Chapter I
A reading circle with a long table and a short agenda
The Chesterton Society of Wausau is a new reading circle in central Wisconsin. Beginning this November, we will meet once a month to read and discuss the writing and thought of G.K. Chesterton.
Each month we will choose a book, a handful of essays, or a few Father Brown stories. We read on our own, then gather to talk about what he got right, what puzzled us, and what still applies to life in Marathon County.
No expertise is required. Some of us have read Orthodoxy five times; some of us have not opened it yet. Believers, skeptics, students and retirees all have a seat. Chesterton argued with almost everyone and stayed friends with most of them, and we try to do the same.
- When
- Second Monday of every month, 6:00 PM
- Where
- Newman Classical School, 1122 S 9th Avenue, Wausau, WI 54401
On-street parking. Enter through the door on the right (north) side of the building. Map - Cost
- Free. Just bring your own copy of the reading.
- Who
- Anyone curious about Chesterton, from first-time readers to lifelong fans.
- First
- Monday, November 9
Chapter II
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874–1936
Journalist, novelist, poet, debater, illustrator and defender of the Christian faith, Chesterton was one of the most prolific and most quoted writers of the twentieth century.
Across four decades he wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories and thousands of newspaper essays, most of them written quickly and all of them written with delight. He wore a cape and a crushed hat, debated George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells in public halls, and remained their friend. He was a man of mirth and girth.
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1874–1908
Fleet Street
Born in Kensington and trained as an artist at the Slade, he drifted into journalism and found his voice defending ordinary things against the fashionable gloom of the 1890s: the family, the pub, the fairy tale, the common man. In Heretics (1905) he took on the leading thinkers of his day by name.
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1908–1922
The apologist
Orthodoxy (1908) tells how he set out to invent a new philosophy and discovered he had arrived at Christianity. The same years gave us The Man Who Was Thursday, the first Father Brown mysteries, and What's Wrong with the World.
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1922–1936
The convert
He was received into the Catholic Church in 1922. St. Francis of Assisi, The Everlasting Man and St. Thomas Aquinas followed, along with his own weekly paper, radio talks for the BBC, and a long campaign for a human-scale economy he called distributism.
Chapter III
A shelf to start from
Choose a spine to read about the book.
Chapter IV
Read by the people who shaped the century
Chesterton is less famous today than the writers he influenced. Follow the threads back and you keep finding him.
C.S. Lewis
Credited The Everlasting Man with helping him see the Christian story as a whole, a key step on his road back to faith.
Mahatma Gandhi
Is widely reported to have been struck by a 1909 Chesterton column urging Indians to build an Indian nation rather than copy England.
Michael Collins
Loved The Napoleon of Notting Hill, a novel about a small place defending its own way of life against an empire.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Served in the Detection Club, of which Chesterton was the first president, and later led it herself.
Jorge Luis Borges
Counted Chesterton among his favorite writers and returned to the Father Brown stories again and again in his essays.
Marshall McLuhan
The media theorist credited reading Chesterton as a turning point on his way to religious faith.
Chapter V
Why read him now?
Chesterton wrote a century ago, yet he reads like someone who saw our feeds, our culture wars and our loneliness coming. Here is why we think he deserves an evening a month.
He restores the habit of wonder
In an age of endless distraction, he looks at a piece of chalk, a dandelion or a lump of cheese and finds a miracle. Reading him is training in attention and gratitude.
He argues without hating
His fiercest opponents were his friends. He shows how to attack an idea with full force while keeping real affection for the person who holds it, a skill our public life has nearly lost.
He defends common sense
“Chesterton’s fence,” as later readers named it, comes from his 1929 book The Thing: before you tear down a fence, find out why it was put up. It is a useful brake in an age of fast reform and faster outrage.
He thinks at human scale
He championed the family, the small farm, the local shop and the neighborhood against both giant corporations and giant government. That speaks directly to a place shaped by family farms, ginseng fields and mill towns.
He takes joy seriously
For Chesterton, faith and fun were never opposites. Humor, paradox and good cheer run through everything he wrote, even his hardest arguments.
He is a pleasure to read
You can start anywhere: a ten-page mystery, a two-page essay, a ballad. He is quotable on nearly every page, and he rarely wastes your time.
Chapter VI
The shape of an evening
6:00
Arrive
Coffee, a pint or a cup of tea, and a few minutes to meet whoever is new.
6:15
Read aloud and discuss
Someone reads a favorite passage from this month's text, then a volunteer opens the conversation with three or four questions.
7:30
Linger
We choose the next reading and keep talking over a last cup.
8:00
Depart
Home by a reasonable hour, with something to think about until next month.
Our next meeting
Monday, November 9
6:00 PM
Newman Classical School, 1122 S 9th Avenue, Wausau, WI 54401
On-street parking. Enter through the door on the right (north) side of the building. Open in Maps
A sketch of this season's readings
A proposed list. The group chooses together, and we change course whenever a good argument demands it.
Chapter VII
Now and then, a guest at the head of the table
A few times a year we plan to invite a speaker to open a topic: a professor, a priest or pastor, a local author, or a visitor from the wider Chesterton community.
Speaker evenings will be open to the public and announced well in advance, so bring a friend. If you would like to give a talk, or know someone who should, we would be glad to hear from you.
Talks we’d love to host
- Father Brown and the detective story
- Distributism and the Wisconsin family farm
- Chesterton, Lewis and the Inklings
- The Ballad of the White Horse, read aloud
Chapter VIII
Pull up a chair
Send us a note and we will add you to the monthly reminder with the date, the place and the reading.
There are no dues and no obligations. Come once, come every month, or come only when the book looks good.
Write to us
chestertonwausau@protonmail.comStart reading at home
Begin with Father Brown
Short, clever mysteries you can finish over lunch. The Innocence of Father Brown is free online and an easy first step.
Find the storiesFollow a reading plan
The Society of G.K. Chesterton offers a reading plan for beginners, along with quotations, essays and lectures.
See the reading plan