As the pre-eminent member of the global literati, your humble correspondent shall soon be winging his way to the northern prairie, to the site of the annual G. K. Chesterton Conference and Winemaking Symposium. Ah, the posh urbane conversation! Ah, the ineffible desuetude! Ah, the mosquitos - where's my repellent?
This year we discuss one of the most formidable books in the Chestertonian canon - Orthodoxy, written 100 years ago in 1908.
All I can honestly say as a preparation for the conference is this true anecdote. Many years ago two ex-seminarians came to our local Chesterton society to participate in a discussion of Orthodoxy. They proceded to knock the book, and when I said to one of them, "It sounds as if you haven't even read it!" he replied, "I haven't!"
"Then why are you here?" I inquired.
"I object to the title!" he replied.
I am not making this up. Well, in a week or less the conference begins, and we'll go deeper, I trust, than objecting to the title.
