Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
G.K. Chesterton (part 2)
254 Plays1 year ago
Brook and Sarah continue their exploration of G.K. Chesterton this week. They discuss his mysteries featuring Father Brown and the legacies of this ecclesiastical sleuth.
Discussed
The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) G.K. Chesterton
Father Brown Mysteries (2013-present) BBC
Sister Boniface Mysteries (2022-present) BBC
Father Dowling Mysteries (1987-1991) NBC, ABC
Radio adaptations of Father Brown
Chesterton’s work on Project Gutenberg
For more information
Instagram: @cluedinmystery
Contact us: hello@cluedinmystery.com
Website
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers – www.silvermansound.com
Transcript
Recommended
![[Re-release] Celebrity Authors image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/61e1c276e3ec42007857cff9/6bf85c27-5b4b-472c-9f00-1aceb11c14f7.jpg)
![[Re-release] Modern Greats: Sue Grafton image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/61e1c276e3ec42007857cff9/6f1dd042-325d-4743-a520-2db110a960b9.jpg)
![[Re-release] Mysteries in Unusual Formats image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/61e1c276e3ec42007857cff9/d8f895fc-5446-494f-b2f8-5a3f6b131e98.jpg)
Transcript
Introduction to Hosts and G.K. Chesterton
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Sarah and I'm Brooke and we both love mystery. Hi Brooke. Hi Sarah. How are you today? I'm good. Thank you. How are you? I'm great. Looking forward to another conversation with you. Yeah. And we're going to continue the conversation that we started last week about GK Chesterton.
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm looking forward to this and I've learned a lot. I'm kind of dismayed to know how very little I had heard about Chesterton before we got started researching, Sarah. Yeah, I feel the same way. He really, like we said last week, is just such a fascinating man who I feel like most people, I feel like all the things that are fascinating about him have been lost to most people.
G.K. Chesterton's Literary Connections
00:01:05
Speaker
Absolutely. Yes, we've heard of many of his famous friends and famous authors that he worked with, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, J.R. Tolkien, George Bernard Shaw. Those are names we really recognize, but he was right there in the midst of that. I mean, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and for whatever reason, his name and his work have not
00:01:29
Speaker
stayed on the tip of our tongues. So we're bringing him back. We're going to learn about him and about his mystery contributions today. Excellent. So, I mean, obviously his most famous character is Father Brown.
Father Brown: Stories vs. Novels
00:01:44
Speaker
And I thought it was really interesting that all of the writing that he did about Father Brown, it was only short stories. He didn't write any novels featuring Father Brown.
00:01:56
Speaker
Which, yeah, I don't know because Doyle did write a couple of novels, but mostly short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. And I think I get that Christy the same thing. She wrote both novels and short stories featuring Poirot. I don't know whether Marple was she just short stories or were there novels with Miss Marple? I don't know the answer to that.
00:02:22
Speaker
I don't either, I guess I'm thinking it's short stories, but we might need to do a little bit of research on that. But yeah, they definitely had both for most of those authors.
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, so that all of the Father Brown stories were short stories, which I think is interesting. And then he also wrote some, I guess we would call them standalone stories that didn't feature Father Brown. But again, I think they were just collections of short stories. No, he did right. There was the novel The Man Who Was Thursday. I think that was a novel rather than a collection of short stories.
00:03:05
Speaker
But, yeah, I think he wrote a lot of short stories. And maybe that's because, like you said, in the first episode, he did a lot of his writing on the train. And, you know, that kind of lends itself to shorter bursts of writing and maybe writing short stories.
Father Brown Adaptations and Creative Liberties
00:03:25
Speaker
I don't know.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, good point. Good point. You could get a story done in probably a couple of mist trains and supposedly that was definitely something he experienced. I also think that it's very similar to his other types of nonfiction writing he did. He was known for essays and articles and things like that. So I think sometimes as authors, we have a way
00:03:50
Speaker
that we tell a story, kind of we have a length, an automatic length. And I feel like he was one of those people who could sum it up. He could kind of encapsulate something pretty briefly, which is a wonderful skill. And yeah, and it really worked for his short stories. And let's face it, it worked great for adaptations later on, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, I thought something similar that having a collection of short stories to draw from makes it quite easy to, I think, translate those into television episodes, which obviously some of that has happened with his father Brown mysteries.
00:04:35
Speaker
although I so I have been watching some of the Father Brown mysteries and there are some characters from his short stories and I've noted one or two that are similar to the short stories that he's written and I have to say I haven't watched all of the Father Brown and I haven't read all of the Father Brown original short stories so I can't say that there's you know that it's it's one for one but I have a feeling that there was a little more
00:05:05
Speaker
creative license taken with the television adaptation, but using Father Brown as the inspiration. I would assume so too because it's been so long running. It's gone on and on and we have 53 of the original stories. So I would assume that you're right there, Sarah.
Chesterton's Influence on the Cozy Mystery Genre
00:05:27
Speaker
Well, and I think the other thing that they did with the television adaptation is they changed the setting. So I think the original story is he traveled around a little bit and that doesn't happen so much in in the television adaptation.
00:05:42
Speaker
Um, and I think the actual location or like where he is from is also different. So in the television adaptation, it's in the Cotswolds. Whereas I think he was Sussex, if I'm remembering that correctly, but I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure on that.
00:06:00
Speaker
That's new. And then also the time. So I think the television series is set in the mid 1950s, whereas the original stories, obviously, I think the first ones were written before the First World War. Yeah. Yeah. He wrote, he started writing them in 1910 and wrote for a while and then had taken kind of a break and went back and finished more. And then so by 1936, he had written all of them.
00:06:26
Speaker
One of the things that I really like about both the stories and the television versions is that these are true, I think, cozy mysteries, right? It's a small community of characters. They're gentle in the, um, gentle in the telling. And, you know, I don't know
00:06:53
Speaker
Did you come across this, Brooke, whether he like, whether we would consider him one of the first true cozy mystery authors? Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think that some actually credit him for being the creator of cozy's. And it's probably because of just like what you said, they're gentler. I mean, they there are murders and things like that, but nothing is ever on the page.
00:07:23
Speaker
The characters are a little bit caricatures in a sense, I feel, and not in an off-putting way, but you definitely get that. And to me, it feels almost like an allegorical way to tell a story. And I think that that gives it a very cozy feel as well. Yeah, that's really interesting.
00:07:50
Speaker
I think that there's a pattern that we see in the stories where many times there's a more elaborate, whether it's by another detective sort of character, or sometimes there's the, you'll have to help me, Sarah, I can't recall the criminal, he's the criminal turned good in the Father Brown.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yes, flambeau or sometimes it's flambeau, that they come up with this more elaborate explanation for what has happened and the explanation of the crime and sometimes that includes supernatural elements.
00:08:31
Speaker
you know a suit unassuming quiet father brown comes in and says no here's what really happened and it's much more simple and straightforward and it you know it makes much more sense and
00:08:46
Speaker
Again, I feel like we get a lesson in his stories about things are generally the most simple explanation or the most simple understanding. I feel like we have a very quiet spiritual lesson even in the Father Brown mysteries.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree. And I think this is something that you said in the first episode in our conversation about him, where it's not pushy, right? Like it's not you don't feel like you're being told that this is something that you need to believe or something that, you know, that you're wrong if you don't believe it. It's it's very
00:09:38
Speaker
It's very soft. Yes, it is soft.
Chesterton's Writing Style: Lyrical and Economical
00:09:41
Speaker
And that the messages are often about getting set on the right path, maybe a second chance. Those kind of ideas definitely come through. And I will say you can read them for the mystery and and not worry about the perhaps deeper meeting that he's weaving in there. But I just I kind of feel that when I read his stories.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, I would, I would agree. I think his writing is quite lyrical. I don't know if you found that. But some of the, you know, the opening paragraphs I looked last night at a couple of his stories and the opening paragraphs are just these
00:10:28
Speaker
wonderful descriptions of setting or the you know the character that's the first character that's introduced in the story and yeah like he just had a really beautiful way of writing.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree. I found it so beautiful and I was surprised. I don't know why I was surprised, but, um, I, I found it to be the same thing. I, I wrote my notes, wonderful descriptions, um, interesting observations, nice details, like these, sometimes the smallest detail, but it just explained the setting and it really beautiful writing. I would agree.
00:11:13
Speaker
And not overly, like it wasn't, you know, pages and pages of description. It was just a little bit to get a sense of where you are. And yeah, like you said, you know, just enough to really paint that picture and get the story started.
00:11:33
Speaker
Mm hmm. And good point because we're talking short stories here. And so in order to do that, you do have to be very economical. So a great lesson. If you're interested in writing short stories, this would be a great lesson to see how he accomplishes that in such a short, a short spot. Oh, definitely. I think, yeah, he's definitely one to to look to.
00:11:57
Speaker
Speaking of him perhaps kicking off the cozy mystery genre, I also found a quote from Crime Reads that said, he was the parent of all clerical mystery. In fact, was the first that we know of clerical amateur sleuth. And we have seen others. In fact, I have a confession, Sarah, and the pun is fully intended.
00:12:24
Speaker
that when we started talking about Father Brown, I was like, oh yeah, I used to watch Father Brown all the time. No, no. I watched Father Dowling. Are you familiar with Father Dowling? I am not.
00:12:41
Speaker
So this was a US series that was late 80s and Tom Bosley, who also was the dad from Happy Days, if anyone needs that reference, was the sleuth, Father Dowling, and these were not based on
00:12:59
Speaker
G. K. Chesterton stories they were based on Ralph mccurney's books and he was. He lived nineteen twenty nine to twenty ten but I only bring it up because he was heavily influenced in talks about being heavily influenced by G. K. Chesterton.
00:13:17
Speaker
So it was not Father Brown that I was most familiar with, but actually Father Dowling. And an example of an author who was influenced and came out of these mysteries that Chesterton started. Well, having a clerical sleuth is actually quite a good device because there's, you know, good reason for him to be at a crime scene. He's comforting.
00:13:45
Speaker
the witnesses or he can have these conversations with people that they may be more willing to open up to him because he's seen as such an unassuming character. So it really is quite a clever device. So I'm not surprised that others have modelled their own stories after that.
00:14:10
Speaker
And I think there's a spin-off from Father Brown that I haven't seen. And I don't know that Chesterton wrote any of these stories, but I think it's Sister Boniface, where she's the sleuth. And she was a character in one of the early episodes of the television series.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yes, I've heard of that, but also haven't caught that. But you're right, having this amateur sleuth who's a priest is really a great device. And I like that part of the reason that Father Brown is so successful in untangling the crimes is his awareness of human evil.
00:14:57
Speaker
I think that, and he talks about, Father Brown talks about this in some of the stories about people assume that priests are these pious, quiet, never being exposed to any of the evils of the world. But in fact, they know a lot because they work with their parishioners and they hear confessions and maybe they know more about how people are than anyone and understand that,
00:15:26
Speaker
what people are capable of. So I thought it was a great way to have this sleuth. And as you say, access to people, access to crime scenes, it works really well. So I often listen to the stories, you know, if we're preparing for an episode, I often will listen to whatever's been written by the author that we're talking about.
00:15:53
Speaker
But I found that I preferred reading Chesterton's work rather than listening to it. And I don't know if it was just the audio version that I was listening to didn't work for me, but I think there was something, and maybe this is, you know, like we were talking about the kind of beauty of his words, there was something about reading them that made them resonate with me a lot more than hearing them.
00:16:20
Speaker
Interesting. I did listen. I listened to a lot of his short stories. And then I also listened to some of the radio plays that were done. And those were a lot of fun. And one thing I enjoyed about them and thought was really cool was that they, although they definitely had a script,
00:16:38
Speaker
They, if they messed up, this must have been live radio because they would just kind of have to work off one another and, um, and fix their improv. So it was really, really fun and it made it feel really real. And, um, I enjoyed those stories a lot too.
00:16:54
Speaker
Oh, I didn't, I didn't listen to any of those, but now I want to, when were those, um, produced? Do you know? I believe that these were like 1940s productions. I found them on YouTube, I believe. And, um, yeah, so that was, it was fun to see like, and maybe as a podcaster to understand like, Oh yeah, they didn't always get it right either. And they just had to roll with the punches.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, okay, I'm definitely going to check that
Chesterton's Nonfiction Fame vs. Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
00:17:25
Speaker
out. We'll maybe put a link to that in the show notes. Great. One thing I wanted to bring up was that I feel like Chesterton succeeded in doing something that Arthur Conan Doyle always wanted to, and that is that he was actually known more for his
00:17:44
Speaker
nonfiction, uh, you know, quote unquote serious writing in his lifetime more than he was his mysteries. And I don't know what there is really to say about that, except for the fact that, uh, he definitely was popular for his philosophical theological stuff and really not so well known for his mysteries that were probably paying the bills in a, in a large sense during his lifetime.
00:18:12
Speaker
I think that's really interesting, Brooke. And I did see that. Yeah, I think he took a break from writing The Father Brown Mysteries. And then when his income was a little lower, wrote a few more to pay some of the bills.
00:18:32
Speaker
But yeah, I think that's interesting that Doyle wasn't able to accomplish that. I think the public was just so enamored with Sherlock Holmes that I think it just was too difficult for him to really do anything else.
00:18:55
Speaker
But I think there are a lot of parallels between those two authors in terms of their wide interests and the things that they wrote about.
Parallels Between Chesterton and Doyle
00:19:06
Speaker
I agree. I agree. I saw a lot of parallels as well. And, you know, on the one hand, you think, well, gosh, what a terrible problem to have, Doyle, that you're massively famous for this, you know, fictional character. But it really did weigh heavily on him. And, you know, I mean,
00:19:25
Speaker
Face it he killed off his his sleuth, right because he was hoping that that would be a way to distance himself, but Yeah, I just it struck me. I thought well, you know what somehow? Chesterton did that And now in this day and age we mostly know him for his mysteries I I think probably in in large part because of the television series that's endured So just just a thought
00:19:53
Speaker
No, I think you're right. I think he is far better known now for the mysteries. And yeah, I would I would credit that with the television series, because I think it's very popular. The Father Brown mysteries, I think it's I think I read somewhere one of the most popular BBC programmes in some category. I'm not sure which I don't remember which category, but
00:20:22
Speaker
And they're really nice. If you don't want something that's too heavy, they're perfect.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yes, yes. And his character, the character of Father Brown is just as endearing and fun as as he is in the books or excuse me, in the short stories. Well, Brooke, this has been so great to talk about G.K. Chesterton and more specifically talk about his mystery writing today. I'm so glad that we took the time to learn a little bit more about about this man.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
00:21:02
Speaker
I am too. And there's others coming because we know that there are a whole list of mystery authors that we're just uncovering as we do the podcast. So we'll continue to do some of these bio episodes in the future and we look forward to that. But for today, thank you so much everyone for joining us on Clued In Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery.
00:21:27
Speaker
Clued In Mystery is produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers at Silvermansound.com. Visit us online at CluedInMystery.com or social media at CluedInMystery. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or telling your friends.