Gaiman, Chesterton, Borges

[poliphilo]

One of the things that interests me about Gaiman is that he's a Chesterton buff. Coraline has an epigraph from Chesterton and Neverwhere- which is the other thing of his I've read- is full of echoes of Chesterton- in particular of the Napoleon of Notting Hill. As someone once said of someone else, Chesterton is damn good to steal from. He was this big, prodigal talent- a lazy genius- who threw out ideas all the time and never worked them through- who never did any research and never really finished anything. Read a novel, story, poem or essay of his and it feels like you're reading a first draft- which is almost certainly what it is. Also he's been forgotten, so you can steal from him without people realising you're stealing. Borges was another Chesterton buff. He did carefully what Chesterton did carelessly.

Comments

[sovay]

I love the Father Brown stories. They were just about the first adult literature I read.

My mother has the complete omnibus of those; I never imprinted on them, but I remember enjoying them. I loved The Napoleon of Notting Hill when I discovered it in college, but I bounced hard off the ending of The Man Who Was Thursday; not the surrealism, but the dissolving into a spirituality that did not compute for me. Probably for similar reasons, I don't think Manalive worked for me at all, but I keep thinking I should try it again and see if it was me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the Napoleon of Notting Hill is his best novel.

I've read vast amounts of Chesterton- including a lot of journalism. He's never less than entertaining, but the books on which his reputation rests were all written early.