Second Impressions

"Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved" – Martin Luther, who revolutionized the world by inventing the aggressive precursor to the thumbtack.

As much as Your Humble Correspondent deplores the militarization of discourse, one must hand it to Martin Luther that he put this one across rather niftily. With this in mind, Loyal Readers, one can only assume that the battle that was the preceding post rivaled the Titanomachy in its test of your Loyalty. One hopes that this conclusion will not test the limits of your goodwill and, in a surprise twist, might uncharacteristically skew toward laconicism over loquaciousness.

If you cast your Loyal minds back to Your Humble Correspondent's previous post, you may remember a Parthian shot in the final paragraph alluding to the name of a character in a silly book about scary bunnies. It was staged, possibly cryptically, as the final key unlocking the inevitably disappointing motive behind this site's effort to "show what can be achieved with a commonplace existence and the sacred spectacles of exaggeration", in the words of the inspiration to be named shortly.

The cat, in the silly book about scary bunnies, was named Chester. A brief note of exposition in at least one of the volumes in the then-trilogy explained that the cat was a Christmas gift, accompanied by two volumes of G.K. Chesterton, the cat having been named in tribute to this mysterious author. As a youth of by now exhaustively-documented callowness, I had never heard of this author, nor did I care to hear of him when hilarious leporine vampirism was in the offing. Having not yet attained the first of what have been possibly too many decades on this earth, one hopes that this intentional ignorance can be excused. Regardless, the scales eventually fell from my apparently scaly eyes and my natural, perpetual, and often obnoxious curiosity reared its head. "Parents," I inquired in what was doubtless a cherubic voice, "who is this Chesterton and how might I learn more of him that I may better realize your expectations of me as a son and make myself into the person that will eventually disappoint you beyond redemption?" Having dealt with Your Humble Correspondent for, as said, almost a full decade at this point, my parents knew that this was an opportunity to keep me out of their hair for a bit. Having absolutely no idea themselves who this Chesterton was, they showed admirable resourcefulness in a pre-Amazon world and purchased for me the complete set of Father Brown mysteries, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, which I now realize was a staggeringly ambitious literary gift to a nine year old.

Being possessed of the personality that insists a thing can be done in the absence, or even the presence, of evidence to the contrary, Your Humble Correspondent set to reading. Nothing made sense at first. This was not a story about dogs and cats and bunnies and vegetables. This was like nothing I had ever encountered. Words I knew were being used in ways that I had never encountered, while words I did not know were tugging at that insistent curiosity. Book-It be damned, I only wanted to read this, to understand so I could better appreciate this master of paradox, of absurd sincerity and sincere absurdity, of grandiloquent overstatement and plunging understatement, and of sunsets. I slept with his book on my nightstand and a dictionary in the drawer below it.

Over the years, I acquired both a cat and more of his works, but not together. My love for his writing only grew, even as I dove into his more religious works. I must pause here for what I hope is a rare moment of sincerity: G.K.'s views on Catholicism and Christianity as a whole are his, not mine. It's difficult, if not dangerous, to cherrypick from an artist's body of work, but I hope that you, Loyal Reader, will allow me this indulgence.

Finally, and through what has been a raging battle, we reach the point of this two-part introduction. The introductory chapter of Chesterton's book Tremendous Trifles details the intent of the rest of the book. I quoted it earlier – I mean that particular passion for describing the ordinary in extraordinary terms. I hope to share with you the humor and wonder in the mundane and have named this site, with the help of a very good friend, as an homage to Tremendous Trifles. I cannot claim to possess even a fraction of his talent or facility with the language, but I'll try to do old GKC proud. I hope you enjoy it too.

Please read for yourself: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8092/8092-h/8092-h.htm#link2H_4_0002