Tigh/Roslin ‘08

Brian got there first, but saying it again and again and again could hardly hurt:

Bumper stickers are no doubt imminent.  Get your wallets out.

Also, rumour has it that this man is heavily favoured to be McCain’s science/ethics advisor.  The conspiracy grows ever larger.

The art of GKC pt. 5

To conclude the series that began on Monday, I’ve decided to be lazy.  The upside of this is that you get more content, but it will only be new if you haven’t been following my work for years already.  That demographic consist of like two people, though, and we find it lonely, so it’s a good bet that this will be new to you even if it’s not necessarily something I’m doing right this moment.

What follows are a series of links to material I scanned out of Gilbert’s posthumous picture book, The Coloured Lands, which was compiled by Maisie Ward, his friend and biographer, in 1938.  I originally put them online for the Chesterton & Friends blog, to which I was a contributor back when I had the time for multiple ventures (and to which I really ought to keep contributing, too, now that I think of it).  

I’ll include samples from each set to provoke your interest.  Unlike with the debacular debut of this feature on Monday, these images are already (unfortunately) at their full size, so don’t bother trying to enlarge them:

1. Some experiments in colour

2. “Immortal idiots” – some caricatures

3. “The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads – A Story” – a fully illustrated story with text that I transcribed from images that are, as scanned, unfortunately a bit too small to make it out easily.  The actual scans were enormous, but some quirk of the Blogspot software made them unable to enlarge properly, and I’ve since lost the original files.  I may rescan ‘em in the future, but for the moment we’re stuck with images somewhat smaller than I’d like.  Still, it’s a heck of a production, and the final plate is breathtaking.

4. Some more caricatures

Those interested in seeing more of G.K. Chesterton’s art might check out Alzina Stone Dale’s The Art of G.K. Chesterton (1985), Edmund Clerihew Bentley’s Biography for Beginners (1905) (the first book of Clerihews – a kind of diminutive poem - includes a number of pictures by Gilbert), and many of Hilaire Belloc’s novels, for which Gilbert would often provide extensive and helpful illustration.  Belloc would sometimes have Gilbert crank out a series of sketches in rapid succession to help him better understand his own characters and ease the writing process.  The quality of the novels varies (though even the worst of them are pretty good), but the pictures are very frequently great.

Thus concludes my brief look at the art of G.K. Chesterton.  I’ve only scratched the surface of his full output in this field, and I’ve certainly made no effort to analyze the stuff critically, but in the spirit of the man who made them I will simply leave them here to be enjoyed by those who are of a mind to do so.

The art of GKC pt. 4

This is the last of the single plates I had planned to present, and it shows George Bernard Shaw, Gilbert’s friend and enemy, tied to a lamp post as The Revolution rages all around him.  The caption should be clear enough to read, so I won’t spoil it by typing it out (click to enlarge, of course):

And no, you’re not mistaken: the revolutionaries really do look like smurfs.

I’ll conclude this series tomorrow with something much larger…

In Ottawa

I am now “moved in,” though much of what was brought is still packed away and/or not constructed. The local Ikea yielded up a number of useful items, not least of which is a bookshelf of truly epic proportions that I plan to put together this evening, if it hasn’t already been done by the time this post goes up.

Notes of interest:

- The Arts building at 70 Laurier Ave. is pretty excellent, in a modernity-meets-old-timey-facade sort of way. It’s certainly close to everything, anyway, and boasts more than enough space and facilities for my purposes.

- The new folk in the department seem uniformly pleasant and eager to be friendly, which is a plus. Some of them are outrageous personalities; some of them are reserved and intriguing. It’s a good mix. Illustrating the relative smallness of the world (after all) is a chance encounter with a girl who is a friend of a friend entering his second year of a PhD back at Western. There’s a decent variety of interests among the new inductees, though about half of them are Canadianists.

- The old hands were, if anything, even more cordial and easy-going. This is a promising situation.

- The University of Ottawa, for some reasons, appraises its students’ performances using letter grades. The only letters I have in response to that are “OMG” and “WTF.”

- My apartment is a block away from the only artsy movie theater in town, and right next door to that is a small but supremely disorganized bookstore into which has apparently been funnelled everything that I’ve ever liked. I didn’t note its name, unfortunately (though it’s not like I’ll be unable to find it again), but the guy behind the counter declared that it was pretty much the place to go if you were an English, Philosophy or History student, and a look around verified his claim. The trip resulted in the purchase of Josephus’ The Jewish War and Henry Chadwick’s legendary The Early Church for under $8, which pleaseth me greatly. There was a copy of The Homeric Hymns there too on which I had my eye, but it was almost cover price so I declined. Still, it’s great to know that there is, literally a block away, the sort of bookstore that doesn’t waste a lot of space on romance novels and obsolete technical manuals while also managing to have six copies of Borges’ Ficciones without that even being the only one of his works being offered there.

- It sucked to wake up this morning for a shower only to discover that I had forgotten to get a shower curtain. A trip to a nearby hardware store solved the problem, but it was a frustrating journey.

More to come as I discover it.

The art of GKC pt. 3

The third installment in this week’s look at some of Gilbert’s lesser-known artwork.  This image, produced very late in his life, as the date mark in the bottom left-hand corner tells, marks a return to his gentle self-deprecation after the rather more sober work of the St. Patrick picture.  Click for a larger and clearer version: 

The “Clare” to whom the picture is dedicated is probably Clare Nicholl, one of the five Nicholl sisters (also Dorothy, Cecilia, Joan and Barbara) with whom Gilbert and Frances were on such good terms.  The precocious girls served in many ways as the children that the Chestertons never had.  Their pleasant relationship with the girls is written of at great and satisfying length in Maisie Ward’s Return to Chesterton (1952).

The absurdity behind the absurdity

Hidden at the bottom of this story about the Gloucester police department’s bewildered happiness at coming into possession of a replica of a weapon used by a fictional race of space warriors is something that is actually stupid.  While it is certainly the case that knife crime in England is at the moment a staggering nightmare, responding to the situation as one woman has will certainly not encourage a realistic assessment of it.  Her words are lent weight by the authority granted to the bereaved, what’s more, for her own husband was killed in such an attack in 1995.  Thus:

Mrs Lawrence said: “There is an anomaly between the legislation for knife crime and gun crime, where gun crime carries much stiffer penalties.

“We all know a knife can kill just as easily as a gun so there is a great anomaly there. A knife amnesty on its own won’t be a solution.”

In other news, “never bring a knife to a gun fight” is a phrase that was actually coined by the surrealist André Breton in 1929 to highlight the absurdity of distinctions without differences.  Anything you may have heard about it actually being prudent advice for a seemingly obvious reason is clearly nonsense.

PSA re: TBB

A note to interested parties who had perhaps given up hope: Sean P. Dailey, editor in chief of the American Chesterton Society’s excellent magazine, Gilbert, has finally returned to his blog, The Blue Boar, after a prolonged absence.  During that absence he apparently found the immigrant who had stowed away inside of him and sent the fellow packing, because he now looks to be about one person lighter.

Welcome back, Sean.

The art of GKC pt. 2

Continuing our mysterious magic tour through the works of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, we come upon a plate more serious than comedic – something of a departure for Gilbert, who typically liked to keep things relatively light in his artwork.  The image shows him standing before the imposing figure of St. Patrick (click to enlarge):

 

The text: “How I felt when I went to Ireland + met St. Patrick.”

More to come tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Image problem fixed

The pictures on both the Chesterton art post and the Batman post are now at a more viewable size, and really can be clicked to go to even larger visions.  This was not previously the case; The Daily Kraken regrets this error.

Worship me and despair

The marks have been submitted for my final paper on Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse, and with that I have formally completed all of the requirements necessary for the MA degree.  This means that the arts are now my slaves, and will do my bidding henceforth.

I suppose all that remains is the handing over of the official parchment declaring the fact of my success, but that seems a mere formality after the vexing travails that went into attaining it.

And now, praise God, I get to go do the same thing in another city for four or five years.