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FOOTNOTES_TO_HOLMES

                                             June 17-21, 2008

It seems clear that G.K. Chesterton's
"Father Brown" character was intended           CALUMNY
as a figure to counter-balance that of
Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes was the man of science and
rationality, with very little interest
in what you might call "human feeling",       Holmes also had an arrogant,
and of no apparent religious faith.           superior air, which is reversed
                                              for the humble, quiet Brown

One of Chesterton's themes                            PHONE_BOOTH
is that the hyper-rational
are prone toward going off       Conan Doyle's Holmes
the rails into superstition.     character showed no     (Though Holmes'
                                 such tendencies --      experiments with
His protagonist Father Brown                             drug use are a
is immune to this with a              But Conan          classic example
common sense based in his             Doyle himself      of the sort of
faith-- he believes in                famously           trap smart
biblical miracles, and yet            became             people set for
when confronted by any                obsessed with      themselves.)
apparent present-day miracle          spiritualism
he stubbornly roots out               and other
evidence that it's an                 similar
illusion.                             phenomena.

   It often seems that for                   Around the time that
   Chesterton, truth is paradox,             Chesterton published "The
   hence to state a contradiction            Oracle of the Dog" (1923)
   is to prove a point.                      Conan Doyle was deeply
                                             involved with spiritualism.
         "From a contradiction,              In 1926 alone Doyle
          anything follows."                 published multiple books
                                             about it...

                                             And also in 1926, Doyle
                                             published a book claiming
                                             photographic evidence for the
                                             existance of fairies.

                                                  When Chesterton attacks
                                                  credulous skeptics, I think
      This line can be                            one should envision Doyle.
      traced further
      as the mystery                              FUNDAMENT
      genre continues
      to evolve/decline.

                John Dickon
                Carr's "Gideon Fell"
                is a reference,
                and perhaps
                a reaction to
                "Father Brown"

                         JUST_MEN

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