The Genius of G.K. Chesterton: How Borges Led Me to “The Blue Cross”

Part 1

Recently, the television offered yet another modern detective series: the BBC’s Father Brown. After watching, I was unsurprised when the Internet confirmed that the 10-year series is only “loosely based” on the original Father Brown mysteries by G.K. Chesterton. The show seemed somehow derivative of Midsomer Murders, but lacking the wry humor of either actor John Nettles in the latter series, or of the humorous writing of Chesterton’s classic stories: in short, an indecisive series marred by anachronisms and the forcible inclusion of modern social issues to a period setting that was not even the original period of the author, as this critical article explains.

Yet production compromises aside, all publicity is good publicity, and if the current BBC effort leads more people to read Chesterton (as the previous ITV 1974 series did, and even Alec Guinness’s first film portrayal of the priestly detective did in 1954), than so much the better.

I’m just a bit cross because G.K. Chesterton and his writings never entered my consciousness until a few years ago, when I started to take a new interest in detective stories- and even then, only accidentally. These wonderfully-written tales were never a part of school curricula, reading lists, nor recommended by anyone. And that is a shame because, while there are many authors of detective literature, most do not qualify firstly as authors of literature.

Chesterton is different. He is what we call a ‘real writer,’ as Jorge Luis Borges might have said.

How Borges Introduced Me to Chesterton

A few years ago, I discovered this Open Culture article, which states that in 1985, “Argentine publisher Hyspamerica asked Borges to create A Personal Library — which involved curating 100 great works of literature and writing introductions for each volume.”

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