1. Chesterton was in most instances a fierce critic and a fiercer friend. His sternest stuff is often directed at his own beloved England. He in the same paragraph will seem to slight or belittle one group, and yet do so with such genuine respect as to shame “lovers of humanity.” Why? Because he didn’t believe in being a “lover of humanity”- he believed in the real, hard virtue of love, which cannot be detached from actual human beings or substituted with tepid platitudes. And I don’t think Gopnik could’ve understood Chesterton well if he thinks the man was against rational thought. He was against rationalism, which he makes a case for as being quite unreasonable. A good reading of some seminal works would help more than an article in the New Yorker that seems to have misunderstood the master of paradox entirely.

2. I must’ve read this story very differently. In no way do I see anything of Chesterton in the assertion that he uses the “anarchists to point the way towards authoritarianism.” That sounds like a statement based on the assumption that religion is inherently authoritarian– an assumption which Chesterton did not share. The anarchy is a different sort, but it is more anarchical than many a ‘free thinker’ can manage to be, because it identifies those things which, atleast from a religious perspective, truly oppress Man. I cannot help but think, given the title of his other novel Manalive, that GCK was acquainted with the quote from Irenaeus of Lyon: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” In other words, God wants us to be fully and completely ourselves– and wants to free us from the oppressive governance sin has over us. Without an understanding of this crucial Christian outlook, it would seem difficult to truly understand the play.

If I weren’t halfway round the world, I’d love to see the play to see what the playwright’s done with it.