Man Who Was Thursday (Wordsworth Collection)

The thing that strikes me most abut this book is how relevant it is to today even though it was written almost a century ago. The boogyman of that time--the anarchist, has a lot in common with our own chosen boogyman--the terrorist. The response of the "heros" of the book are very similar to the response of the Western World of today: they are all over the map. One could get so caught up in counting similarities and dissecting philosophies, that the biggest, almost garishly glaring fact about The Man Who Was Thursday could be missed: it is a masterpiece.

The Man Who Was Thursday is a tense, masterfully structured thriller that has powerful echoes of the Biblical book of Job. Chesterton subtitled this novel "a nightimare."

The characters of The Man Who Was Thursday move through a world twisted by forces outside of their comprehension. They ultimately encounter the nightmare of a deity-figure who is more of a force of random and capricious nature than a personal being. God's non-answer in the book of Job is amplified to a worldview in The Man Who Was Thursday.

The genius of Chesterton is that his book produces a question in the soul of the attentive reader that demands and points the way to an answer.

This is indeed a book worthy of reading, reflection, and even interaction. It blows through you like a wind that cannot leave what it touches unchanged.

I give The Man Who Was Thursday my highest recommendation.

For a book that's only about a hundred pages long, "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."

Having recently read this book again, I have to say that it made considerably more sense this time than when I read it in my teens. In fact the symbolism, while superbly thought-out, was, I thought, made too explicit at several points, when characters simply say outright what all of it means. I still loved it. It is exalted above mere autobiography by Chesterton's light spirit and vigorous fantasy, but even if it were merely autobiography, it would be a treasure, fully the equal of "The Education of Henry Adams."

For those to whom its nature as intellectual autobiography is not clear, I advise a closer reading of the poem to E.C. Bentley that prefaces the story. The poem speaks of the intellectual chaos of their shared youth and the wisdom ("touching the root" as he puts it) that was created from it. The creation of wisdom from chaos explains Chesterton's use of symbols from Genesis, also a story of creation from chaos. Chesterton in his youth was intellectually volatile, by his own account descending into solipsism. The six days of creation represent different stages of his own intellect; Professor de Worms, for example, is solipsism, Gogol socialism (which Chesterton never took seriously), Bull materialism, and so on. Just as each is revealed to be an agent of order, so Chesterton found that as he confronted each philosophy it was disarmed, and that in doing so he moved ever closer to wisdom, which is faith in God. Sunday is perhaps a bizarre symbol for God, but further reading in Chesterton (or indeed the Bible, especially Job, as was pointed out in the Ignatius collected edition) will show that all the most baroque and incomprehensible aspects of Sunday are the most literally orthodox.

It's all dressed in an entertaining if sometimes confusing fantasy, but it should not be necessary to say that Chesterton did not actually advocate "thought police" any more than he advocated turning suburbs into armed, walled cities, as in his book "The Napoleon of Notting Hill." As to the review that considers the book "Dali in anarchist drag," I recommend that he read the preface in which Chesterton explodes that idea, which had already been advanced in his lifetime. Finally, all readers should re-read the first chapter of Genesis before beginning the book, to have the source of the symbolism fresh in the mind.

This was my first reading of Chesterton's fiction, and I couldn't put it down. Chesterton had a keen mind and a gift with words. If you're trying to decide whether to try one of his books, this would be a great place to start- a mystery with a twist!

I have just finished this book and have to say, I concur with Kingsley Amis (writer of the introduction) who said that it was the "most thrilling book he has ever read." Chesterton weaves together a combination detective story, wierd dream ("Nightmare" as he says on his cover page), and social commentary. It's certainly not an apologetic book (as C.S. Lewis said, one can't always be defending the faith, sometimes one has to encourage those already converted), but elements of Christianity do come through (especially Chesterton's sensible view that your faith should affect every area of your life and outlook to the world).

The hero, Symes (who is called Thursday) is a detective and a Christian who provokes an anarchist and infiltrates a world-wide underground anarchist society. From there, I won't spoil the story but there are many adventures, twists, and turns. This part I thought very well written. Every new discovery Symes makes literally had me on the edge of my seat. Things become more and more bizarre (right in line with Chesterton's own description of his book as a "Nightmare") until a very bizarre ending that I confess I have still not fully absorbed.

There is a great deal of symbolism and allegory in the book, which is not clear until at least a third of the way through the book. In this way, the book is similar to C.S. Lewis's book "That Hideous Strength" (the third book in his space trilogy that includes "Perelandra"). Like Lewis's book, "Thursday" starts off very realistic (although with some hints of the bizarre twists to come) and gets more and more strange as the book goes on.

Two things that will be helpful to understanding much of the symbolism:

(1) Read the afterword at the end of the book by Chesterton. Unlike Amis's introduction, I wouldn't read it before you start reading the book. I'd recommend reading it after about a third of the book, perhaps right around the time the Pole is "unmasked" (that is, around chapter 6).

(2) Also helpful is Martin Gardner's commentary on the book. There is another edition of the book that has Gardner's comments, but the most important parts of his commentary are available on the Internet (just search ye shall find them). This lays out the symbolism in more detail than the former, so if you want to figure it out for yourself don't read this until the end of the book.

Finally, after you read through the book once, think about it and read comments such as Gardner's, then go back and read it again. As Amis says in his introduction, you can read this book many times and get new things out of it every time.