The Radio Who Was Wednesday
Jun. 30th, 2010 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinA 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.
I'm sure a great deal of its attraction to me lies in it being about a secret society in Edwardian London which involves some interesting characters in an adventure that is at once madcap and deathly serious, which ticks at least four boxes on my Checklist of Win. Another attraction is the way every so often I can spot something that might have influenced Terry Pratchett, who has referred to Chesterton quite a few times. It's also the Snicketiest thing I've encountered since that series ended. But at the core, it's just a really fun story that still has some philosophical weight to it, with the novelty factor of the philosophical weight being on the opposite end of the scale to what one finds in most fiction nowadays; i.e., the value of civilisation and structure and all those 'certainties' which make the Edwardian era so appealing and so bittersweet.
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. I'm not sure if I've got the characters according to their descriptions but it's a lot harder to keep track of these things if I haven't read them off a page, I find, and having it spread out over two weeks doesn't help either. It was fun, though!
Sunday's not nearly obese enough – I realised halfway through that my image of him was influenced by Ratigan, and then the whole enormous torso/teeny tiny feet idea crept in, and ... I'll have to give him another go.* On the other hand, how awesome would a movie adaptation be in the hands of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg? Mr Pegg would make a fantastic Syme. Something to ponder!
*she said, knowing she probably wouldn't ...
If you want to listen to the last six episodes, you can find them here for now ... If picking up more than halfway through is far from your idea of fun (and who can blame you) you can always read the book!
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'm sure a great deal of its attraction to me lies in it being about a secret society in Edwardian London which involves some interesting characters in an adventure that is at once madcap and deathly serious, which ticks at least four boxes on my Checklist of Win. Another attraction is the way every so often I can spot something that might have influenced Terry Pratchett, who has referred to Chesterton quite a few times. It's also the Snicketiest thing I've encountered since that series ended. But at the core, it's just a really fun story that still has some philosophical weight to it, with the novelty factor of the philosophical weight being on the opposite end of the scale to what one finds in most fiction nowadays; i.e., the value of civilisation and structure and all those 'certainties' which make the Edwardian era so appealing and so bittersweet.
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. I'm not sure if I've got the characters according to their descriptions but it's a lot harder to keep track of these things if I haven't read them off a page, I find, and having it spread out over two weeks doesn't help either. It was fun, though!
Sunday's not nearly obese enough – I realised halfway through that my image of him was influenced by Ratigan, and then the whole enormous torso/teeny tiny feet idea crept in, and ... I'll have to give him another go.* On the other hand, how awesome would a movie adaptation be in the hands of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg? Mr Pegg would make a fantastic Syme. Something to ponder!
*she said, knowing she probably wouldn't ...
If you want to listen to the last six episodes, you can find them here for now ... If picking up more than halfway through is far from your idea of fun (and who can blame you) you can always read the book!
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!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 08:44 pm (UTC)