From the Shelves of the Paco Library

Msgr. Ronald Knox was a highly accomplished man: Roman Catholic clergyman, theologian, literary critic, Bible translator, Catholic chaplain at Oxford, radio broadcaster, a close friend of G.K. Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh, and a writer of detective stories.

I regret to say that I have not had the opportunity to read Msgr. Knox’s detective fiction; however, I have had a chance to dip into his non-fiction, including Literary Distractions, and an excellent selection of quotations published by Ignatius Press, The Quotable Knox.

In Literary Distractions, a book of essays on a variety of authors and literary topics, one finds Msgr. Knox’s famous rules governing the writing of detective stories. He introduces them thusly:

“And now, what are the rules governing the art of the detective story? Let us remember in the first place that these are rules; and you cannot afford to overlook them, because the detective story is a game. People try to write poetry without rhyme and novels without plots and prose without meaning and so on; they may be right or they may be wrong, but such liberties must not be taken in the field of which we are speaking. For every detective story is a game played between the author and the reader; the author has scored if he can reach the last chapter without letting the reader see how the crime was committed, although he has given him hints all through which ought theoretically to have let him work it out for himself. And there will be no triumph in doing that if the author has broken the rules.”

Msgr. Knox also turns his nimble mind to an appreciation of such literary figures as Dr. Johnson and Robert Louis Stevenson, and tells the droll, but true, story of one George Townsend, D.D., Canon of Durham, who, in 1848, set out on his holiday to convert the Pope (quite unsuccessfully, it is, of course, needless to point out).

The Quotable Knox is, as the subtitle indicates, “a topical compendium of [his] wit and wisdom.” Herewith, a few of my favorite quotes:

Oxford: “A kind of isolation hospital, in which the English nation was well advised to segregate all the people who were intelligent enough to prove a nuisance if they went into public life.”

The devil: “It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil…he is the only explanation of it.”

Detective stories: “Many great men – it is notorious – read detective stories, though often behind locked doors, or under false jackets. They are afraid of their high-brow friends; for detective stories still do not rank as literature…and if you meet a man who boasts that he does not think them interesting, you will nearly always find that he indulges in some lower form of compensation – probably he is a cross-word addict.”

Evolution, theory of: “People went about with long faces cursing Darwin and the other people for tracing man’s ancestry…from some monkey or monkeys unknown. They minded that terribly; not so much, I think, because they were Christians as because in their heart of hearts they were good old solid Victorians, who thought that the human species was the highest kind of existence that could possibly be conceived…But if they’d looked in the Bible, instead of being so anxious to defend the accuracy of the Bible, they’d have found something much worse than that. The Bible says the Lord God formed man out of the slime of the earth. That’s what we are, Lord Macaulay and all the rest of us, slime…We are animals, we are organisms we are matter – slime of the earth.”

Judgment Day: “We know that we shall not all be equal in glory; the equality…lies in this, that each soul is fulfilled to its full extent with the delights of God’s house. And we know that there can be no murmuring or envying in that manifestation of the sons of God. We shall, I imagine, have no time to say, “Who could have thought of seeing you there?” We shall be too engrossed in the reflection, “Who would have thought of seeing me here?”

Msgr. Knox’s spirit of Christian charity and his restless intellectual curiosity combined to give us a first-rate thinker whose writings on a multitude of subjects are witty, perceptive and instructive. A thousand pities that we did not, like Waugh and Chesterton, have the opportunity to sit with him over brandy and cigars and delight in his conversation. The printed word is as close as we can get to possessing an intimate familiarity with this humane mind, and for that, at least, I am grateful.