οι λέξεις. Εκεί που μιλούσαν αφιλοσόφητα περί φιλοσοφίας, να μιλάνε τώρα αντιεπιστημονικά και περί επιστήμης >>
Μπορεί να διαβαστεί και έτσι αυτό εδώ το βιβλίο, με ελαφρά την καρδία για να διασκεδάσει κάποιες ώρες που θα αναλωνόμασταν διαφορετικά στην επίφαση φαντασίας και στην ψευδευφράδεια της τηλεόρασης. Αλλά ο σημαντικότερος ρόλος του είναι αυτός που επιτελεί στα χνάρια του Βολταίρου, ως μια σαρκαστική παραβολή για όλα εκείνα που μοιάζουν με αποτελέσματα, αλλά δεν είναι παρά τα αίτια, αιτιών που δεν αντιλαμβανόμαστε και που μας οδηγούν στην καχεξία και τη ρηγμάτωση.
Για τον Τσέστερτον ο άνθρωπος δεν έχει το δικαίωμα να μένει μακριά απ’ τον άνθρωπο και τον πολιτισμό, παρά μόνο από μιαν ανάγκη να απέχει απ’ τη μονοτονία αυτού που ονομάζουμε τάξη και την κάλπικη εκδήλωση εκείνου που λέμε πολιτισμό. Η ζωή βρίσκεται ανάμεσα στους ανθρώπους και οι άνθρωποι μπορούν να αναμορφωθούν αρκεί να τους δώσουμε την ευκαιρία να δουν τις αιτίες κι όχι τ’ αποτελέσματα.
<< Πρόσφερα λοιπόν τις υπηρεσίες μου ιδιωτικά ως καθαρά ηθικός κριτής επί καθαρά ηθικών θεμάτων και διαφορών. Δεν πέρασε πολύς καιρός κι αυτά τα ανεπίσημα δικαστήρια τιμής ( που κρατούνταν αυστηρώς μυστικά ) έγιναν γνωστά σ’ ολόκληρη την κοινωνία. Δικάζονταν ενώπιον μου άνθρωποι όχι για πρακτικές σαχλαμάρες για τις οποίες κανείς δε νοιάζεται, όπως η διάπραξη φόνου, ή η διατήρηση οικιακού ζώου χωρίς άδεια. Οι δικοί μου υπόλογοι δικάζονταν για ελαττώματα που καθιστούν πραγματικά την κοινωνική ζωή αδύνατη. Δικάζονταν για εγωισμό ή μεγαλομανία ή σκανδαλοθηρία ή τσιγκουνιά σε προσκεκλημένους ή πρόσωπα εξαρτώμενα απ’ αυτούς. Φυσικά, σ’ αυτά τα δικαστήρια οι αποφάσεις δεν είχαν νομική ισχύ και συνεπώς δεν ήταν υποχρεωτικά εκτελέσιμες. Η έκτιση της ποινής επαφιόταν αποκλειστικά στο αίσθημα τιμής των δυαδίκων, ανδρών και γυναικών, συμπεριλαμβανομένων και των ενόχων. Αλλά θα σας εξέπληττε αν σας έλεγα πόσο απόλυτα συμμορφώνονταν προς τις αποφάσεις μου >>
Έτσι ξεκινάει η Λέσχη Αλλόκοτων Επαγγελμάτων και ύστερα απ’ αυτό το πρώτο κεφάλαιο, μπορεί να διαβαστεί με οποιοδήποτε τρόπο επιθυμούμε. Κάθε κεφάλαιο είναι σχεδόν μια ανεξάρτητη, αυτοτελής ιστορία, καρυκευμένη με το σαρκασμό και τις αντίθετες αλήθειες του Τσέστερτον που πάντα έχει κάτι να πει για την εποχή, τα ρεύματα, τις εκάστοτε μόδες που ακολουθούνται σα θρησκείες και προπάντων την τυφλότητα μας.
<< - Μια πρώτη εντύπωση είναι ίσως λιγότερο χειροπιαστή από τα γεγονότα
- Μα σε τι άλλο στηρίζεται ο κόσμος μας πάρεξ στις πρώτες εντυπώσεις; Τι θα μπορούσε να ‘ναι πιο χειροπιαστό; Η φιλοσοφία αυτού του κόσμου, φίλτατε, βασίζεται ίσως στα γεγονότα, οι δουλειές όμως στηρίζονται σε καταστάσεις κι εντυπώσεις πνευματικές. Πώς επιλέγεις ή απορρίπτεις έναν υπάλληλο; Του μετράς το κρανίο; Ανατρέχεις σε κάποιο εγχειρίδιο να βρεις στοιχεία για τη φυσιολογία του; Βασίζεσαι καθόλου σε γεγονότα; Ούτε κατά διάνοια. Προσλαμβάνεις έναν υπάλληλο που θα σώσει ίσως την επιχείρηση σου – απορρίπτεις έναν που ίσως θα έκλεβε το ταμείο, αποκλειστικά και μόνο βάσει αυτών των άμεσων μυστικιστικών εντυπώσεων, υπό το κράτος των οποίων τελώντας κι εγώ δηλώνω με απόλυτη σιγουριά και ειλικρίνεια ότι ο άνθρωπος αυτός που περπατάει στο δρόμο πλάϊ μας, είναι μασκαράς κι απατεώνας >>
Στο μεγαλύτερο μέρος του κειμένου το απόσπασμα παραπάνω είναι μια απ’ τις βασικές ιδέες που αποτελούν καύσιμο των κεφαλαίων. Ένας αγώνας να αποδειχτεί πως τα γεγονότα μας κρύβουν την σημαντικότατη ίσως απ’ όλες τις αλήθειες, πως στην πραγματικότητα τα αγνοούμε και άγονα αποφασίζουμε ψυχανεμιζόμενοι. Σκέψου τις φορές που δεν πήρες μια θέση, έχοντας ίδια προσόντα μ’ έναν άλλο υποψήφιο. Ας μην το πάμε στις ξεχωριστές κατηγορίες που ‘’ανταγωνίζεσαι’’ με μια όμορφη κοπέλα, ή με μια πρόθυμη, ούτε στην περίπτωση ενός πολύ όμορφου άντρα, ή της ύπαρξης γνωριμιών. Ας πούμε πως είστε δυο ίσης απήχησης εμφανισιακά ή ενδυματολογικά άνθρωποι. Γιατί εκείνος κι όχι εσύ; Επέκτεινε το στην καφετέρια. Γιατί η κοπέλα που σερβίρει τον καφέ είναι συγκρατημένη μαζί σου κι αμέσως ανοίγεται σ’ έναν άλλο πελάτη και χαριεντίζεται; Ναι να αγνοήσεις πάλι τις προηγούμενες περιπτώσεις. Βλέπουμε, αλλά δε βλέπουμε, συνυπολογίζουμε αλλά δε συνυπολογίζουμε.
Το βιβλίο είναι φρέσκο, ζωηρό, πικάντικο και ελαστικό. Πουθενά δε σε αφήνει να καταλάβεις πως είναι γραμμένο 113 χρόνια πριν. Και χρησιμοποιεί τη γνωστή φόρμα που τόσο αγαπάει να εκδικείται ο συγγραφέας, αυτή του αστυνομικού μυθιστορήματος και του λαϊκού ρομάντζου. Αυτή τη φορά κεντρικός χαρακτήρας είναι ο Μπέϊζιλ Γκραντ που άνετα θα μπορούσαμε να τον δούμε σα διασταύρωση του Ντοστογιεφκικού Ηλίθιου Πρίγκιπα, με τον Ντοϋλικό Σέρλοκ Χολμς. Κι αυτά τα διαπιστευτήρια, θαρρώ αρκούν.
<< Γραφείο περιπετειών και ειδυλλίων ΕΠΕ >>
Μου είχε αρέσει πολύ μια ταινία νομίζω με το Ντάγκλας, που πραγματεύεται μια στημένη περιπέτεια για να του ανακινήσει το αίσθημα να θέλει να ζήσει. Η ιδέα μου είχε φανεί πολύ πρωτότυπη. Που να ‘ξερα…
<< Η άποψη ότι ο πολιτισμός δεν είναι ποιητικός είναι φρεναπάτη των πολιτισμένων >>
Το έκτο και τελευταίο κεφάλαιο είναι ίσως το σημαντικότερο του βιβλίου, ικανό να μας θυμίσει αρκετά πράγματα για την ανθρωπιά και την ηθική και που είναι προάγγελος αρκετών κεφαλαίων της εμμονής του Καμύ στον Επαναστατημένο Άνθρωπο με την πολύ σωστή άποψη πως η εκλαίκευση μπορεί να οδηγήσει απ’ την τύφλωση, μέχρι και το θάνατο. Και σ’ άλλα βιβλία του Τσέστερτον, έχω ιχνογραφήσει απόψεις που αναλύονται στον Επαναστατημένο Άνθρωπο και είναι ίσως πολύ χαρακτηριστικό ότι δυο συγγραφείς φαινομενικά άσχετοι, ο πατέρας του Παραλόγου ως υπερκόσμιος κριτής των αιτιών που οδήγησαν στην πολιτισμική απίσχναση με κορυφές τους πολλούς εμφυλίους και τους δυο παγκοσμίους πολέμους και ο πατέρας του Παράδοξου, ως προφήτης των ίδιων αιτιών που ακόμη δεν είχαν οδηγήσει στον πιο θανατηφόρο απ’ τους πολέμους, είναι τόσα κοντά μεταξύ τους, που δημιουργεί μια ανησυχαστική ιδέα ασφάλειας για την επαναληψιμότητα της ιστορίας ακριβώς επειδή διαρκώς ξεχνάμε.
<< Όταν ο κόσμος μιλούσε για την πτώση του ανθρώπου, ήξερε τουλάχιστον ότι μιλούς για ένα μυστήριο που δεν καταλάβαινε. Τώρα που μιλάνε για την επιβίωση του ισχυρότερου, νομίζουν ότι το καταλαβαίνουν, ενώ όχι μόνο δεν έχουν ιδέα τι είναι αλλά έχουν και μια περί διαγραμμάτου λανθασμένη ιδέα του τι σημαίνουν αυτές οι λέξεις. Εκεί που μιλούσαν αφιλοσόφητα περί φιλοσοφίας, να μιλάνε τώρα αντιεπιστημονικά και περί επιστήμης >>
Μπορεί να διαβαστεί και έτσι αυτό εδώ το βιβλίο, με ελαφρά την καρδία για να διασκεδάσει κάποιες ώρες που θα αναλωνόμασταν διαφορετικά στην επίφαση φαντασίας και στην ψευδευφράδεια της τηλεόρασης. Αλλά ο σημαντικότερος ρόλος του είναι αυτός που επιτελεί στα χνάρια του Βολταίρου, ως μια σαρκαστική παραβολή για όλα εκείνα που μοιάζουν με αποτελέσματα, αλλά δεν είναι παρά τα αίτια, αιτιών που δεν αντιλαμβανόμαστε και που μας οδηγούν στην καχεξία και τη ρηγμάτωση.
Για τον Τσέστερτον ο άνθρωπος δεν έχει το δικαίωμα να μένει μακριά απ’ τον άνθρωπο και τον πολιτισμό, παρά μόνο από μιαν ανάγκη να απέχει απ’ τη μονοτονία αυτού που ονομάζουμε τάξη και την κάλπικη εκδήλωση εκείνου που λέμε πολιτισμό. Η ζωή βρίσκεται ανάμεσα στους ανθρώπους και οι άνθρωποι μπορούν να αναμορφωθούν αρκεί να τους δώσουμε την ευκαιρία να δουν τις αιτίες κι όχι τ’ αποτελέσματα.
<< Πρόσφερα λοιπόν τις υπηρεσίες μου ιδιωτικά ως καθαρά ηθικός κριτής επί καθαρά ηθικών θεμάτων και διαφορών. Δεν πέρασε πολύς καιρός κι αυτά τα ανεπίσημα δικαστήρια τιμής ( που κρατούνταν αυστηρώς μυστικά ) έγιναν γνωστά σ’ ολόκληρη την κοινωνία. Δικάζονταν ενώπιον μου άνθρωποι όχι για πρακτικές σαχλαμάρες για τις οποίες κανείς δε νοιάζεται, όπως η διάπραξη φόνου, ή η διατήρηση οικιακού ζώου χωρίς άδεια. Οι δικοί μου υπόλογοι δικάζονταν για ελαττώματα που καθιστούν πραγματικά την κοινωνική ζωή αδύνατη. Δικάζονταν για εγωισμό ή μεγαλομανία ή σκανδαλοθηρία ή τσιγκουνιά σε προσκεκλημένους ή πρόσωπα εξαρτώμενα απ’ αυτούς. Φυσικά, σ’ αυτά τα δικαστήρια οι αποφάσεις δεν είχαν νομική ισχύ και συνεπώς δεν ήταν υποχρεωτικά εκτελέσιμες. Η έκτιση της ποινής επαφιόταν αποκλειστικά στο αίσθημα τιμής των δυαδίκων, ανδρών και γυναικών, συμπεριλαμβανομένων και των ενόχων. Αλλά θα σας εξέπληττε αν σας έλεγα πόσο απόλυτα συμμορφώνονταν προς τις αποφάσεις μου >>
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April 26, 2018Tough book for a star rating, really. Like a 3.6
http://www.crimesegments.com/2018/04/...
In The Club of Queer Trades, Chesterton takes to the familiar Holmes and Watson-ish format to tell his own tales, following the adventures of detective Rupert Grant and Swinburne, the narrator of these tales, who is often dragged into Rupert's adventures. Add into the mix Rupert's brother Basil who generally comes up with the real solution to Rupert's cases. The thing is that, when all is said and done, Chesterton has given us much more of a detective-story parody here, but it's parody with a purpose.
Exactly what oddball trades are involved in the six tales centered around the Club of Queer Trades I won't say, since a) they have to do with the short cases in this book and b) half the fun is in figuring out exactly what each might be as you're reading each story and once you get the pattern of these tales down in your head.
What I will say is that as far as the actual detection that happens in this book, there are some clever conundrums to be found here. My favorite is the "Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit," which not only presents a clever little mystery but also made me laugh out loud. And as far as the actual detective who is "solving" these cases, Rupert takes himself quite seriously, but he has a habit of never being right in his deductions and ends up deferring to Basil who has a way of seeing exactly what's going on in each situation.
What seems to be a lot of silliness actually has some serious purpose when all is said and done. The trick is that you have to get to the end of the book before actually discovering what that purpose really is. And once again, it's a book where reading simply for plot is well beyond the point as so many good books are. While it turned out to be anything but what I thought it might be, The Club of Queer Trades is actually a delightful and entertaining book. People who enjoy Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries (not the later TV versions but the short stories themselves) will find that same sense of understanding of human nature in this book but this one makes for a completely different sort of reading experience. It won't be for everyone, but it suited me just fine.
http://www.crimesegments.com/2018/04/...
In The Club of Queer Trades, Chesterton takes to the familiar Holmes and Watson-ish format to tell his own tales, following the adventures of detective Rupert Grant and Swinburne, the narrator of these tales, who is often dragged into Rupert's adventures. Add into the mix Rupert's brother Basil who generally comes up with the real solution to Rupert's cases. The thing is that, when all is said and done, Chesterton has given us much more of a detective-story parody here, but it's parody with a purpose.
Exactly what oddball trades are involved in the six tales centered around the Club of Queer Trades I won't say, since a) they have to do with the short cases in this book and b) half the fun is in figuring out exactly what each might be as you're reading each story and once you get the pattern of these tales down in your head.
What I will say is that as far as the actual detection that happens in this book, there are some clever conundrums to be found here. My favorite is the "Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit," which not only presents a clever little mystery but also made me laugh out loud. And as far as the actual detective who is "solving" these cases, Rupert takes himself quite seriously, but he has a habit of never being right in his deductions and ends up deferring to Basil who has a way of seeing exactly what's going on in each situation.
What seems to be a lot of silliness actually has some serious purpose when all is said and done. The trick is that you have to get to the end of the book before actually discovering what that purpose really is. And once again, it's a book where reading simply for plot is well beyond the point as so many good books are. While it turned out to be anything but what I thought it might be, The Club of Queer Trades is actually a delightful and entertaining book. People who enjoy Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries (not the later TV versions but the short stories themselves) will find that same sense of understanding of human nature in this book but this one makes for a completely different sort of reading experience. It won't be for everyone, but it suited me just fine.
January 3, 2020
C’è una parola che mi si affaccia nel cervello ogni volta che mi gusto un Chesterton, e questa parola è delicatezza.
Chesterton aveva un dono del tutto peculiare e di cui credo abbia avuto modo di ringraziarLo lungamente, dopo la dipartita dal mondo terreno: la capacità di dipingere con pennellate quasi eteree i suoi personaggi, e renderli più solidi della roccia. E ancora: la capacità di descrivere l’Uomo (non un uomo, l’Uomo) nelle sue piccolezze e nelle sue fragilità, senza per questo dare mai l’impressione di formulare un giudizio definitivo (sebbene potesse anche apparire caustico, chi ha letto ritengo che sappia). Gettando, ed è la sua caratteristica che me lo rende irresistibile, una luce sempre nuova e imprevedibile sugli eventi, anche quelli immaginati. Così – come capita in questo splendido Il Club dei mestieri stravaganti – un delitto non è mai un delitto (soprattutto quando uno sherlockiano co-protagonista vorrebbe renderlo tale), l’ordinario non lo è mai del tutto.
Ed ammettiamolo, una buona volta: non c’è nulla di più vero! La vita non è una concatenazione di fatti logici, la pura deduzione quasi mai è rappresentativa della realtà. E allora quanto è più bello vedere i nostri giorni attraverso gli occhi sognanti ed insieme concreti di uno scrittore semplicemente enorme!
La citazione:
"Ogni particolare indica qualche cosa, certo, ma in genere indica la cosa sbagliata. A me sembra che i fatti indichino in tutte le direzioni, come i mille rami di un albero. È solo la vita dell’albero che ha unità e si innalza, solo il sangue verde che sgorga, come una fontana, verso le stelle."
Chesterton aveva un dono del tutto peculiare e di cui credo abbia avuto modo di ringraziarLo lungamente, dopo la dipartita dal mondo terreno: la capacità di dipingere con pennellate quasi eteree i suoi personaggi, e renderli più solidi della roccia. E ancora: la capacità di descrivere l’Uomo (non un uomo, l’Uomo) nelle sue piccolezze e nelle sue fragilità, senza per questo dare mai l’impressione di formulare un giudizio definitivo (sebbene potesse anche apparire caustico, chi ha letto ritengo che sappia). Gettando, ed è la sua caratteristica che me lo rende irresistibile, una luce sempre nuova e imprevedibile sugli eventi, anche quelli immaginati. Così – come capita in questo splendido Il Club dei mestieri stravaganti – un delitto non è mai un delitto (soprattutto quando uno sherlockiano co-protagonista vorrebbe renderlo tale), l’ordinario non lo è mai del tutto.
Ed ammettiamolo, una buona volta: non c’è nulla di più vero! La vita non è una concatenazione di fatti logici, la pura deduzione quasi mai è rappresentativa della realtà. E allora quanto è più bello vedere i nostri giorni attraverso gli occhi sognanti ed insieme concreti di uno scrittore semplicemente enorme!
La citazione:
"Ogni particolare indica qualche cosa, certo, ma in genere indica la cosa sbagliata. A me sembra che i fatti indichino in tutte le direzioni, come i mille rami di un albero. È solo la vita dell’albero che ha unità e si innalza, solo il sangue verde che sgorga, come una fontana, verso le stelle."
September 4, 2018
Bizzarra e divertente questa piccola raccolta di storie, devo però dire di averla trovata un po’ ripetitiva e contraddittoria, come il solitario ma estroverso protagonista. È stato curioso assistere ogniqualvolta dove andasse a parare la “stravaganza” di turno, anche se non sempre il mestiere in questione aveva quella radice originale che ci si era premessi, questo però non ha inficiato il valore dei racconti. A non convincermi è stato proprio il sedicente rinfanciullito ex-giudice Basil Grant, a causa della sua esasperante semplicità nel ruolo di risolutore. La formula per la soluzione dei misteri: ‘Basil è fuori di senno mentre gli altri indagano razionalmente ma alla fine lui aveva ragione e tutti gli altri torto’, viene riproposta con scrupolosa minuzia, riuscendo incredibilmente a conferire un’aria monotona nonostante le varie stramberie dei mestieranti.
Concludendo l’ho trovato un libricino più “particolare” che bello… sono comunque stato molto contento di averlo letto per via della sua eccentricità :)
Concludendo l’ho trovato un libricino più “particolare” che bello… sono comunque stato molto contento di averlo letto per via della sua eccentricità :)
July 15, 2017
There are very few writers that write detective fiction in the same way as Chesterton. On the face of it, his set up is often quite usual. The Club of Queer Trades has a somewhat similar set up as the Sherlock Holmes stories, an brilliant independent investigator is followed by the narrator, though the Chesterton story does have a one more central character.
The difference is that there are no murders in The Club of Queer Trades as there would be in pretty much all traditional detective stories. In fact, there isn't any real crime to speak of in these six stories. They all center around the concept queer trades which has nothing to do with what would be called queer today. It means unusual, or peculiar trades. People that have made up their profession from scratch, and can be called unique in some way. That part of the story is actually quite interesting.
The main problem I have with this book is that the central "investigator" is rather annoying. He is way too pompous to be really likeable. If this was the usual detective story I probably would have given up on these stories pretty quick because of him, but this isn't a usual genre entry. For that reason I thought it was worth reading to the end. Some of these "trades" have some become a real professions, others I suspect will never become anything but ideas in this book. So I thought it was fun read.
I listened to the LibriVox audiobook, and I have to add that the reader did a good job.
The difference is that there are no murders in The Club of Queer Trades as there would be in pretty much all traditional detective stories. In fact, there isn't any real crime to speak of in these six stories. They all center around the concept queer trades which has nothing to do with what would be called queer today. It means unusual, or peculiar trades. People that have made up their profession from scratch, and can be called unique in some way. That part of the story is actually quite interesting.
The main problem I have with this book is that the central "investigator" is rather annoying. He is way too pompous to be really likeable. If this was the usual detective story I probably would have given up on these stories pretty quick because of him, but this isn't a usual genre entry. For that reason I thought it was worth reading to the end. Some of these "trades" have some become a real professions, others I suspect will never become anything but ideas in this book. So I thought it was fun read.
I listened to the LibriVox audiobook, and I have to add that the reader did a good job.
August 18, 2013
FRom BBC Radio 4 - 4 Extra Debut:
4 Extra Debut. A retired soldier finds himself threatened by a flowerbed. Stars David Warner, Martin Freeman, Geoffrey Whitehead and Vicki Pepperdine.
1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown.
2. The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation.
3. The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit.
4. The Singular Speculation of the House Agent
5. The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd
4 Extra Debut. A retired soldier finds himself threatened by a flowerbed. Stars David Warner, Martin Freeman, Geoffrey Whitehead and Vicki Pepperdine.
1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown.
2. The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation.
3. The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit.
4. The Singular Speculation of the House Agent
5. The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd
January 5, 2020
#7 - 2010
At the beginning of the 20th century, in detective fiction there was Sherlock Holmes and that was all. There were other fictional detectives, to be sure, but they were only bad imitations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective. The sleuths offered by other writers would try to outdo Holmes in eccentricity and in solving crimes that were evermore contrived and convoluted.
But in 1905 a book of mysteries came along that finally managed to turn the Sherlock Holmes idea on its head. The book was The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton. His detective, Rupert Grant, is a Sherlock Holmes-like private eye who investigates crimes and chases crooks with great self-assuredness in his powers of deduction. But he is always wrong. The hero of these stories is not Rupert, but his older brother, Basil Grant, a retired judge. In each case, Basil proves to Rupert hat there has been no crime and no crooks. (Read the entire lecture on this book, of which the above which has been an excerpt, here.
This book was a delight from beginning to end, and I'm not really a G.K. Chesterton fan. I listened to the Librivox recording which was wonderfully read by David Barnes.
At the beginning of the 20th century, in detective fiction there was Sherlock Holmes and that was all. There were other fictional detectives, to be sure, but they were only bad imitations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective. The sleuths offered by other writers would try to outdo Holmes in eccentricity and in solving crimes that were evermore contrived and convoluted.
But in 1905 a book of mysteries came along that finally managed to turn the Sherlock Holmes idea on its head. The book was The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton. His detective, Rupert Grant, is a Sherlock Holmes-like private eye who investigates crimes and chases crooks with great self-assuredness in his powers of deduction. But he is always wrong. The hero of these stories is not Rupert, but his older brother, Basil Grant, a retired judge. In each case, Basil proves to Rupert hat there has been no crime and no crooks. (Read the entire lecture on this book, of which the above which has been an excerpt, here.
This book was a delight from beginning to end, and I'm not really a G.K. Chesterton fan. I listened to the Librivox recording which was wonderfully read by David Barnes.
September 10, 2018
Originale e divertente, si è rivelato un libro da leggere senza troppe pretese. E magari trovarvi qualche idea per un lavoro.
Inventarsi dei mestieri stravaganti (ma anche remunerativi ed insoliti) può sempre tornar utile, no?
Sono sei racconti, collegati tra loro e con gli stessi protagonisti, ambientati in una Londra dei primi del Novecento sapientemente descritta da GKC ed impreziositi dai suoi bizzarri disegni.
Non ho trovato tutte le storie egualmente divertenti, ma la lettura è stata sempre piacevolmente scorrevole ed in alcuni momenti mi sono sorpreso a ridere da solo.
Forse Basil Grant non è bravo come Sherlock Holmes, ma di certo mette in scena una parodia simpatica ed inconsueta del detective più famoso del mondo.
I fatti - mormorò Basil, come se parlasse di qualche strano e fantastico animale, - come oscurano la verità, i fatti. Sarà anche sciocco - e infatti sono fuori di testa - ma non ho mai creduto in quell’uomo… come si chiama? Quello delle storie sensazionali… Sherlock Holmes. Ogni dettaglio rimanda a qualcos’altro, senza dubbio; ma in genere rimanda alla cosa sbagliata. A me pare che i fatti puntino in tutte le direzioni, come i mille rami e ramoscelli di un albero.
Attenzione al finale: potrebbe indurvi a… ricominciare da capo.
Inventarsi dei mestieri stravaganti (ma anche remunerativi ed insoliti) può sempre tornar utile, no?
Sono sei racconti, collegati tra loro e con gli stessi protagonisti, ambientati in una Londra dei primi del Novecento sapientemente descritta da GKC ed impreziositi dai suoi bizzarri disegni.
Non ho trovato tutte le storie egualmente divertenti, ma la lettura è stata sempre piacevolmente scorrevole ed in alcuni momenti mi sono sorpreso a ridere da solo.
Forse Basil Grant non è bravo come Sherlock Holmes, ma di certo mette in scena una parodia simpatica ed inconsueta del detective più famoso del mondo.
I fatti - mormorò Basil, come se parlasse di qualche strano e fantastico animale, - come oscurano la verità, i fatti. Sarà anche sciocco - e infatti sono fuori di testa - ma non ho mai creduto in quell’uomo… come si chiama? Quello delle storie sensazionali… Sherlock Holmes. Ogni dettaglio rimanda a qualcos’altro, senza dubbio; ma in genere rimanda alla cosa sbagliata. A me pare che i fatti puntino in tutte le direzioni, come i mille rami e ramoscelli di un albero.
Attenzione al finale: potrebbe indurvi a… ricominciare da capo.
June 14, 2018
Βιβλίο που χαίρεσαι να το διαβάζεις· το ύφος του Τσέστερτον είναι απαράμιλλο και σαρκάζει άγρια τη σοβαροφάνεια και την υποκρισία. Αν το καλοσκεφτεί κανείς ανακαλύπτει -από άλλον δρόμο- τη δύναμη που βρήκε στο παράδοξο ο Μπρεχτ. Διαμαντάκι.
December 9, 2008
Chesterton's book is a series of mystery stories involving a narrator and his friend, the eccentric ex-judge Basil Grant. Each story is about someone who belongs to the Club of Queer Trades--someone who makes his living in an unique way.
I haven't read any Chesterton before, but was delighted by the breadth and depth of the mysteries. They had a variety of means and ends, and often didn't involve murder or other sordid crimes. At the same time, the detective Basil Grant becomes a sort of anti-Sherlock, relying more on what he knows about people through his long study of them, rather than through detailed facts and clues. There's an interesting passage about the unreliability of facts:
"Facts," murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, "how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly—in fact, I'm off my head—but I never could believe in that man—what's his name, in those capital stories?—Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up—only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars."
("Death to Major Brown")
This anti-rational approach depends on the spiritual approach to the universe. Basil functions like the physiologies (common books from the early 1800s that described residents of the city using broad caricatures), abstracting ideas about the character of people he meets not from any specific facts but rather from the general impression of them as people.
This book also features a club that seems to be the inspiration for the movie The Game -- the Adventure and Romance Agency:
"Major," said he, "did you ever, as you walked along the empty street upon some idle afternoon, feel the utter hunger for something to happen—something, in the splendid words of Walt Whitman: 'Something pernicious and dread; something far removed from a puny and pious life; something unproved; something in a trance; something loosed from its anchorage, and driving free.' Did you ever feel that?"
"Certainly not," said the Major shortly.
"Then I must explain with more elaboration," said Mr Northover, with a sigh. "The Adventure and Romance Agency has been started to meet a great modern desire. On every side, in conversation and in literature, we hear of the desire for a larger theatre of events for something to waylay us and lead us splendidly astray. Now the man who feels this desire for a varied life pays a yearly or a quarterly sum to the Adventure and Romance Agency; in return, the Adventure and Romance Agency undertakes to surround him with startling and weird events. As a man is leaving his front door, an excited sweep approaches him and assures him of a plot against his life; he gets into a cab, and is driven to an opium den; he receives a mysterious telegram or a dramatic visit, and is immediately in a vortex of incidents. A very picturesque and moving story is first written by one of the staff of distinguished novelists who are at present hard at work in the adjoining room...."
"How on earth does the thing work?" asked Rupert Grant, with bright and fascinated eyes.
"We believe that we are doing a noble work," said Northover warmly. "It has continually struck us that there is no element in modern life that is more lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to seek all artistic existence in a sedentary state. If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar into heaven, he reads a book; if he wishes to slide down the banisters, he reads a book. We give him these visions, but we give him exercise at the same time, the necessity of leaping from wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen, of running down long streets from pursuers—all healthy and pleasant exercises. We give him a glimpse of that great morning world of Robin Hood or the Knights Errant, when one great game was played under the splendid sky. We give him back his childhood, that godlike time when we can act stories, be our own heroes, and at the same instant dance and dream."
("Death to Major Brown")
One might also suggest that the appeal of ARGs depends on this same dissatisfaction with pre-packaged media entertainment. What doesn't figure here, though, is the rise of mix culture. The ability to remix and create your own media undoes some of the malaise of the modern man.
I haven't read any Chesterton before, but was delighted by the breadth and depth of the mysteries. They had a variety of means and ends, and often didn't involve murder or other sordid crimes. At the same time, the detective Basil Grant becomes a sort of anti-Sherlock, relying more on what he knows about people through his long study of them, rather than through detailed facts and clues. There's an interesting passage about the unreliability of facts:
"Facts," murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, "how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly—in fact, I'm off my head—but I never could believe in that man—what's his name, in those capital stories?—Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up—only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars."
("Death to Major Brown")
This anti-rational approach depends on the spiritual approach to the universe. Basil functions like the physiologies (common books from the early 1800s that described residents of the city using broad caricatures), abstracting ideas about the character of people he meets not from any specific facts but rather from the general impression of them as people.
This book also features a club that seems to be the inspiration for the movie The Game -- the Adventure and Romance Agency:
"Major," said he, "did you ever, as you walked along the empty street upon some idle afternoon, feel the utter hunger for something to happen—something, in the splendid words of Walt Whitman: 'Something pernicious and dread; something far removed from a puny and pious life; something unproved; something in a trance; something loosed from its anchorage, and driving free.' Did you ever feel that?"
"Certainly not," said the Major shortly.
"Then I must explain with more elaboration," said Mr Northover, with a sigh. "The Adventure and Romance Agency has been started to meet a great modern desire. On every side, in conversation and in literature, we hear of the desire for a larger theatre of events for something to waylay us and lead us splendidly astray. Now the man who feels this desire for a varied life pays a yearly or a quarterly sum to the Adventure and Romance Agency; in return, the Adventure and Romance Agency undertakes to surround him with startling and weird events. As a man is leaving his front door, an excited sweep approaches him and assures him of a plot against his life; he gets into a cab, and is driven to an opium den; he receives a mysterious telegram or a dramatic visit, and is immediately in a vortex of incidents. A very picturesque and moving story is first written by one of the staff of distinguished novelists who are at present hard at work in the adjoining room...."
"How on earth does the thing work?" asked Rupert Grant, with bright and fascinated eyes.
"We believe that we are doing a noble work," said Northover warmly. "It has continually struck us that there is no element in modern life that is more lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to seek all artistic existence in a sedentary state. If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar into heaven, he reads a book; if he wishes to slide down the banisters, he reads a book. We give him these visions, but we give him exercise at the same time, the necessity of leaping from wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen, of running down long streets from pursuers—all healthy and pleasant exercises. We give him a glimpse of that great morning world of Robin Hood or the Knights Errant, when one great game was played under the splendid sky. We give him back his childhood, that godlike time when we can act stories, be our own heroes, and at the same instant dance and dream."
("Death to Major Brown")
One might also suggest that the appeal of ARGs depends on this same dissatisfaction with pre-packaged media entertainment. What doesn't figure here, though, is the rise of mix culture. The ability to remix and create your own media undoes some of the malaise of the modern man.
March 16, 2017
A collection of little charm-like stories that combine to make a lovely bracelet of a book.
March 6, 2014
4 Extra Debut. A retired soldier finds himself threatened by a flowerbed. Stars David Warner, Martin Freeman, Geoffrey Whitehead and Vicki Pepperdine. From April 2005.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...
GK Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades - 6. The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady: Cries for help distract Rupert and Charlie from a pleasant summer evening. Could it be that Basil has an odd vocation of his own? Stars David Warner, Martin Freeman. From May 2005.
Thoroughly enjoyed this and can say that Chesterton appeals to my inner wild child; unhappily he is not everyone's favourite cuppa.
December 25, 2022
"Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it."
I originally picked up this book because it had the word "queer" in the title. However upon further inspection I learned it was a group of 6 short mystery stories and bizarre adventures.
We follow our heroes:
Charlie 'Cherub' Swinburne, our narrator.
Rupert Grant, a wannabee P.I. and Basil's younger brother. And (my fave) Basil Grant, a madman/poet with near clairvoyant abilities. They basically run around investigating unbelievably strange events, and attempt to get to the bottom of them. Through a variety of petty crimes, normal crimes, detective work, and pure luck.
I liked this book a lot and it really tied in my personal themes for the year, 2023, as the year of the Madman. Basil Grant is seen as completely insane but due to his madness he is the only one who sees things clearly without preconceived notions and tends to have the most correct theories.
All in all, easy read, fun nonsense, funny characters, with some good chunks of crazed wisdom.
4 queer tradesmen out of 5 queer tradesmen
I originally picked up this book because it had the word "queer" in the title. However upon further inspection I learned it was a group of 6 short mystery stories and bizarre adventures.
We follow our heroes:
Charlie 'Cherub' Swinburne, our narrator.
Rupert Grant, a wannabee P.I. and Basil's younger brother. And (my fave) Basil Grant, a madman/poet with near clairvoyant abilities. They basically run around investigating unbelievably strange events, and attempt to get to the bottom of them. Through a variety of petty crimes, normal crimes, detective work, and pure luck.
I liked this book a lot and it really tied in my personal themes for the year, 2023, as the year of the Madman. Basil Grant is seen as completely insane but due to his madness he is the only one who sees things clearly without preconceived notions and tends to have the most correct theories.
All in all, easy read, fun nonsense, funny characters, with some good chunks of crazed wisdom.
4 queer tradesmen out of 5 queer tradesmen
May 22, 2022
In giving G. K. Chesterton’s The Club of Queer Trades three stars I take and accept the risk that the call is more about me that Mr. C. The premise is clever and the satire is well aimed at a ready target, but after that it goes on too long for what is basically a one, ok two joke funny book. It is family friendly. Likely a relaxing enough read to take to the beach and depend on the cognizanti among the sun worshiper to grant you points for class.
The title is entre to the clever invention of the book. The Club of Queer Trades is an exclusive organization with highly exclusive membership rules. Every member must have invented an unusual, previously non excitant job and make a living perusing it. For example a member has a service for hire for the purpose of having is clients experience a made up drama, only it is inserted into their lives. Rather like we now have locked door mystery rooms, only this version plays out in real time and on the streets.
Our protagonists are brothers who are operating a detective agency. Very early on it is told to the reader that they operate much like Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. This is a satire of the then and still very popular fictional characters. As such the book is a very early effort to take a satirical potshot at what would have been a primed for it, overly self-important target.
The setup for every chapter is the same. A classic mystery in the typical form of the Sherlock book draws the brothers into a situation that is obviously clear to each. Only one can only see the simple answer and the other realizes that there is always smore to it. The payoff is pretty likely to be some other newly invented unlikely personal service.
The queer trades tend to be well crafted. One can see the value of the service and there is something of a joke behind it. Well enough in conception but at some point, another of maybe too many. Chesterton is a fine word smith. The book is short and there is enough fun to be had, but in the end, I was not exhausted with laughter, and could remember a vague sense of fun. Not a bad book, just not that funny.
The title is entre to the clever invention of the book. The Club of Queer Trades is an exclusive organization with highly exclusive membership rules. Every member must have invented an unusual, previously non excitant job and make a living perusing it. For example a member has a service for hire for the purpose of having is clients experience a made up drama, only it is inserted into their lives. Rather like we now have locked door mystery rooms, only this version plays out in real time and on the streets.
Our protagonists are brothers who are operating a detective agency. Very early on it is told to the reader that they operate much like Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. This is a satire of the then and still very popular fictional characters. As such the book is a very early effort to take a satirical potshot at what would have been a primed for it, overly self-important target.
The setup for every chapter is the same. A classic mystery in the typical form of the Sherlock book draws the brothers into a situation that is obviously clear to each. Only one can only see the simple answer and the other realizes that there is always smore to it. The payoff is pretty likely to be some other newly invented unlikely personal service.
The queer trades tend to be well crafted. One can see the value of the service and there is something of a joke behind it. Well enough in conception but at some point, another of maybe too many. Chesterton is a fine word smith. The book is short and there is enough fun to be had, but in the end, I was not exhausted with laughter, and could remember a vague sense of fun. Not a bad book, just not that funny.
February 13, 2018
G.K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades is one of those bagatelles the author tossed off early in his career. It is about a unique club:
The central character is one Basil Grant, who just walked away from being a judge. He is the one who introduces the other characters, Swinburne and his detective brother Rupert, to the strangeness of the world thy live in:
The nature of this society, such as we afterwards discovered it to be, is soon and simply told. It is an eccentric and Bohemian Club, of which the absolute condition of membership lies in this, that the candidate must have invented the method by which he earns his living.The six stories remind me of another Chesterton work written about the same time, The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond. You may have heard the British expression “He'll never set the Thames on fire.” Well, in the first story, someone does just that.
The central character is one Basil Grant, who just walked away from being a judge. He is the one who introduces the other characters, Swinburne and his detective brother Rupert, to the strangeness of the world thy live in:
We all followed him. We snatched our hats from the hat-stand and our sticks from the umbrella-stand; and why we followed him we did not and do not know. But we always followed him, whatever was the meaning of the fact, whatever was the nature of his mastery. And the strange thing was that we followed him the more completely the more nonsensical appeared the thing which he said. At bottom, I believe, if he had risen from our breakfast table and said: “I am going to find the Holy Pig with Ten Tails,” we should have followed him to the end of the world.Like all of Chesterton's early fiction, The Club of Queer Trades is a joy to read and re-read.
October 17, 2013
Se penso che stavo quasi per rimuoverlo dalla lista dei to-read per fare spazio ad altri titoli mi prenderei a righellate le mani da sola.
Chesterton è geniale e geniale è il suo personaggio Basil, uno Sherlock Holmes molto più sociale di quello vero.
Ottima anche la presentazione in copertina: Le apparenze sono sinistre; il mistero agli inizi della vicenda è dei più cupi e inquietanti; l’evidenza dei fatti sta lì a indicare che una mente criminosa è al lavoro o ha già condotto a termine il lavoro.. Citate il rasoio di Occam o Dylan Dog, ma il concetto rimane lo stesso: anche la situazione più strana ha una spiegazione, basta cercarla senza fermarsi alle apparenze.
Secondo me è ottimo anche l'ordine in cui i sei racconti sono proposti, perché portano il lettore ad accettare situazioni leggermente sempre più strane. Quando sono arrivata all'ultima storia, in cui Basil e un quasi professorone del British Museum saltellavano serissimi per il giardino, ho dovuto posare il libro e ridacchiare.
Chesterton è geniale e geniale è il suo personaggio Basil, uno Sherlock Holmes molto più sociale di quello vero.
Ottima anche la presentazione in copertina: Le apparenze sono sinistre; il mistero agli inizi della vicenda è dei più cupi e inquietanti; l’evidenza dei fatti sta lì a indicare che una mente criminosa è al lavoro o ha già condotto a termine il lavoro.. Citate il rasoio di Occam o Dylan Dog, ma il concetto rimane lo stesso: anche la situazione più strana ha una spiegazione, basta cercarla senza fermarsi alle apparenze.
Secondo me è ottimo anche l'ordine in cui i sei racconti sono proposti, perché portano il lettore ad accettare situazioni leggermente sempre più strane. Quando sono arrivata all'ultima storia, in cui Basil e un quasi professorone del British Museum saltellavano serissimi per il giardino, ho dovuto posare il libro e ridacchiare.
April 11, 2023
In these 6 whimsical and joyous short stories, Chesterton gently parodies the detective stories of Sherlock Holmes and the like, while philosophising about religion, modernity, art and human weakness. Our narrator, Charles Swinburne (his name taken from the poet A.C. Swinburne), finds himself mixed up in a number of strange situations along with the ex-judge Basil Grant and his private detective brother Rupert.
Rupert is a Holmesian figure, rushing into situations following clues which he has invariably misinterpreted, while it is the apparently insane Basil whose wisdom and knowledge of human nature lead him to the truth. Each story also introduces a member of the Club of Queer Trades, people who have a unique and unusual calling, and these are entertaining and ingenious examples of Chesterton’s creativity.
Really enjoyed these clever stories with their mix of ideas and entertainment. Chesterton is not very fashionable these days, perhaps because of the way his work reflects his Christian beliefs, but he is undoubtedly a skilful writer and this collection shows that off.
Rupert is a Holmesian figure, rushing into situations following clues which he has invariably misinterpreted, while it is the apparently insane Basil whose wisdom and knowledge of human nature lead him to the truth. Each story also introduces a member of the Club of Queer Trades, people who have a unique and unusual calling, and these are entertaining and ingenious examples of Chesterton’s creativity.
Really enjoyed these clever stories with their mix of ideas and entertainment. Chesterton is not very fashionable these days, perhaps because of the way his work reflects his Christian beliefs, but he is undoubtedly a skilful writer and this collection shows that off.
August 5, 2018
Che lettura piacevole! Questo libro è riuscito a farmi sorridere molte volte e anche a strapparmi qualche risata di gusto!
Fra i personaggi giganteggia Basil Grant, ex giudice che ha abbandonato il lavoro per apparente pazzia e che si trova ad indagare su alcuni episodi criminosi (si riveleranno davvero tali oppure no?) insieme a Swinburne (che ha la funzione di voce narrante) e al fratello Rupert (una spietata e gustosissima parodia del detective tutto deduzioni razionali, modello Sherlock Holmes per intenderci).
Basil, a dispetto della sua aria stralunata e delle sue risatine perenni, guida con acume e lucidità il fratello e l'amico alla risoluzione di casi che definire insoliti è fin riduttivo, casi che ci permettono di fare la conoscenza con personaggi a dir poco bizzarri.
La scrittura di Chesterton è scorrevole e godibilissima, pur non mancando descrizioni dettagliate di personaggi e ambienti (fantastiche quelle relative a vicoli e stradine di Londra...sembra quasi di vederli) e il libro secondo me ha un unico difetto (solo per questo non gli ho dato le 5 stelle): dura troppo poco!
Fra i personaggi giganteggia Basil Grant, ex giudice che ha abbandonato il lavoro per apparente pazzia e che si trova ad indagare su alcuni episodi criminosi (si riveleranno davvero tali oppure no?) insieme a Swinburne (che ha la funzione di voce narrante) e al fratello Rupert (una spietata e gustosissima parodia del detective tutto deduzioni razionali, modello Sherlock Holmes per intenderci).
Basil, a dispetto della sua aria stralunata e delle sue risatine perenni, guida con acume e lucidità il fratello e l'amico alla risoluzione di casi che definire insoliti è fin riduttivo, casi che ci permettono di fare la conoscenza con personaggi a dir poco bizzarri.
La scrittura di Chesterton è scorrevole e godibilissima, pur non mancando descrizioni dettagliate di personaggi e ambienti (fantastiche quelle relative a vicoli e stradine di Londra...sembra quasi di vederli) e il libro secondo me ha un unico difetto (solo per questo non gli ho dato le 5 stelle): dura troppo poco!
August 2, 2018
3.5*
Le storie di questa raccolta sono divertenti e molto scorrevoli, e complessivamente è superiore, per qualità, alle solite raccolte di racconti. Il mio racconto preferito è quello dell'agente immobiliare!
Però mi è sembrato che le illustrazioni non fossero molto adatte alla narrazione, irriverente e spiritosa, mentre i disegni erano un po' cupi.
Nel complesso sicuramente una lettura che vale la pena intraprendere, per passare qualche momento piacevole.
Le storie di questa raccolta sono divertenti e molto scorrevoli, e complessivamente è superiore, per qualità, alle solite raccolte di racconti. Il mio racconto preferito è quello dell'agente immobiliare!
Però mi è sembrato che le illustrazioni non fossero molto adatte alla narrazione, irriverente e spiritosa, mentre i disegni erano un po' cupi.
Nel complesso sicuramente una lettura che vale la pena intraprendere, per passare qualche momento piacevole.
August 15, 2020
Fun, inventive, impelling and paradoxical, another delightful Chesterton romp - but more superficial than most.
May 1, 2023
What a joyous, yet queer grouping of oddities.
September 6, 2017
Chesterton’s early work has a strong flavor of Robert Louis Stevenson. The stories collected here, for example, might have made an acceptable addition to RLS’s New Arabian Nights. While enjoyable, however, these tales are not quite of Stevenson’s quality; nor are they as good as Chesterton’s better Father Brown stories. Nonetheless, this was a fun read.
December 19, 2019
ENGLISH: The gist of this short collection of short stories can be expressed by a few typical proverbs:
Appearances are deceiving. Proven facts are sometimes not so proven. What really moves us is not the facts, but our interpretations of the facts.
Truth is stranger than fiction. For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
As usual in the stories by Chesterton, the protagonists, in this case the retired judge Basil Grant, but also other characters, often seems to be crazy, but always turn out to be saner than the other characters, who try to interpret facts resting on appearances, which are notoriously deceptive.
I had read this book in a Spanish translation 18 years ago. Now I've read it in the original English, and have liked more, so I'm giving it one extra star.
ESPAÑOL: La esencia de esta breve colección de cuentos se puede expresar mediante un par de refranes:
Las apariencias engañan. Los hechos probados a veces no resultan estar tan probados, porque lo que realmente nos mueve no son los hechos, sino nuestras interpretaciones de los hechos.
La realidad es más sorprendente que la ficción. Porque la ficción es creación de la mente humana y por lo tanto es semejante a ella.
Como de costumbre en los cuentos de Chesterton, los protagonistas, en este caso el juez retirado Basil Grant y otros personajes, a menudo parecen locos, pero siempre resultan estar más cuerdos que los otros personajes, que tratan de interpretar los hechos basándose en las apariencias, notoriamente engañosas.
Leí este libro hace 18 años en traducción española. Ahora lo he leído en el inglés original y me ha gustado más, por lo que le doy una estrella adicional.
Appearances are deceiving. Proven facts are sometimes not so proven. What really moves us is not the facts, but our interpretations of the facts.
Truth is stranger than fiction. For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
As usual in the stories by Chesterton, the protagonists, in this case the retired judge Basil Grant, but also other characters, often seems to be crazy, but always turn out to be saner than the other characters, who try to interpret facts resting on appearances, which are notoriously deceptive.
I had read this book in a Spanish translation 18 years ago. Now I've read it in the original English, and have liked more, so I'm giving it one extra star.
ESPAÑOL: La esencia de esta breve colección de cuentos se puede expresar mediante un par de refranes:
Las apariencias engañan. Los hechos probados a veces no resultan estar tan probados, porque lo que realmente nos mueve no son los hechos, sino nuestras interpretaciones de los hechos.
La realidad es más sorprendente que la ficción. Porque la ficción es creación de la mente humana y por lo tanto es semejante a ella.
Como de costumbre en los cuentos de Chesterton, los protagonistas, en este caso el juez retirado Basil Grant y otros personajes, a menudo parecen locos, pero siempre resultan estar más cuerdos que los otros personajes, que tratan de interpretar los hechos basándose en las apariencias, notoriamente engañosas.
Leí este libro hace 18 años en traducción española. Ahora lo he leído en el inglés original y me ha gustado más, por lo que le doy una estrella adicional.
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