Tuesday 7 July 2020

The Question All Atheists Need To Ask After Reading A Father Brown Book


Hello there. Hope you're feeling well. 

Well let's get to the question first. If you are an atheist and have just read a Father Brown book by G K Chesterton, who would you be more likely to believe exists if a gun was pointed to your head? 
1) God 

2) A Father Brown type figure. 

I would argue that all atheists would pick God. 

I have read one G K Chesterton book before. The Man Who Knew Too Much. Well trust me that man wasn't me. A most confusing piece of rubbish truly had not passed through my vision in a long, long while. Well The Innocence Of Father Brown is not as bad as that. But it's still rubbish. 

Father Brown, supposedly a priest of an Essex parish that gives the impression of quietness/ politeness to almost the point of timidity before revealing whodunit. His ordinariness is pre Columbo without the skill. And anyway how can you be truly ordinary when you walk around in a robe all day? 

The stories are both rushed and rubbish. Father Brown works out whodunnit whilst for the rest of us it's just too much of stretch to work out how he did unless there was help from a diety. No human really could work it out. My suspicion is that Chesterton just worked out the crime then the solution in the shortest possible time. Hence this haphazard nature can explain why in one story the newly discovered dead body is moved and in another it's kept there until the police have finished with their scene of crime investigations.

Now I must admit that as a rule I don't think that crime short stories featuring a regular character work. Simply because the novel allows more breathing space. But even allowing for that these stories are awful.

Father Brown is, apparently a parish priest of an Essex parish and yet the stories are set in places such as Paris and Scotland. Perhaps he's a secret agent for the pope. A sort of double o heaven.

He's also not a socialist and a bit racist to other religions. There is a line when describing something in Hindi that " They are letters and symbols in a language I don't know but I know they stand for evil words ".How he knows this is not explained. 

I have another Father Brown book to read. And when I do I might like it. It would however be a god given miracle. 

Until the next time.

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