Journal of Inklings Studies

Duncan Reyburn, Seeing Things as They Are: G.K. Chesterton and the Drama of
Meaning. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016. xi + 298 pp. ISBN:
978-1-4982-3188-6.

In this thoughtful and lucid study, Duncan Reyburn makes a compelling case
for the complexity of G.K. Chesterton’s philosophy. Foregrounding the
question ‘What, in Chesterton’s view, is required for us to perceive things
clearly, as they are?’ (ix), Reyburn considers a range of writings by Chesterton
and offers a series of intelligent readings. Reyburn’s philosophical and
theological acumen is evident throughout, and in addition to showing a high
level of familiarity with the scholarship that has been produced on Chesterton,
Reyburn’s extensive acquaintance with his primary material is impressive. Two
of the strongest parts of the book see Reyburn turning his attention to work by
Chesterton that has enjoyed less attention than some of the better-known
writing. The account of Chesterton’s drama The Surprise (in chapter 3 and
elsewhere) is particularly good, and the excellent discussion in chapter 6 of
Chesterton’s various writings on the Book of Job probably leads to the most
insightful section of the book.
While there is much to admire in the thought and scholarship that has gone
into writing this book, I am left with some reservations. In some respects, these
result from my disagreement with two of the premises that Reyburn sets out at
the beginning. Outlining the preliminary hermeneutical principles that shape
his reading of Chesterton, Reyburn details one being ‘that Chesterton’s words
ought to have priority above my own opinions, as well as the opinions of others’,
and another being the decision ‘to treat Chesterton’s corpus as a unified whole’
(10). The first strikes me as a recurring problem across a lot of the criticism by
scholars who work on Chesterton, many of whom seem critically paralysed by
the stylistic skill of the author they are writing about. Reyburn justifies his
choice by saying that it emerges from a desire to know Chesterton’s thinking as
accurately as possible, but I am not convinced by this line of thought. Although
I like Chesterton’s writing very much and am acutely aware of how difficult it is
to do justice to his ability with language, critics should not defer to an author so
heavily. If one wants to read Chesterton’s own words, we can do so at source
and in the extended and intended form that his books and short pieces allow.
The task of the critic must surely be to say something about their subject that is
not immediately apparent. Reyburn has much to teach us, but there are times
when his use of long quotations by Chesterton becomes overwhelming, and the
result is that I was sometimes left longing to hear more from the critic and less
from his subject.

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The second principle about which I have my doubts is the decision to treat
Chesterton’s corpus as a unified whole. I agree that Chesterton was a relatively
consistent thinker, yet differences and modifications still emerge in his writing.
My own view is that Chesterton’s later work was less innovative formally,
more entrenched in its perspectives, and increasingly unwilling to engage with
the thinking of others. Whether or not I am right to note these temporal
differences, there are certainly substantial formal differences in Chesterton’s
work as he moves between genres. Reyburn is not entirely unaware of these
formal differences, but they are frequently allowed to recede into the
background, and the result is that the formal and stylistic particularity of
Chesterton’s writing sometimes gets lost. For those interested in thinking
further about Chesterton’s use of form and genre, I would recommend Michael
D. Hurley’s G.K. Chesterton (2012), which turns out to be one of the few books
about Chesterton that is missing from Reyburn’s bibliography.
I also found myself wondering about the focus and audience for this book.
Reyburn admits that scholarship on Chesterton often exists in a ‘ghetto’ (222),
and while the attempt to get Chesterton out of this ghetto by covering huge
swathes of ground and providing a wide-ranging ‘philosophical tour’ (285) of
Chesterton is laudable and frequently illuminating, the danger of looking at
everything is, as Reyburn himself acknowledges, that the subject becomes
harder and harder to ‘pin down’ (125). While the quality of the writing and
discussion in this book is generally very good, I am not convinced that the study
is really about Chesterton’s hermeneutics. Early on in his introduction Reyburn
seems to recognise as much when he highlights the difference between
Chesterton’s account of interpretation and the particular German philosophical
tradition from which our modern understanding of hermeneutics emerges.
Reyburn is right, of course, to insist that a hermeneutic is present whether or
not one has read Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Gadamer, but it does not make
sense to use the language of these German thinkers if one is not going to
engage with their thought in more detail. Those who are familiar with these
hermeneutical thinkers—Gadamer especially—will hear echoes of this
tradition in the emphasis that Reyburn places throughout on terms such as
‘play’ and ‘horizon’, but the lack of any sustained reference to those who
write about hermeneutics orphans this vocabulary. Moreover, in some of
the chapters—most notably chapter 4, but also the latter part of chapter 2,
when Reyburn starts to write about Chesterton’s views on imperialism and
patriotism—the link to hermeneutics feels a little forced.
The wide-ranging concerns of this study lead to questions about audience
and who the book is trying to reach. One obvious answer is to say that the book
is aimed at those already familiar with Chesterton, and I suspect that many
people within this community will, like me, find much of interest in what
Reyburn has to say. But it is harder to imagine who else would read the book.

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By seeking to cover so much philosophical and theological ground, Reyburn

inadvertently closes down the space in which he might have engaged at length
with those critics and thinkers who write about the same topics. There are a few
brief references in the book to continental philosophers such as Slavoj Žižek,
yet for the most part these references are fleeting and there is very little said
about other scholarship (apart from those who write about Chesterton) on
hermeneutics or the myriad other topics with which this book is concerned
(imperialism, human dignity, humour, the event, and so on).
Like all of the thinkers commonly associated with our study of the Inklings,
Chesterton is an important and complex writer. He deserves the careful and
expert attention that Reyburn gives to him, and there is no doubt that
Chesterton’s ideas and texts speak to a large array of subjects. But if Chesterton
is going to escape the ghetto and get the attention he deserves, those of us who
write about him need to find sharper ways of engaging with specific scholarly
audiences, and, as we do so, revealing precisely how we think our subjects speak
into the involved conversations that our peers are having. Chesterton debated
with numerous interlocutors over the course of his life, and for those who are
interested in continuing his legacy, there is a need to step outside our
immediate interpretative communities so that we can find ways of doing
likewise.

Mark Knight
Lancaster University
DOI: 10.3366/ink.2019.0035

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