Audiobook · read by volunteers
Heretics
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936)
Read by Ray Clare · 21 chapters · 7 h 15
About the book
In this collection of essays, G. K. Chesterton takes on the leading thinkers of his day, writers who thought they were rebuilding the world with new ideas about religion, art and society. He calls them heretics, not as an insult but as a challenge, and he asks them to say plainly what they believe. With paradox, humour and endless surprising comparisons, he considers Rudyard Kipling, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and others, defends everyday things and attacks fashionable gloom. Along the way he writes about the importance of orthodoxy, of having a philosophy at all, and of seeing the world with fresh eyes. The result is witty, provocative and full of memorable phrases. It is the argument that led him to write his better-known book Orthodoxy.
Introduction
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London in 1874 and died in 1936. A journalist, novelist, poet and debater, he wrote on an extraordinary range of subjects and became one of the best-known public figures in England. Today he is perhaps most famous for the Father Brown detective stories, but his essays, biographies and works of criticism were just as widely read in his lifetime.
Heretics was published in 1905. Its chapters first appeared as newspaper articles, and in them Chesterton questions the thinkers who were popular in the early years of the century. He is not an angry opponent: he enjoys his debates, and he treats his opponents with a certain affection. Yet he insists that every person has a view of the universe, whether acknowledged or not, and that it matters. When critics challenged him to explain his own view, he answered with Orthodoxy in 1908.
The recording has twenty-one sections and lasts a little over seven hours, and it is read by a single LibriVox volunteer. Many of the writers he discusses are no longer widely read, but the questions he raises about belief, fashion and common sense have not gone out of date. Anyone who enjoys a lively argument conducted with good humour will find it a pleasure.
Chesterton’s habit of turning a familiar idea upside down makes him a delight to hear. A sentence will begin in one direction and end in another, and then you realise he has made a serious point with a joke. Take the essays in small portions and you will find that many of them stay with you.
Public domain
G. K. Chesterton died in 1936: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text