The Dark Side of Chesterton

Though an apostle of joy and common sense, Chesterton’s work, especially his stories, has hideous and frightening images running through from beginning to end. What is the place of the grotesque, the nihilistic, and evil itself in his work? Was it something overcome by the beautiful, the true, and the good? “Did his gaiety surmount evil,” Garry Wills asked, “or simply ignore it?” This is the burden of John C. Tibbetts’s “inquiry” titled The Dark Side of Chesterton.