The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Penguin Classics) | G. K. Chesterton

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Penguin Classics) | G. K. Chesterton | Sparkling prose littered with gems

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The Man Who Was Th...

	The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Penguin Classics) G. K. Chesterton Penguin Classics, 1990 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 102 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Widely considered as Chesterton's masterpiece, "The Man Who Was Thursday" (1908) defies classification. Subtitled "A Nightmare" by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective story. This critical edition includes several short related pieces, "A Picture of Tuesday", "Introduction to the Book of Job", and "The Diabolist", as well as a map of contemporary London and detailed explanatory notes.

Your blue sock is behind the dryer.

I went into reading this book with such strong misconceptions concerning what it was about. Like the characters whom see things completely different it seems like the readers of this book see its meaning quite differently as well. It is a crazy allegory but of what?

On a stylistic level Chesterton's prose is unique and well crafted. Chesterton has his own voice in his writing powerful, artful, and clear. On an abstract level I can't help but feel I got something out of the book but I am at a loss to say what. I was told, long ago, that the book was about the futility of much of what passes for philosophy and the book was a mockery of this in the promotion of faith and traditional religious devotion. I only vaguely got the notion that the book was about this. I could see how the book was about the futility of judging others or creating "us" verse "them" groups because we are all brothers, the ideas and classifications we use to classify each other are futile and meaningless and make a mockery of humanity in the eyes of God, so go with the established/ traditional way of doing things otherwise one is really in rebellion with oneself; but I don't know for sure if that is correct.

Bottom line though is it was a fun book to read.

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Sparkling prose littered with gems

To this point in my life, I've now read three works by Chesterton: his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse and his biography of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Man Who Was Thursday is a completely different work from the abovementioned pair. It is subtitled "A Nightmare" and that's exactly how it reads.

Thursday starts out like a quirky spy/detective novel, but as the plot progresses, it becomes obvious that this is no typical pot-boiler. It is well to keep in mind when reading this book that Chesterton was a master of paradox--and Thursday is riddled with paradoxes. Indeed, the whole book is a paradox to some extent. In an interview recorded in a biography by Maisie Ward, Chesterton once summarized Thursday by saying: "In an ordinary detective tale the investigator discovers that some amiable-looking fellow who subscribes to all the charities, and is fond of animals, has murdered his grandmother, or is a trigamist. I thought it would be fun to make the tearing away of menacing masks reveal benevolence."

To summarize what happens in Thursday is to give away much of what makes this book an enjoyable read, so I will refrain. But the plot is almost coincidental to what makes this book interesting. It is a mere plastic tree (if an oddly shaped one) upon which Chesterton hangs a myriad of literary ornaments. The book is simply littered with gems which sparkle even out of context. Here are two of my favorites:

"We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals....We say that the most dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral people."

"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."

The Man Who Was Thursday can be read and appreciated on two different levels--as an entertaining bit of absurdity that, in some sections, prefigures a Monty Python routine, or as an allegory with significant theological depth. I enjoyed it a great deal on both levels.

To conclude, let me simply say that this is the kind of book that I will need to re-read at some future point, perhaps a couple times, to make sure I didn't miss anything. Fortunately, Chesterton's prose is so merry and brisk that the re-read will be a pleasure rather than a trial. However, if you are the type of reader who demands significant character development, a standard plotline, and is offended by Christian spiritual content, I'd forget about this one. It's not the book for you.

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Early terrorism thriller

Today it's al Qaeda... in Chesterton's time it was anarchists, ("no government is good government," sort of early-period extremist Libertarians).

But here Chesterton spun a fascinating tale of a policeman who goes under-cover to foil a bomb plot. The seven anarchists involved use day-of-the-week code names; thus, our policeman becomes "Thursday".

As you approach the end of this fine work you might ask yourself, "Where the heck is this thing going?" But just hang in there -- it makes total sense when all is revealed.

While I don't consider this work a real genuine page-turner, it did manage to maintain my interest. For me, this is Chesterton's Magnum opus.

I highly recommend this 1908 book to anyone who is interested in thrillers, mysteries, and/or British literature.

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Chesterton hits close to home with this thriller

I wasn't sure what to expect when I was given this book by a friend - all I knew is that Chesterton is an amazing writer and I was not disappointed in the least after reading The Man Who was Thursday. The story is intriguing and moves the reader along page by page until one is almost finished with the book before even knowing it. The characters are interesting - and as one person commented about the book - the real characters are the ideas, not the individuals themselves. Chesterton is a master at communicating ideas and then embodies those ideas in characters which connect to the reader. This "psychological thriller" is more than just a quick, easy and entertaining read - it is actually quite provocative and in some sense unnerving in the same way that Huxley's Brave New World seems to strike too close to home in today's culture.

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