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The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

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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.

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.

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.

This wonderful novel is not a detective story; not an allegory; especially not a work of theology. I haven't the audacity to attempt to define what it is. Chesterton did, however, and it's right there in the title: "A Nightmare". The story unfolds as a dream does, illogically and vividly. I approach it (and I have read it many times) as a prose poem, and a picture painted with words. Certainly it shows GKC's intensely visual imagination, and his ability to create a landscape in the mind. It is also an extended commentary on the Book of Job; in both, a mystery is answered with a greater mystery. Thus the enigmatic ending. GKC was a modern mystic, who saw creation as a pageant to be lived - and loved - rather than a propostion to be solved.

"It remains the most thrilling book I've read," wrote novelist Kingsley Amis about The Man Who Was Thursday. The story is nearly 100 years old, having first appeared in 1907, and since it's now in the public domain, exists in numerous editions. G. K. Chesterton, or G.K.C., is best known as the author of the Father Brown detective stories and for his "slovenly autobiography," Orthodoxy. This novel, part detective story, sort of a metaphysical thriller, kind of a melodrama, maybe surrealistic, slice-of-life, dream/ vision has dazzled numerous readers with its unclassifiable, gripping, hallucinatory style. There is no one like Chesterton, and this novel, along with The Ball and The Cross and Manalive, and The Flying Inn, and maybe The Club of Queer Trades and Four Faultless Felons, with some Father Brown thrown in, remains in the handful of his best.

Some years back, Ignatius Press launched an ambitious project to reprint all of Chesterton's prolific output, in which they are still fruitfully engaged. "Thursday" appeared in a volume dedicated to his novels, and then in an edition matching the Collected Chesterton editions. Finally it's gotten out on its own to the general reading public, and a good thing, too, for this is a very special edition.

I was an avid reader of Martin Gardner when he wrote the "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American, always coming up with some brain teaser or logical conundrum, and one of the most read features of the magazine. Little did I know it was his latent detective tendency which led him on the trail of all sorts of alleged psychic phenomenon and New Age oddities, the most famous being his report on the pedigree of the Urantia Book, unmasking quite a few hoaxes and charlatans along the way.

But, as in a Chesterton novel, now the strands get all interconnected. Gardner's dual interest in literature and logic found a natural outlook in his Annotated Alice edition of fellow polymath Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking Glass." He also produced for Oxford Press, The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown by G.K.C.. Chesterton's famous sleuth, it turns out, was also about debunking so-called psychic phenomena, as fake seances were a growth industry in the early 1900s.

His annotated edition of Thursday was originally released as a sort of study version for those who'd already encountered one of the many editions of the novel and wanted to probe deeper with a trusty guide. Now that it's out at large, however, this edition serves not only as a deluxe follow-up for seasoned GKC addicts, but is also ideal for the new reader. How annotated is it? After Martin Gardner's (MG) introduction, there's a fascimile of Chesterton's hand-lettered faceplate of the first edition followed by GKC's dedication poem, nearly never reprinted in its entirety. The text is peppered with notes, art by GKC and period photos and drawings of GKC's London. There's also a bibliography of various editions of "Thursday," including the weirdest of them all, in the March, 1944 issue of the pulp mystery magazine, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, with a reproduction of its sensationalist cover.

The new reader is advised to read the novel first, before the MG intro (which gives away the game) and, if possible, without reading the back cover notes, reviews, or any other later opinions. Most readers get hooked and keep rereading it, and these naturally make up the audience for this edition. Like the film, Twelve Monkeys, GKC keeps you puzzling and pondering over this novel, but not so much for what happened as to for what it meant. Enter fellow detective Gardner (who starts his introduction with a quote from Sherlock Holmes creator, Conan Doyle, and points out that GKC was himself the founder of the Detection Club for mystery writers (Dorothy L. Sayers was the next president), and it's elementary, Watson, why this is your best guide.

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!

This was a pretty good book, as others have attested. My beef is with the worthless annotations. Actually, they are less than worthless because they contain major plot spoilers. As far as I can tell, the notes break down as follows:

40% Numerous descriptions of London streets, neighborhoods that have absolutely no bearing on the plot and can easily be obtained on the Web by anyone who really cares about things like exactly where Charing Cross is and what kinds of shops it has in it.

35% Irrelevant literary cross-references that have no bearing on the work's plot or themes. These are most likely to occur when the annotator is reminded of some poem from the same period from another one of his books, and wants to speculate on whether Chesterton might have read it.

17% Corrections of Chesterton's own quotes and allusions, which apparently he did mostly from memory and so misses a word or two here and there

3% plot spoilers.

5% I guess were sort of useful, though the annotater is so pretentious it's hard to admit. But you should avoid reading them, because you never know which ones might be plot spoilers.

I would also comments that most of the cultural references that actually caused me to pause and question the text were not footnoted.

In his defense, I will say that the annotator provides a fairly good introduction. But don't read it until after you've read the book (more spoilers).

Once in a great while you come across a book that leaves you oscillating between being struck speechless and gushing with praise. Such a book is The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. First published in 1908, this short book has since remained a benchmark of English literature. Years ago I read a volume of the author's Father Brown mystery series and liked it, but those stories, as well written as they are, did not prepare me for this book.

If you threw Sherlock Holmes, Socrates, Franz Kafka, Alice in Wonderland, and Get Smart into a mix, you might get some of the flavor but never the meat of reading The Man Who Was Thursday, a melting pot of political conspiracies, wild adventures, religious conundrums, logical excesses and subliminal satire! Chesterton is a past master of cliffhangers and paradoxes - a fun combination! Add oxymorons in his crisp writing as he makes splendid use of unusual combinations in poignant descriptions like: "A voice at once of quietude and volume", or "a church of eastern pessimism."

Have you ever pondered whether poetry is an expression of anarchy, or order? Do you "regard anarchists, as most of us do, as a handful of morbid men, combining ignorance with intellectualism?" Or, "felt that Government stood alone and desperate, with its back to the wall?" One thing to do is join Scotland Yard's select unit of Philosophical policemen, who "go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists... We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed," a recruit was instructed.

With surprise following surprise, this book is philosophically relentless, even as you trip and rush to its incredible conclusion, experiencing a duel to the death, chasing a balloon and then an elephant across London, Chesterton reigns you in once in a while with meta-questions like, "Are you a half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever man playing the fool?"

I kept thinking, Where is he going with this? And the ending, that surrealistic ending (which given its 1908 publication date would make this sally an especially pioneering effort in that genre), I won't spoil but say it made me think; so I'll end with a few more of Chesterton's tantalizing lines:

...he went about as usual - quiet, courteous, rather gentle; but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. ... His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, as if pure thought was pain.

He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of falling over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he was to be hanged.

Fun, but hang on - especially to your current perceptions!

"The Man Who was Thursday" is a fantastic, bizarre puzzle that defies attempts at explanation or description. On the surface, it is a spy story about anarchistic terrorists with elements of suspense and paranoia; as you dig a little deeper, a black comedy emerges; peeling back a few more layers reveals a philosophical underbelly; and it all ends in an uproariously enigmatic denouement worthy of Lewis Carroll. If the book is, as its subtitle indicates, a nightmare, we all should hope to have dreams as sweet as this.

The hero, Gabriel Syme, is a poet-detective (yes, seriously) who works for a special branch of Scotland Yard dedicated to apprehending "intellectual" criminals, particularly anarchists, because they tend to be the most subversive and therefore the most dangerous. By operating undercover as a poet-anarchist, Syme manages to infiltrate the seven-member Central Anarchist Council, who alias themselves using the names of the days of the week, and fills the vacant slot of "Thursday." The Council's main directive is to cast the world into chaos by assassinating heads of state, and their current plan, as masterminded by their president, "Sunday," is to bomb the upcoming meeting of the Russian Czar and the French president in Paris.

It is, of course, up to Syme/Thursday, who is always at risk of being exposed as a policeman, to put a stop to this nefarious scheme, to which there is naturally more than meets the eye. As the plot unfolds, it breaks down (or builds up) into an indescribably wild farce; Syme's mission turns into a picaresque adventure of disguises, a swordfight, and several chases -- involving horses, cars, an elephant, and a hot-air balloon. At the end of the book, a surprise is waiting; a strange detachment from everything that has preceded it, which slyly lets the reader in on its symbolic joke. If not for its relentlessly silly tone and idiosyncratic resolution, "The Man Who was Thursday" could be a perfect sister novel to Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent."

Like fellow British wits Dickens, Wodehouse, and Waugh, Chesterton is that rare sort of writer who is skilled in combining breathtaking narrative with irreverent and intelligent comedy and whose prose is as poetical as it is humorous. The fact that Kingsley Amis called this novel the "most thrilling" book he'd ever read speaks volumes.