Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf
This probably won’t surprise anyone who reads our Substack, because it’s very clear where the two of us fall on the autistic-to-schizotypal spectrum, 1 and if you’re familiar with those great twentieth century Christian apologists you’ll know that Chesterton is the one way down at the “painting with a broad brush of metaphor and joie de vivre and enthusiastic, impressionistic riffs” end of things. 2 I am at the other end. I do like Chesterton — I wrote about him a bit here, and I’m very fond of his poetry — but he’s not the one who (as the Quakers say) speaks to my condition. I like my nice neat arguments. I do not have the soul of a poet or a Gothic cathedral. Lewis is also a wonderful stylist, but his writing is clearer, more pointed — something neoclassical, perhaps, if we’re to continue this architectural metaphor. And of course Lewis and Chesterton are not opposites in any meaningful way: Lewis read and greatly enjoyed Chesterton’s work, a fact that whoever does the marketing for Chesterton’s books today makes a big deal about. But the two of them do tend to suit different tastes.
Anyway, as you may also have guessed from this Substack, we have one invariable practice when we like something: we buy a book about it. So obviously we own a copy of Chesterton’s autobiography, and one day my husband picked it up and read me the opening sentence:
