The Radio Who Was Wednesday
A handful of people over the course of my adult life have tried to get me into G.K. Chesterton. Those people are going to laugh at this post, or else tear their hair out. They've sent me essays and read me snippets but I've never really gotten it; he seemed like a slightly more lighthearted C.S. Lewis. I appreciated the skill and intelligence but it just didn't strike a chord. What I didn't know was that he's more or less a mirror image of C.S. Lewis, to me: I enjoy Lewis' essays but find his fiction varies from a tad to enormously condescending, overly pious, fatally lacking in subtlety, and when he attempts humour it usually ends up falling flat. What I'd read of Chesterton (mostly nonfiction, or passages from fiction taken out of context) left me with a similar impression, but there's been a reading of The Man Who Was Thursday on BBC 7 and I've been hooked on it. It's one of a very few radio productions that have made me want to go and read the book. ( Nattering on ... )
I was content simply to listen to a half hour a day while I was working, but darn it if he didn't throw in a lanky mad character with a lopsided grin and call him The Secretary. How could I not draw that? That's practically wrapped up in a bow for me. ( Then it kind of snowballed. )
Another Good Thing on the radio: Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation, in which he fulfills the fantasy of John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman and almost literally stands atop a plinth and shouts 'GROW UP!' through a megaphone to the crowd below. The contents of this show are perhaps ironic in light of the themes of The Man Who Was Thursday, but paradoxes are what make life interesting. Embrace the possibilities of paradox!
I was content simply to listen to a half hour a day while I was working, but darn it if he didn't throw in a lanky mad character with a lopsided grin and call him The Secretary. How could I not draw that? That's practically wrapped up in a bow for me. ( Then it kind of snowballed. )
Another Good Thing on the radio: Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation, in which he fulfills the fantasy of John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman and almost literally stands atop a plinth and shouts 'GROW UP!' through a megaphone to the crowd below. The contents of this show are perhaps ironic in light of the themes of The Man Who Was Thursday, but paradoxes are what make life interesting. Embrace the possibilities of paradox!