She was always showing up in all of his novels, both positively and negatively.Ĭhesterton was the second sort of artist. Tolstoy’s poor wife lived in a state of almost constant embarrassment. Tolstoy is Pierre in War and Peace, and Levin in Anna Kerenina. The other kind are the autobiographical ones who write out of their own experience and life. The impersonal ones seem to be conduits of something that comes to them from the outside, and you can never tell anything about them as persons by the content of their art (Mozart and Shakespeare are the two consummate examples). Karl Stern, the great Catholic psychoanalyst maintains that there are two kinds of artists. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one of the best of the last century.Ĭhesterton was one of those artists who was quite autobiographical. I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century.
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