The Man Who Was Thursday

Rating:
Summary: A FASCINATING CHEAT
Review: It is difficult to write about a book that holds one's interest throughout but which so thoroughly disappoints in the end. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY begins like a mystery, but it increasingly becomes apocalyptic as its religious message comes to the forefront, and I believe will appeal to few modern readers. As the religious symbolism begins to dominate, the mystery that drew the reader in begins to fade, and one continues reading simply to see how Chesterton is going to manage to finish the thing. And this is where it is most disappointing. There is no ending which follows from its premise AS A MYSTERY. By that time, most of what happened in the beginning is no longer relevant.

Chesterton subtitled the book A NIGHTMARE, and this is more revealing than it appears at first. In one sense, this book can fit into a long tradition of the religious vision genre, which is more common in Medieval and Renaissance literature. This is not something that evokes much for a modern reader, though, so what we really get here is an inexcusable case of "And then he woke up." At least the writers of the Middle Ages had the guts to tell you upfront at the beginning that the character had fallen asleep.

By the time I got to the end of the book I felt that I had been cheated. I had been given a fascinating story, one in which Chesterton seemed to be setting up for himself insurmountable difficulties and obstacles in terms of plot, but it felt as if all that had been a device to get my attention, to get me to listen to his religious message, which, it turned out in the end, was not that interesting anyway.

Rating:
Summary: a nightmare indeed!
Review: I make it a point to never give up on a book till I've read the last page, but this book finished me long before I finished it! And I DID finish it, but I must confess that I just didn't GET what it was saying, and so I just can't recommend it to the average reader out there. Maybe if you are a political scientist or something, you will know what is going on here (allegorically and all)... and maybe I am just the wrong reader for this genre altogether, and there is nothing I dislike more than the feeling of handing a negative review to a writer who, in other respects, I greatly admire. I think it is important though for potential readers to not base their acquiring of this book on an admiration of Chesterton's other works (ie., the Father Brown stories, or his outright theological stuff). This book is nothing like those other writings which I dearly love. The Man Who Was Thursday is about this poet/detective (Gabriel Syme) who is hired to perform a clandestine infiltration of a group of anarchists, each named for a day of the week and all bent on destroying the world. I was lost, lost, lost. Granted, greater minds than mine will not agree, but have mercy, I am arguing from, and for, the commoner. If that final hot-air balloon scene was meant to be climactic, it only served to further tempt me toward the committal of the book in its entirety to the gravitational forces on the nether side of my balcony.

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Summary: Was Chesterton an anarchist?
Review: By all measures this is an extraordinary novel. Part of its strangeness to me - its personal strangeness - is that anarchist philosophy has always been close to my heart. But this novel is not an anarchist manifesto - it doesn't refer to Proudhon, Kropotkin, Goldman or even William Godwin. But that's not to say the arguments are not surprisingly engaging. I can't believe that Chesterton was an anarchist but anarchism does give an individual the personal power to exercise their religious beliefs as they see fit (or as instructed by their God) and we certainly know that Chesterton was a Christian.

So why does Chesterton use anarchism as a vehicle in this novel? Perhaps it was to shock the reader into considering something seriously that they might not have done otherwise - to open the horizons of their thinking. Not that this is a serious novel though - it is full of sparkling wit and humour. One thing that anarchy does provide for Chesterton is a 'no holds barred' framework in which the story itself - its plot - can take whatever whimsical (and illogical?) turn that the author chooses.

Take the ride of this thriller with its confusion of parts - all the anarchists that aren't but leave you wondering if everyone else isn't an anarchist. This ride is a real roller coaster with wild dips and climbs, twists and turns.

Rating:
Summary: chesterton is the man!
Review: A fascinating though complicated book which takes us on a psychological tour of the man called Syme, or Thursday. We are introduced to paradoxical characters which will stay in the reader's mind forever. Gregory keeps his promise of "A very entertaining evening."

Rating:
Summary: Kind of Confusing, but cool!!!
Review: I was first introduced to this book by my brother and my sister who both read it, and liked it. It is about a policeman who gets on the central council of anarchists who are all named after days. I really shoul not tell you much more or else it would spoil it, so sorry if this isn't very helpful. But I think you'll like this book. It's cool!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A Timeless Classic
Review: Let me start by saying either the people who are claiming this book to be filled with anti-jewish, pro-facist, pro-christian messages are reading a different book, or just plain making things up. No where in my careful reading of this entire book did I find one comment that could even be interpreted as "right wing" much less racist, facist, or pro-religious. This was my first Chesterton novel, and after reading it I could have sworn he was an atheist! It was only later that I learned that he had fond reliigous beliefs, but take a look at these pages. Chesterton does not advocate the style of religion which exists only to opress, and to proclaim others as wrong. This book is more open, non-linear, and thought-provoking than any other. I love the surreality with which Chesterton writes, something akin to a combination of George Orwell and Lewis Carrol. I love his dry wit, which never failed to elicit a cackle. I loved the ethereal tone this novel takes on during the last fifty or so pages. This book simply defies categorization. Satire/Mystery/Philosophy? Perhaps. Whatever it is, it's purely Chesterton, and purely wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe the books makes a point, maybe.
Review: Regardless of the very witty paragraphs ,and very funny situations that you might find in this book, I completely fail to see any coherence in the underlying drama. So an entity called Sunday decided to confuse six policemen and make each one of them appear as anarchists to the other, so that those same six guys will somehow be able to discover that they were in fact policeman is far from logical but them, to create another situation by which they are induced to follow him after an elephant and a balloon, then enter a party that could also be confused by an LSD trip, for the sole purpose of help them make sense of their lives is simply absurd.

You really do not know if this a suspense story (a very bad one if that is the case) or if it is really into social satire (then the books becomes much better)or if this an under cover new age novel for those with esoteric inclinations (there I do not know how to judge it, that is, he might be mocking all those with ideas about the existence of supreme beings, or he could be supporting those beliefs, but this book was written in 1907 and only until 1922 he converted to Catholicism).

The fact is that the author was well aware that many of his readers were clueless about what this book was about, so he kindly remembered them that the original title was "The Man Who Was Thursday. A Nightmare". I guess that left him out of the hook, but as a dissatisfied reader I wish I could accept such explanation for such incoherent ending.

Rating:
Summary: A Wild Ride Through Chesterton's Mental Lanscape
Review: Gabriel Syme, a dashing British secret agent who fancies himself the world's last defender of order and justice, infiltrates Europe's most dangerous revolutionary terrorist society and discovers that reality is not quite what it seems. Everyone he meets has a hidden agenda or secret identity or both. Tunnels and bunkers stuffed with bombs and lie hidden under ordinary streets. Men disguise themselves with impossibly realistic makeup and prosthetic noses and live out elaborate secret lives while so disguised. The police meet in darkened rooms and often run for their lives, while "underground" groups hold conferences in fancy hotels, plotting assasinations and bombings over brunch. A delightful forerunner to spy fiction of the James Bond school {gadgets, black humor, classy super-villans, outrageous conspiracies of destruction}, and "what is reality?" "who am I?" postmodernism of writers life Phillip K. Dick.

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Summary: It never grows old
Review: Michael Reid's review of this wonderful book (whatever it is--nightmare, novel, allegory, etc.) is very close to my own feelings about it. It defies most traditional critical approaches, just as the characters in it are themselves continually foiled and re-educated in their encounters with some of the weirdest people and situations in 20th-century fiction. It is a slam on anarchism and political mischief-making, but it is also a slam on the moralistic, "quick-fix" crusaders against rocking the boat, most of whom lack the spirit and wisdom of their opposition. It is also extremely funny, improvisatory in its layout, and in no hurry to give the reader a tidy conclusion. Like reviewer Reid, I like thinking of the book as a nightmare--try reading it after reading or listening to W. S. Gilbert's "Nightmare" song from his Iolanthe (written with Sullivan). There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what happens, and perhaps there isn't, but the astounding thing is that, despite all of the detours, digressions, and about-faces, everything comes out beautifully right in the end. I love re-reading this book because I never feel bored by it; on the contrary, I feel as if I'm always rediscovering something I haven't quite looked at before. And as for Chesterton's prose style... well, I can't think of too many people--a mere handful at best--who have excelled Chesterton in writing sentences that glitter, twine around my mind, and leave me dumbfounded by their loveliness.

Rating:
Summary: Oddly enough...
Review: For a work by a Catholic theologian, several of the passages, with their strong individualist overtones, reminded me of Objectivist fiction. Indeed, in his search for the truth, the protagonist in this novella is incredibly reminiscient of a Rand hero. I highly recommend this book to any Objectivists, with the stipulation that none of Chesterton's other works be taken into account.

I believe that anyone who has exhausted the typical Objectivist repetoire of literature (Dostoevsky, Hugo, Rand, Tolstoy, etc) will much appreciate this piece of work. Some of the paragraphs, while in some places obviously misguided by religion, are amazing examples of individualism and beautiful metaphoric speech at their finest.