I finished The Club of Queer Trades. There seems to be more to this than I thought at first, and before I reflect further I'll contribute to the ongoing discussion.
Chesterton has a good sense of humor, some satire thrown in (especially regarding the British clubs and societies) and writes beautifully about normal and not-so-normal occurrences. In ‘The noticeable conduct of Professor Chadd’ he has Rupert Grant say ‘ For miracles should always happen in broad daylight. The night makes them credible and therefore commonplace.’(107)
I feel that he likes his world to be very tidy or perhaps he is an optimist; all his stories have a happy end. The world may appear to be upside down, but in the end all curious things are explained and neatly placed in order. In ‘The tremendous adventures of Major Brown’, the major’s world changes for a while beyond recognition, but all’s well that end well: he marries a theatrical lady, although from time to time he hankers after some adventure in his organized little life.
Chesterton seems to be lightly satirical about vicars, as seen in ‘ the Awful Reason of the Vicar’s visit’, where a scammer explains ‘Now the highest payment in our office goes to those who impersonate vicars, as being the most respectable and more of a strain' (70)
One of the interesting ideas that Chesterton weaves into his stories I found in ‘The singular speculation of the house-agent’: 'So far from paradox," said his brother, with something rather like a sneer, "you seem to be going in for journalese proverbs. Do you believe that truth is stranger than fiction? “Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction," said Basil placidly. "For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.'(74)
Even before reading ‘ The noticeable conduct of Professor Chadd’, Chesterton’s manner of describing the absurd made me think about Monty Python. I found this interesting link on ‘Monty Python and Chesterton’
http://www.staustinreview.com/ink_de...ton_connection
Not only satire, but also social criticism in ‘The eccentric seclusion of the old lady’, where Basil Grant explains his frustration with the legal system ‘ it gradually dawned on me that in my work, as it was, I was not touching even the fringe of justice’ and offered himself as a ‘purely moral judge to settle purely moral differences’ in ‘unofficial courts of honor’. (144-5)
In the same story Chesterton, as Basil Grant(?), criticizes Darwinism: ‘ What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now that they talk about the survival of the fittest they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean. The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.'(130)
Perhaps it is this fragment in the last story that made me think of Dickens, somehow: 'From behind the wooden partition, in which there was a long lean crack, was coming a continuous and moaning sound which took the form of the words: "When shall I get out? When shall I get out? Will they ever let me out?" or words to that effect.'(121)