Chesterton and Dickens

Wikisource is a wonderful thing. Its better-known cousin may be the more addicting, but any site that gives you nearly the entire completed works of some of the masters of western thought (and then some) is worth perusing every now and then. Even when the one thing you're looking for has been inexplicably deleted, you're bound to run into something else worthwhile.

And so it was today with myself and the delightful G.K. Chesterton, whose "God in the Cave" chapter from The Everlasting Man I thought would make for wonderful Christmas reading. Alas, it was not to be -- but I was happily reminded, given my Yuletide Dickens kick, that Chesterton was something of a Dickens scholar himself.

Here, then, is the ever-so-timely "Dickens and Christmas," celebrating "that trinity of eating, drinking and praying which to moderns appears irreverent, for the holy day which is really a holiday."

And here, of course, is Chesterton on Scrooge. No question he would have loved the Muppets:

Scrooge is not really inhuman at the beginning any more than he is at the end. There is a heartiness in his inhospitable sentiments that is akin to humour and therefore to humanity; he is only a crusty old bachelor, and had (I strongly suspect) given away turkeys secretly all his life. The beauty and the real blessing of the story do not lie in the mechanical plot of it, the repentance of Scrooge, probable or improbable; they lie in the great furnace of real happiness that glows through Scrooge and everything around him; that great furnace, the heart of Dickens. Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us. Whether or no the visions were evoked by real Spirits of the Past, Present, and Future, they were evoked by that truly exalted order of angels who are correctly called High Spirits. They are impelled and sustained by a quality which our contemporary artists ignore or almost deny, but which in a life decently lived is as normal and attainable as sleep, positive, passionate, conscious joy. The story sings from end to end like a happy man going home; and, like a happy and good man, when it cannot sing it yells. It is lyric and exclamatory, from the first exclamatory words of it. It is strictly a Christmas carol.

Merry Christmas.

Homeward bound

Merry Christmas everyone!

My deepest apologies for neglecting my blogging duties of late -- it's been a crazy few weeks at work, and I still lack any internet connection at home. When that changes, I'll be much more prolific, I'm sure -- much to the detriment of any social life I may or may not currently enjoy.

In the meantime, praise the Lord for free wifi at the JetBlue terminal at JFK airport, and for the less-than-hellish bus-to-subway-to-airtran commute that allowed me plenty of time to enjoy same. Six months in, I'm really starting to get a knack for this whole getting-around-NYC thing.

Which reminds me: I've been thinking about this blog a bit, and I've realized that what's currently sorely lacking are more stories about the city itself. I've been somewhat embarrassed in this regard by the Great Greg Gallagher, whose musings on his German adventures make for a delightful read. I may not have his eye for the absurd, but at least I've got a lot more material to work with.

But for now, back to the world of letters. I came across a fascinating article by Joseph Bottom (of Weekly Standard/First Things fame) last Christmas, and I've been waiting to blog it ever since.

The subject is that iconic Christmas favorite (certainly mine), Dickens's "A Christmas Carol." Bottom's argument, briefly, is that far too many critics -- and cinematic adaptations -- get the story completely wrong by playing it straight. In other words, by focusing so much on Scrooge's supposed "transformation," they neglect to see that the story is a merry comic farce from the very beginning. Scrooge doesn't so much undergo some dramatic darkness-to-light redemption as simply come into line with the Christmas cheer that pervades the entire tale -- and that he even participates in with his own amusing brand of grumpiness.

My only quibble with the piece is that Bottom completely neglects the one screen version of the story that really does get it. I speak, of course, of "The Muppet Christmas Carol" -- my pick for the best Christmas movie ever made. Who better than the Great Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat to provide exactly the kind of mirthful narrative voice Bottom longs for? It's damn near perfect, really.

But you're free to disagree. If you hate Christmas.