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The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Penguin Classics) Paperback – July 1, 1990
| G. K. Chesterton (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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- Print length192 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Classics
- Publication dateJuly 1, 1990
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100140183884
- ISBN-13978-0140183887
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
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
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Classics (July 1, 1990)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 192 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0140183884
- ISBN-13 : 978-0140183887
- Item Weight : 5.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,103,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,330 in Christian Classics & Allegories (Books)
- #3,365 in Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction (Books)
- #157,121 in Thrillers & Suspense (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a prolific English journalist and author best known for his mystery series featuring the priest-detective Father Brown and for the metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Baptized into the Church of England, Chesterton underwent a crisis of faith as a young man and became fascinated with the occult. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and published some of Christianity's most influential apologetics, including Heretics and Orthodoxy.
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Each of the characters, the days of the week, have something to learn about themselves and each other. Even further, they have something to learn about humanity itself. They each approach the same possible hell; they each relay their experience in a chase for the enigma of a man known as Sunday, the lead-man of the Central Anarchist Council.
The ending feels a bit rushed, there are a lot of points playing around but it really seems that none of them want to be the close of the story. Toward the end of the story, when the surreal elements of the work begin really presenting themselves in outrageous happenings I found the aspect immediately disappointing. If for nothing else, than because the story had progressed so far without blatant dreamscaped surrealism. At the close of the story I can say that in retrospect, it seems a bit generic, almost borderline genre-fiction, but an engaging if passable story which I wouldn’t recommend to many as a ‘must’.
SPOILERS potential:
We initially meet Gabriel Syme and Lucian Gregory – two philosophers who happen in the same park. One says he’s an anarchist. The other says he couldn’t be! He’s flouting it too openly. But isn’t that the trick?
Gregory shows Syme his stockade and his anarchist party. However right before the rest of the party enters Syme beseeches Gregory to promise him something – a return for a promise, as Syme has promised not to expose Gregory as an anarchist, a dynamiter! Syme reveals his secret, and with providential intervention and quick wit, just manages to save his skin!
Working honorably the pair attempt to stand beside their respective promises to each other – not to release their professions: one an anarchist, the other: a policeman. The logic behind the propositions, the struggle for one-ups-manship and the very simple reason neither can squeal on the other – ‘you made a promise’ – is a very comical point to start. Watching Gregory’s ire rise as he has suddenly been usurped by a policeman with his quick wit as ‘a sabbathatarian – an ardent observer of Sunday’ – his bitter rival – for the position of Thursday on the Central Anarchist Council is quite entertaining.
Meeting the rest of the council and progressing through bizarre experiences with each of them, and they are generally comical and colorful experiences (the infirm Professor whom, no matter how fast Syme runs, is either always just ahead or just behind), Syme gradually discovers that each man, each day of the week, is also a policeman! Why would Sunday assemble a consortium of policemen to make up an Anarchist council?
Monday – ‘The Secretary’, the creation of light out of darkness. Philosopher of the formless.
Tuesday – ‘Gogol’, Polish – he is discovered by Sunday (or rather – given up) at the groups first council meeting. He disappears but returns to the story later.
Wednesday – ‘Marquis de St. Eustache’, French, referred to after his discovery as Ratliffe, representation of the earth and things ‘green’. The 3rd policeman who joins rank with Syme and de Worms. He brings with him Colonel DeCroix.
Thursday – Gabriel Syme, the creation of the moon and stars, a poet.
Friday – Professor de Worms, German. The 2nd policeman Syme encounters in the group. The professor is a character impersonator who has been enacting German Nihilist de Worms for quite some time.
Saturday – ‘Dr. Bull’, less known as Wilks. The disguised baby-face is the 4th policeman to join the ranks with Syme, de Worms and the Marquis. He considers himself and the rest of humanity mad during his experience running from the mob of anarchists.
After encountering the Marquis and discovering his identity, we approach my least liked part of the story: the entirety of a town turns on the group. Mistaking them for the anarchists they’re trying to stop the Secretary (Monday) leads the charge to arrest Syme and his associates. Discovering themselves all police officers it is time to question Sunday. During the chase Colonel DuCroix switches sides and claims he didn’t know the policemen he was assisting to escape from the mob were in fact policemen… A plot point gone awry.
Encountering Sunday and discovering he was also the Policeman who hired them from behind the veil provided by a darkened room, he soon escapes in fantastical fashion – bouncing, swinging like an orangutan, daring leaps and bounds. The chase then ensues with mishap aplenty along the way.
Arriving at Sunday’s home, the group is informed to be prepared to masquerade. Each day of the week then dresses in garb artistically appropriate to Chesterton’s mind-image of how the days of the week and their biblical descriptions would present. Sunday presents as the Sabbath – ‘the peace of God.’ (2273) and brings this unto the other members of the never existing Anarchist Council.
Lucian Gregory returns for a brief cameo. Presenting as one truly suffering due to governments rule, the group reaffirm to him – they have suffered also, particularly through this tale. And thus wakes our protagonist, Gabriel Syme.
Quotes:
‘There comes a certain point in such conditions when only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic pride, secondly tears, and third laughter.’ (997)
‘The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government.’ (1596)
‘This is more cheerful,’ said Dr. Bull; ‘we are six men going to ask one man what he means.’… said Syme ‘I think it is six men going to ask one man what they mean.’ (1923)
‘If you want to know what you are, you area set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses.’ – Sunday to the group. (1943)
‘Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.’ (2075)
Even though G.K. Chesterton was a Catholic there is little reference to it in the book so don't let it stop you from reading it.
Note. I was undergoing severe physical pain during the reading of this book (not because of the book). That combined with the meds may have altered my perspective of the story. Since the book is very interesting I do suggest reading it if not for anything but to at least say you had.
This version by Watchmaker Publishing is a nice print. Large pages, nice font and good spacing.
1 Star = Pathetic
2 Stars = Fair
3 Stars = Good
4 Stars = Excellent
5 Stars = Life changing
Since my review does not explain the book I'm adding this short article by by Dale Ahlquist who explains it much better then I could.
At first glance, The Man Who Was Thursday is a detective story filled with poetry and politics. But it is mystery that grows more mysterious, until it is nothing less than the mystery of creation itself.
This is Chesterton's most famous novel. Never out of print since it was first published in 1908, critics immediately hailed it as "amazingly clever," "a remarkable acrobatic performance", and "a scurrying, door-slamming farce that ends like a chapter in the Apocalypse." One reviewer described how he had read it in one sitting and put it down, "completely dazed." Thirty years later, Orson Welles called it "shamelessly beautiful prose" and made a radio dramatization of it with his Mercury Radio Theater of the Air. (Unfortunately, he upstaged himself two weeks later with a production of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.)
Gabriel Syme is a poet and a police detective. Lucien Gregory is poet and a bomb-throwing anarchist. At the beginning of the novel, Syme infiltrates a secret meeting of anarchists and gets himself elected to as "Thursday," one of the seven members of the High Council of Anarchists. If you think it is paradoxical that there should be a governing body of those dedicated to destroying governing body, a hierarchy for blowing up hierarchies, you might be right. You might also note that the main reason Syme becomes a detective in the first place is because he is a rebel against rebellion. The policeman who recruits him explains that there is a difference between the real anarchists and the innocent ones who merely think rules are bad and should be broken. The real anarchists are something far worse than that. "They mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy humanity and then themselves." This is a prophetic description of the philosophy of the "real anarchists" who really would bring us the Culture of Death.
As the story unfolds, Syme soon learns that he is not the only one in disguise. The comparison with the Apocalypse is not unwarranted; this is a book of Revelation, as one symbolic surprise after another is revealed. But even as the masks come off, the biggest question - for both the reader and the characters - is who is Sunday? What is the true identity of the larger than life character who is the supreme head of the anarchists?
"I confess that I should feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is."
"Why," asked the Secretary, "for fear of bombs?"
"No," said the Professor, "for fear he might tell me."
But have no fear, I won't tell you who Sunday is, even if you think you already know the answer. But I will happily give away a bigger surprise, the revelation that this story is not to be compared with the biblical book of Revelation, but rather with the book of Job, the book which Chesterton considered the greatest riddle in all of literature. And even if you know that going in, it won't help you one bit.
Along the way to the final confrontation, we also get a taste of Chesterton's social philosophy. Barely noticed by most readers is the enormous common sense that a person with property is not an anarchist. But it's not just bomb-throwers who are the anarchists and the enemy of the common man. There is another class of people dedicated to a more deceitful destruction of society. They, too, think they can live outside the rules. They are the very rich. "The poor object to being governed badly. The rich object to being governed at all."
This book is Chesterton at his best. Every scene is perfect. Every line is a gem. His brilliant wit shines in the episode where Syme is looking for any pretense to challenge another council member to a duel. But then he describes with great poignancy Syme's feelings as he is about to fight the duel in which he will most likely die: "He felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in the grass under his feet; he felt the love of life in all living things."
Look through those eyes for a while.
Top reviews from other countries
Reading the first page I thought it must have been translated from a foreign language by some one who did not know English and had just looked up each word in a dictionary! For example, when the action takes place near a railway station, the author uses an inappropriate synonym for 'train', such as 'teach' or 'instruct'. Nearly every sentence has to be decoded in order to get the meaning. This is quite fun to start with; rather like solving crossword clues, but gets very tedious after a page or two. It really interrupts the flow of the story.
I believe Chesterton was upset at many reactions to this book, people thinking it represented his own view of the world. Accepting this there are times when it represents mine.











