20th Century Man Who Was Thursday: Amazon.ca: G K Chesterton, Kingsley Amis: Books

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In an article published the day before his death, G.K. Chesterton called The Man Who Was Thursday "a very melodramatic sort of moonshine." Set in a phantasmagoric London where policemen are poets and anarchists camouflage themselves as, well, anarchists, his 1907 novel offers up one highly colored enigma after another. If that weren't enough, the author also throws in an elephant chase and a hot-air-balloon pursuit in which the pursuers suffer from "the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon."

But Chesterton is also concerned with more serious questions of honor and truth (and less serious ones, perhaps, of duels and dualism). Our hero is Gabriel Syme, a policeman who cannot reveal that his fellow poet Lucian Gregory is an anarchist. In Chesterton's agile, antic hands, Syme is the virtual embodiment of paradox:

He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realization; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.... Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left--sanity.

Elected undercover into the Central European Council of anarchists, Syme must avoid discovery and save the world from any bombings in the offing. As Thursday (each anarchist takes the name of a weekday--the only quotidian thing about this fantasia) does his best to undo his new colleagues, the masks multiply. The question then becomes: Do they reveal or conceal? And who, not to mention what, can be believed? As The Man Who Was Thursday proceeds, it becomes a hilarious numbers game with a more serious undertone--what happens if most members of the council actually turn out to be on the side of right? Chesterton's tour de force is a thriller that is best read slowly, so as to savor his highly anarchic take on anarchy. --Kerry Fried

Review

"A powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each of us encounters in his single-handed struggle with the universe."
--C. S. Lewis --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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54 Reviews

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4.3 out of 5 stars (54 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars On Thursday, Sep 11 2007

By

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Man Who Was Thursday (Paperback)

For a book that's as short as this one, "The Man Who Was Thursday" is pretty packed.

G.K. Chesterton's classic novella tackles anarchy, social order, God, peace, war, religion, human nature, and a few dozen other weight concepts. And somehow he manages to mash it all together into a delightful satire, full of tongue-in-cheek commentary that is still relevant today.

As the book opens, Gabriel Symes is debating with a soapbox anarchist. The two men impress each other enough that the anarchist introduces Symes to a seven-man council of anarchists, all named after days of the week. In short order, they elect Symes their newest member -- Thursday.

But they don't know that he's also been recruited by an anti-anarchy organization. And soon Symes finds out that he's not the only person on the council who is not what he seems. There are other spies and double-agents, working for the same cause. But who -- and what -- is the jovial, powerful Mr. Sunday, the head of the organization?

Hot air balloons, elaborate disguises, duels and police chases -- Chesterton certainly knew how to keep this novel interesting. Though written almost a century ago, "The Man Who Was Thursday" still feels very fresh. That's partly because of Chesterton's cheery writing... and partly because it's such an intelligent book.

He doesn't avoid some timeless topics that make some people squirm. Humanity (good and bad), anarchy, religion and its place in human nature, and creation versus destruction all get tackled here -- disguised as a comic police investigation. And unlike most satires, it isn't dated; the topics are reflections of humanity and religion, so they're as relevant now as they were in 1908.

But the story isn't pedantic or boring; Chesterton keeps things lively by having his characters act like real people, rather than mouthpieces. From Symes to the Colonel to the mysterious Sunday himself, they all have a sort of friendly, energetic quality. "We're all spies! Come and have a drink!" one of the characters announces cheerfully near the end.

And of course, once the madcap police investigations are finished, there's still a mystery. Who is Sunday? What are his goals? And for that matter, WHAT is Sunday -- genius, force of nature, villain or god? The answer is a bit of a surprise, and as a reflection of Chesterton's beliefs, it's a delicate, intelligent piece of work.

"The Man Who Was Thursday" is a wacky, literate little satire that will both amuse and educate you. Not bad for a book often subtitled "A Nightmare."

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars On Thursday, Mar 4 2007

By

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Paperback)

For a book that's as short as this one is, "The Man Who Was Thursday" is pretty packed.

G.K. Chesterton's classic novella tackles anarchy, social order, God, peace, war, religion, human nature, and a few dozen other weight concepts. And somehow he manages to mash it all together into a delightful satire, full of tongue-in-cheek commentary that is still relevant today.

As the book opens, Gabriel Symes is debating with a soapbox anarchist. The two men impress each other enough that the anarchist introduces Symes to a seven-man council of anarchists, all named after days of the week. In short order, they elect Symes their newest member -- Thursday.

But they don't know that he's also been recruited by an anti-anarchy organization. And soon Symes finds out that he's not the only person on the council who is not what he seems. There are other spies and double-agents, working for the same cause. But who -- and what -- is the jovial, powerful Mr. Sunday, the head of the organization?

Hot air balloons, elaborate disguises, duels and police chases -- Chesterton certainly knew how to keep this novel interesting. Though written almost a century ago, "The Man Who Was Thursday" still feels very fresh. That's partly because of Chesterton's cheery writing... and partly because it's such an intelligent book.

He doesn't avoid some timeless topics that make some people squirm. Humanity (good and bad), anarchy, religion and its place in human nature, and creation versus destruction all get tackled here -- disguised as a comic police investigation. And unlike most satires, it isn't dated; the topics are reflections of humanity and religion, so they're as relevant now as they were in 1908.

But the story isn't pedantic or boring; Chesterton keeps things lively by having his characters act like real people, rather than mouthpieces. From Symes to the Colonel to the mysterious Sunday himself, they all have a sort of friendly, energetic quality. "We're all spies! Come and have a drink!" one of the characters announces cheerfully near the end.

And of course, once the madcap police investigations are finished, there's still a mystery. Who is Sunday? What are his goals? And for that matter, WHAT is Sunday -- genius, force of nature, villain or god? The answer is a bit of a surprise, and as a reflection of Chesterton's beliefs, it's a delicate, intelligent piece of work.

"The Man Who Was Thursday" is a wacky little satire that will both amuse and educate you. Not bad for a book often subtitled "A Nightmare."

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5.0 out of 5 stars The Author Who was Billiant, Dec 18 2009

By

D Glover (northern bc, canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Paperback)

As others have thoroughly reviewed the details of this story, I will reserve my comments for the overall impression I received from reading this short book. In typical Chestertonian fashion, which is to say non-typical, the reader is guessing until the end and the world in this book is not what it seems. Good men seek to infiltrate, undermine and hold at bay the forces of anarchy and lawlessness in the universe. Or perhaps they are unwittingly aiding them.

"Thursday" reads something like a more intelligent John Buchan novel, say "The Thirty Nine Steps", but with prose taken several levels higher and with a conflict that is cosmic in scope rather than temporal. Here men fight the dark forces in the universe rather than the dark forces of pre-WW 1 Germany. Here men fight a struggle in their own hearts and minds to a degree that makes their outward struggle pale in comparison. Here the fabric of the universe is exposed as unbreakable and fragile at the same time. For those looking to see a sharp, point by point parallel with spiritual reality, don't dig deeper than G.K. intended. In a fragment from an article published the day before he died, he warns against this by recalling the subtitle: "A Nightmare". This is not meant to be a consistent symbolic parallel with the world as we know it. The story is loaded with commentary without being preachy and symbolism without being pedantic but this is not allegory or even consistent metaphor. While one can see shades of this same spirit in the Space Trilogy of C.S. Lewis, Chesterton's world is not as parallel to ours, not as similar...and yet more so. It is for very good reason that this book has received the accolades it has.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars only 5 stars because it doesn't go any higher...
This book is definitely a nightmare, and one of the greatest books ever written! Although Chesterton said, "A thing worth doing is worth doing badly" I doubt he took that advice... Read more

Published on Oct 16 2007 by Nicholas D. Carvalho

4.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling setup, lax ending
Chesterton is indeed a double-crossing secret agent, for he sets up the reader for quite a fall in this novel of spies, anarchists, betrayal and backstabbing, and some readers may... Read more

Published on Oct 16 2006 by Krypter