The Life and Theme of G.K. Chesterton | Randall Paine | An Introduction
to The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton
The prospect of a humble man setting out to write an autobiography suggests
an enterprise blighted 
with potential frustrations–for both author
and reader. Being humble, the author will hardly regard himself as sterling
material for a book. The reader, already poising the book in his lap, obviously
disagrees. Thus the two may find themselves standing at this ambiguous frontier,
staring blankly at each other and comparing their complementary frustrations.
But this is a gamble one must be willing to take, for there is many a modest
soul with a magnificent tale to tell.
In
the case of The
Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton, we do have a book that both falls
short of and carelessly oversteps the usual framework of an autobiography.
It is with this dilemma we must begin. Here is a self that reveals by effacing.
Indeed, the very depth of Chesterton's humility and the very extravagance
of his intellectual hospitality join forces to lay open a landscape at once
vast and various, and yet so full of the man's unmistakable presence that
both author and reader promptly forget their frustrations and glue their
eyes to a quite unexpected genre of self-revelation.
In the last years of Chesterton's life, when he was visibly failing but
still prodigiously active, the inevitable request for an autobiography was
repeatedly made. Finally, he obligingly turned to the task, probably overcoming
a natural modesty with an even stronger sense of humour at the book's prospects,
and began dictating. We are tempted to picture the book's genesis in somewhat
the following pattern: The aging and ailing G.K.C. would settle back into
a chair in his studio, light up a cigar, and begin a long and misty reflection
on "the story of my life and development". His dozens of books all on display
in a large circle around his likewise large and circular body, our author
would proceed to cap these prolific literary labours with a pleasant reminiscence–a
kind of crowning occupation in the leisure of life's evening.
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