G.K. Chesterton in Sight & Sound

[Lucaszci]

Do you know where I could find more files in which I could listen to Chesterton's voice as well?

Thank you for your time.

[gmdinformation]

@Lucaszci Look through my videos. There's another one playing portions of all the known sound files he ever recorded. You'll also find a video about the CD I have available through CDBaby of all Chesterton's recorded output. Rather than buy the CD, many people elect to download the files as mp3s for a buck each at CDBaby, Amazon, iTunes etc.

[FrederickBaroh]

One of the greatest wits in the English language, and still underappreciated.

[glrcmptn]

i liked his book on St.Francis of Assisi....and love to listen to him talk.

[anmfrk1]

what would the world be like now if we had even one gk chesterton or cs lewis

god has blessed us with their wit and knowledge and even though I never met either of these great men I still miss them

[Arminevh]

Thank you Chesterton for your books.

Thank you God for Chesterton.

[TheWizzooo]

@Arminevh

Hear Hear

[InculpatusVitae]

Hah! I believe that's sort of the English way of writing... very witty wordiness. It's great.

[tincoffin]

he was however a great poet - a much rarer thing.

[AspiringScoundrel]

But he is certainly very funny.

[Dilhan777]

This is wonderful!. I had known that there were recordings of this great individual, but had never expected to hear them. As C.S. Lewis said, G.K.C. was " a great Christian, a great writer and a great man ". Thank you very much for posting.

[wisesatyr72]

looks like teddy rosevelt

[roypeter347]

The words never foregetable about importance of G.K Chesterton the hero of the Catholic.

[morrink]

A catholic hero!

[AspiringScoundrel]

Oxymoron.

[smallllama]

I see that someone disliked The Paradoxes of Mister Pond... While some of that collection is marginal, I think the Mister Pond short story "Ring of Lovers" is one of the best stories ever.

[sthugh]

Oh, there are some good stories in it. Most people just seem to think his earlier stories were better--at least his short stories.

[smallllama]

I am very thankful to see this video. G. K. Chesterton is one of my favorite authors and I had no idea until wandering across this video that there was any sound recording of him.

[StibiumAlkabar]

This set of snippets is a Godsend. Thankyou! And as for the clash of civilisations (below) it's all in GKC's novel "The Flying Inn" about an Islamic take-over of the UK, sponsored by high-minded (but actually nihilistic) Liberals!

[dasgdasg]

I certainly don't agree with Chesterton on religion - and though I see the logic behind his ideas I don't necessarily agree with them - but he was a very good author and a great man. I have to say, we really don't get voices like this anymore; they've entirely disappeared. Also, I too would pay anything to see Hitchens debate Chesterton.

[jesseakers]

Ravi Zacharias is worth mentioning, Chuck Missler is another, there certainly are chesterons all around us today, just far fewer people willing to listen to them

[greatsea]

Are you kidding me 'jesseakers'! This makes me wonder if you've actually read Chesterton at all.

[jesseakers]

And before chesterton people wouldve said the same thing about chesterton... Speakers worth listening too that is....

[greatsea]

What Chesterton did best was unveil the folly behind much modern thinking. This, of course, does not equate to being right. At the least, it affords his opponents a third eye for blind spots in their arguments. Every opinion or position has them. And if there's some bit of absurdity in the way an atheist or a modernist of any sort has constructed his ideas it helps to have a Chesterton around. Allan Bloom, a magnitude less in genius, has provided a similar service to the American left.

[greatsea]

Oh and by the way, Hitchens is just the sort of potshotting opportunist intellectual that Chesterton, given enough time would end up pulling to pieces. I think often times it is Hitchens particular 'market share' brilliance that is the source of his greatest follies. There are holes in this leviathan's underbelly I've yet to see anyone truly expose. I lack the brilliance, and as for 'jesseakers' Ravi Zach. and Chck Missler, they are midgets compared to Hitchens and Chesterton.

[gmdinformation]

I must say though that, although GKC certainly was one of the greats, he did have his faults. Much of his argumentation was based on paradox and comparisons, and those comparisons he constantly made ("It is as though....") could easily be turned around on him. This is especially true in _Orthodoxy_ where many of his arguments were just flat, and his comparisons monotonous (which isn't to say there isn't some genius in the book here and there).

Also GKC was a distributist--an economic absurdity.

[greatsea]

I think Orthodoxy is one of the greatest pieces of sophistry ever written. But its value is that this is exactly the thing it is taking on. It is fighting sophistry with sophistry. In spite of itself it did manage to dismantle many of the shallow 'problems' the modernists of the time had with Christianity. The imperious flippancy with which they THOUGHT they had nudged aside a superannuated body of beliefs. All I got to say is get ready for China. They're converting by the tens of millions.

[gmdinformation]

I thought he needed an editor that wouldn't have been afraid to tell him when he was being too redundant, verbose etc. One of the more frustrating things about reading Chesterton was that he often took forever to get to the point. Sometimes these long, roundabout ways he had of getting to the gist of things could be entertaining--other times you didn't feel quite so rewarded for having read something in four pages that he could've said _better_ in one paragraph. _Orthodoxy_ was like that for me.

[greatsea]

I concur.

[gmdinformation]

Also, it wasn't that I thought _Orthodoxy_ was bad. I still recommend it to people. I just thought it was sort of over-written. Like Lewis, I think _The Everlasting Man_ was easily his best non-fiction. And I think _The Man Who Was Thursday_ was head and shoulders above everything else GKC wrote in the fiction department. When he was on, he could be better than just about anybody. But when he was off, he could be really off. _The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond_ comes to mind. That one was a real stinker.

[AbdielAbiram]

@gmdinformation

Thats the thing about Chesterton. When he has a good argument, its a really good argument. But when he doesn't have a good argument, its a really bad argument he replaces it with. So he's really a hit and miss writer. Which I why i recommend him to people, because he does occasionally make some really great points.

[gmdinformation]

@AbdielAbiram,

My thoughts exactly. When he's "on" he's better than anybody, but when he's "off" he can really set himself up to be knocked down very easily. Reading GKC is like watching a good jazz musician. Some nights he's got it, some nights he doesn't, but he's always fun to watch.

[godriczimmerman]

@AbdielAbiram Can you give an example of one of his really bad arguments?. I'm interested because having recently read four of his books i personally can't think of one.

[ChocolateExplosion]

Despite the fact his religious and some of his political beliefs are extremely different to mine, and i find his preaching a little over the top sometime... he's such an enjoyable writer to read. The Man Who Was Thursday could be one of the most exciting books i've ever read if it didnt drift off into religious psycho-babble

[seditionape]

Architecture (practical and dangerous) as living in the (bastardized) belly of the beast. Profound genius is an understatement.

[Sebasalfonso]

Chesterton was amazing. I thought he´d never got out from Londres. By the way, Borges became happy when he knew that Chesterton planned to go to Buenos Aires

[UomoVivo]

Grazie! Grazie mille!

[savioblanc]

"I'm not much of a Crusader, but atleast i'm not a Muhammadan" G K Chesterton - looks like the clash of civilisations was going on for quite sometime eh?

[bookstar77]

Ah the mighty Gilbert! How sad for the world that we don't have more of his recorded lectures available.

[MarkGauvreau]

Genius.

[canoodlian]

Wonderful clips. Is there any possibility of hearing them in their entirety?

[gmdinformation]

Not here I'm afraid. There's a CD you can buy fairly cheap that has all of 'The Spice of Life' broadcast on it along with a bunch of other famous speeches. Just google the following and you'll find it on the first link they show:

"The Very Best Historic Voices"

[Jitpring]

His voice is different than I expected. I expected something...bigger!

[gmdinformation]

You know, he was maybe 6'3" or 6'4" and well over 300-lbs, so I always thought he'd have a deeper, less jolly voice. But then Dale Ahlquist reminded me that GKC had once described his own voice as, "...the mouse that came forth from the mountain". :-)

[Jitpring]

hehehe....

[marciodpsh]

Me too. And... Have you heard CS Lewis' voice? He recorded "The four loves" in audio. I've downloaded it at Mininova. He has the most powerful voice. Very grave.

[gmdinformation]

Click on my username and look through my videos. You'll find recordings there by Lewis, Tolkien, and Hugo Dyson as well.

[Jitpring]

I recently watched the debate posted here on youtube between Hitchens and D'Souza. The latter did a good job, but I couldn't help wishing that he were Chesterton instead.

[MarkGauvreau]

The Chesterton and Shaw debates were amazing.

[marciodpsh]

Chesterton debating Hitchens! I'd pay anything to see that!

[mojoforyeshua]

unfortunately chesterton is dead and hitchens generally doesnt take up debates

[NathanBarrow]

@marciodpsh

That would hardly be fair to Hitchens

[grandconjunct]

thanks for posting