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amusingly, the Google blurb for GK Chesterton lists him as influencing only Zizek. He was born in London in 1874, worked for a publisher, did some journalism, freelance art and literary criticism, and interestingly, like Shaw, wanted to be an artist rather than a writer 6'4 https://t.co/8SzHLaQAst https://t.co/pz1bkMHupg
Shaw and Chesterton were described as "fighting friends", "beloved enemies", rarely in agreement yet maintaining goodwill. Plays have been written and staged about their rivalry, which was a gift to everyone in their scene https://t.co/J0GWGcDiNW https://t.co/ca9zOLDASz
Chesterton has been described as the "prince of paradox", known to take popular sayings, proverbs, allegories and "carefully turn them inside out" https://t.co/MG1ydZoT9V
another mutual of Chesterton and Shaw was HG Wells "He seemed always to be working out a philosophy of human progress" you can see a pattern in how WW1, The Great Depression and WW2 shook intellectuals, turned them (understandably) pessimistic, cynical https://t.co/w8stBIT5zw https://t.co/sOI2PzdJSh
“Freud’s outlook grew dark as Europe tore itself to bits in one war, then rearmed for a worse one; and darker as the cancer attacked his body.” This is what I love about biographies – big picture perspectives on the broad, hard-to-see-in-real-time forces that shape people’s lives
cute/sweet exchange between Wells and Chesterton Wells: if there is a God I hope he'll let me into heaven because I am your friend GKC: my dear HG, if there is a heaven, you will be welcome to it- and not for being my friend, but for being a friend to all men 😭❤️ https://t.co/1J5jcp27gG
Like Montaigne and Shaw, Chesterton recognized that school is bullshit https://t.co/VCoFL34rs1