About The Four Men Feast - the Event and the Website
by Joseph L. Grabowski
In the year of Our Lord two-thousand, avid ChesterBellocians Nathan Allen and Ted Olsen co-founded an annual Four Men Feast in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. When I say avid, I mean it: Allen has annotated and edited a wonderful new edition of The Four Men published by ACS Books, and the wealth of research and care evident in the edition marks it clearly as a labor of love. Even more strikingly, Allen and Olsen joined two other men once in re-creating the foot trek across Sussex described in The Four Men: that is the manner and the measure of devotion they have to the subject.
I can understand such devotion. I don't remember the season, or even the year; all I recall is that one day, when I was minding my own business, I suddenly found myself excited for the next Four Men Feast. I'd attended a couple, and even helped plan and execute one or two, and enjoyed them immensely. You see, the annual Feast that had begun in the Twin Cities inspired others to join the fun. A "satellite" feast first cropped up in Illinois, and I drove down to attend this while I was attending Marquette University in Wisconsin. When I returned home to Philadelphia, I and two friends started our own here. But even after helping start a local Feast, it was nevertheless silently and subconsciously that the Feast grew to be one of my favorite events of the year, and Belloc's novel to be one of my favorite books. The realization of these facts, as they dawned on me on this particular day, was a kind of pleasant surprise. The response in me engendered by that surprise, thought it may seem odd to some, seemed natural to me.
You see, I tend to dote on the things I enjoy. In a different life, with different chromosomes, I might have been one of those people who collects unnecessarily small dogs and dresses them in unnecessarily absurd outfits and trains them to skateboard or push baby carriages. I can understand, and even sympathize, with such people: not because I fathom the objects of their devotion, but rather because I think that our minds have the same modus operandi, a certain obsessiveness and, as it were, surfeit span of attention. That is to say, for me a hobby hardly seems worth having unless it becomes a huge demand upon time and energy: it's just how my brain works.
Thus, building a website, designing program booklets, digitizing sheet music, and all the other frenetic activities I suddenly undertook in devotion to The Four Men and the Feast were simply what seemed to me the proper responses to a sudden appreciation for the joy that the book and the celebration impart. This website, ultimately, is a hobby. It's maintenance is a labor, not of love per se, but of that peculiar kind of devotion one feels who particularly enjoys a certain activity or thing: think of the runner who reads running magazines, the home cook who constantly experiments with new ingredients or gadgets, or the amateur photographer who saves to buy new lenses and accessories.
I hope that the fruits of my interest in The Four Men and the Feast will aid others in their appreciation of the same, and assist in their consideration of the themes upon which both the book and the celebration focus - the themes of mortality, morals, and masculinity; of fidelity, faith, and friendship; and of the truest meaning of "home," in time and in eternity.
I can understand such devotion. I don't remember the season, or even the year; all I recall is that one day, when I was minding my own business, I suddenly found myself excited for the next Four Men Feast. I'd attended a couple, and even helped plan and execute one or two, and enjoyed them immensely. You see, the annual Feast that had begun in the Twin Cities inspired others to join the fun. A "satellite" feast first cropped up in Illinois, and I drove down to attend this while I was attending Marquette University in Wisconsin. When I returned home to Philadelphia, I and two friends started our own here. But even after helping start a local Feast, it was nevertheless silently and subconsciously that the Feast grew to be one of my favorite events of the year, and Belloc's novel to be one of my favorite books. The realization of these facts, as they dawned on me on this particular day, was a kind of pleasant surprise. The response in me engendered by that surprise, thought it may seem odd to some, seemed natural to me.
You see, I tend to dote on the things I enjoy. In a different life, with different chromosomes, I might have been one of those people who collects unnecessarily small dogs and dresses them in unnecessarily absurd outfits and trains them to skateboard or push baby carriages. I can understand, and even sympathize, with such people: not because I fathom the objects of their devotion, but rather because I think that our minds have the same modus operandi, a certain obsessiveness and, as it were, surfeit span of attention. That is to say, for me a hobby hardly seems worth having unless it becomes a huge demand upon time and energy: it's just how my brain works.
Thus, building a website, designing program booklets, digitizing sheet music, and all the other frenetic activities I suddenly undertook in devotion to The Four Men and the Feast were simply what seemed to me the proper responses to a sudden appreciation for the joy that the book and the celebration impart. This website, ultimately, is a hobby. It's maintenance is a labor, not of love per se, but of that peculiar kind of devotion one feels who particularly enjoys a certain activity or thing: think of the runner who reads running magazines, the home cook who constantly experiments with new ingredients or gadgets, or the amateur photographer who saves to buy new lenses and accessories.
I hope that the fruits of my interest in The Four Men and the Feast will aid others in their appreciation of the same, and assist in their consideration of the themes upon which both the book and the celebration focus - the themes of mortality, morals, and masculinity; of fidelity, faith, and friendship; and of the truest meaning of "home," in time and in eternity.
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