Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton
A comment I left over at Matt’s blog.
I’ve not read a lot of Chesterton, but the stuff I have read … well, it leaves me invigorated. Much the same with Lewis and Tolkien.
It’s not that these men knew how to draw out what is wrong with this world … they knew how to draw out what was right …
Sometimes I think we romanticize so much of the wrong of the world (even for seemingly right reasons) because that is what we know, can identify, and can relate to.
But these guys never romanticized the wrong. They certainly knew how to draw out and paint the depths of suffering, vice, and evil in the world … but what was romanticized and formed the contrast of their prose was the good, the ideal … a glimpse of a hobbit-esque world of self indulgent selflessness in between the larger resistance to gluttonous selfishness.
I have Chesterton (well, some of his works) you’re welcome to borrow them.
Though I will say this: Tolkien and Lewis have that brittish tendancy towards wordyness. Chesterton is that way… squared.