G.K. Chesterton on zombies, sort of

An anonymous scribe called "Publius" notes that there no undead folks in The City of God (#DUH)

We all get too much email. Right?

When Internet junkies (or even digital professionals) talk about guilt, one of the statistics we tend to share is the number of emails that remain in our “in boxes.” What to do? An annual purge? Respond to all of them? File them into some kind of system that saves the material for future use? Just feel guilty about online life in general?

I am not going to share my “in” box total. I do, however, have 40+ email file folders, a few of which contain file materials going back 20 years or more. So there.

From time to time, we all get emails that come from somewhere or someone and the headline in the subject line makes it impossible to click “trash.” Here is a double-decker headline that sent an email straight into my Rational Sheep file, pending further action. That headline:

In Defense of Zombie Movies

An Award-Winning Essay Inspired by G.K. Chesterton!

This particular piece came from the Public Musings Substack of a scribe using the name “Publius,” which was the pseudonym used by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay when writing “The Federalist.”

This anonymous scribe notes: “I'm just a middle-aged attorney, with pretensions to being a halfway decent writer, and with aspirations of becoming a hobbit, working at the edge of the world.” As for content, Publius said the newsletter is: “A belated attempt to share what poor thoughts I have with the wider world. My interests are broad, but tend to the intersection of politics, law, the arts, theology (especially Eastern Orthodox Christianity) and societal and spiritual degeneration.”

Obviously, it’s easy to see Rational Sheep hooks in that (and I’m not just talking about the ancient East reference). Oh, Publius also has — apparently without success — tried his hand as a screenwriter.

The inspiration for this piece was a competition seeking essays about “The Use and Abuse of Violence, or War: What is it NOT Good For?” Publius describes that as a “Chestertonian topic if ever there was one!” That leads to this:

While thinking on what I wanted to write, I distinctly remember having a dream one night about zombies. I don’t recall what happened in the dream, nor do I recall it being particularly discomfiting, but I do remember upon waking, I knew that I had both a thematic hook as well as a title. For those of you less versed in Chesterton’s writings, the title is an (admittedly oblique) homage to Chesterton’s classic essay in defense of “low-brow” literature A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls.

Now, before I pass along a few chunks of this Chesterton-esque essay from Publius, let me confess that:

* I am not a big fan of horror movies or flicks that include strong depictions of violence (“The Silence of the Lambs” is an important exception).