Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton: What I Saw in America, the Resurrection of Rome and Side Lights

Rating:
Summary: Deeply embarrassing for Chesterton admirers
Review: Few writers of the last century deserve a more drastic upward revision in their reputations and popularity than Chesterton. His magnificent prose, humanity and gift for paradox shine through his writings. His account in this volume of American culture and society exemplifies these strengths, and is the reason for my awarding it a second star. Yet this volume also includes his worst book by a long way, namely his first-hand account of Italy under Mussolini. This book doesn't approach the mendacity of some starry-eyed intellectuals who travelled to the Potemkin Villages of the Soviet Union and came back with glowing accounts of happy and fulfilled proletarians - Shaw and the Webbs, Henry Wallace (Roosevelt's Vice-President), and their equivalents (Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky) who travelled as political pilgrims to China, Vietnam, Cuba and Nicaragua more recently. But it is still indefensible, and we admirers of Chesterton will just have to admit it. The author is massively confused; he goes on for pages and pages skirting round the question of whether he's for or against the Fascists. I'm afraid he even explicitly commends to his readers' attention the system of Fascist Syndicalism in preference to capitalism ("[A] policy ... which is worthy of a sharp and close attention which it has hardly received. It is not Socialism; it is not Distributism; but it is distinguished and divided in a most startling manner from anything to which we are accustomed as Capitalism.") All in all, this volume shows us a good and gentle man out of his depth; I'm sorry the book is in print and cannot recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Timeless assessment of American culture
Review: Though Chesterton died in 1936, his What I Saw In America presents an analysis of American (and British) life and culture which is as pertinent today as ever. Delivered with his delicately delightful wit, only his mild tendency toward wordiness keeps this book from a 5-star rating.