I've had this album, "The Criminal Under My Own Hat" by T-Bone Burnett for years. It's only just now, while leafing through a new biography of G.K. Chesterton, that I happened on this quote from one of his Father Brown stories:
"No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat."
I've had this album, "The Criminal Under My Own Hat" by T-Bone Burnett for years. It's only just now, while leafing through a new biography of G.K. Chesterton, that I happened on this quote from one of his Father Brown stories:
Great quote. Not familiar with Chesterton I must admit but even that short passage has intrigued me.
ReplyDeleteTypical Chesterton, using the code-word 'Pharisees' to cloak his noxious anti-semitism.
ReplyDeleteI can honestly say I haven't a drop of the oil of the Pharisees on me.
ReplyDeleteIt's good of GK - a great writer, see "A Piece Of Chalk" - to admit that his soul even contains drops of Pharisee oil.
ReplyDelete