Book report: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K Chesterton.
Thanks, Wall Street Journal. Allan Barra in the Dec. 29, 2008, edition considered this book in its centennial year, with details about the author and his diverse fan base that continues even today. Got it from the library, but I’ll be hitting Dickson Street Bookshop for a second-hand volume soon so I can own it, and maybe some other Chesterton chestnuts. With luck, I can find this edition with the Garry Wills introduction.
Thursday is another precursor to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Despite its 1908 pedigree it is a fast read and along that extraordinary line from Lewis Carroll to H.G. Wells (and Jules Verne) that continues with Rowling, in imagination, wit and compassion. I can’t go much further on my own. The superbly read Barra and Wills do.
You have to watch for guys like that. Introductions can mess up a good story.
Thursday was executed on several levels so if you’re young or a simpleton (where I fit is in the eye of the reader) you enjoy the engaging, sometimes thrilling, sometimes unashamedly silly story. It’s not very long, either. If you have some intelligence or literary background (traits that don’t have to go together), the levels will worry the pleasure of the book right out of you — you see the symbolism but damn if you can piece the allusions. If you’re a genius like Wills then you’ll appreciate the referential puns and philosophical questions, all the way up to the full intent of the author.
Chesterton, whom I’d never read before but knew the name, reminds me of George Orwell, a deep thinker as well as a storyteller. GKC’s nightmare is the long intricate sort, where you wake up confused and vaguely frightened, not the wake-up-screaming horror-movie sort. Where I see Rowling is in the dreamlike quality, starting where two poet-anarchists meet in a pub, and their table rotates then settles them in a secret basement room. A few rooms like that are in Hogwarts School for Wizards and the nearby town. Yes, that puts Rowling in a line from Swift to Lewis Carroll through Chesterton and the pals C.S. Lewis/J.R.R. Tolkien. (Gosh yes there’s a wealth of differences, too.)
Anarchists? As Barra notes, before World War I, anarchists worried governments silly and outraged the conservative portions of the citizenry. While the goals of a dictionary-defined anarchist have little in common with those of recent terrorists, their methods are comparable. In fact, how governments and blowhards paint them is identical. That makes Thursday a must for these times. It’s not a forced read because Chesterton’s style has pace and whimsy. Not only does one not mind the quaintness — cars were obviously still in the beta stages, as we’d say now — but the funhouse-mirror London he creates captivates.
Ah, the two poets. One recruits the other to his anarchist cell then the story seems to leave him behind. The other, the recruited fellow, Gabriel Syme, is a policeman whose intent is to infiltrate the group. It has seven leaders, code-named for days of the week. Thursday’s spot has become vacant so Syme gets voted in, a “made” anarchist.
Because I didn’t want to get bogged down in introductions, I skipped it despite my admiration for Wills, a scholar with facile prose. This provides a Life Lesson:
Skip introductions, forwards and prefaces and even acknowledgements, unless they’re less than a page or prove captivating from the first paragraph.
Definitely skip them when not written by the author. They slow you down. But I keep finding they’re worrisome even when the author pens them. If you need to learn the writer’s motivation in order to understand even Chapter One, the book has failed. [Yes, dive into the classics, the Russians and James Joyce. Better to slog through the first 60 pages yourself than have some erudite priss fog it up for you, and with footnotes.]
The text of Thursday is free at Bartleby.com, but it’s missing a lengthy, but easy to follow, poem that Chesterton evidently intended as his prologue. Any poem-as-preface passes my “captivating” test. Still, it made little sense until I reread it after finishing the overall story. This leads to the corollary of the skip-the-intro law: If you like or need to, read or, better, skim the prefatory material only after you’ve polished off the book.
For Thursday, skipping Wills was wise, for he gave out “spoilers,” revealing major plot points. Shame, Garr’! Here is the nub of Wills spoiler. Read if you dare: Thursday is Chesterton’s take on the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Job. Ol’ Gilbert Keith sure spins a heck of a midrash on cranky Job, providiing a sensible though complex explanation of one of Scriptures’ most confusing prophets.
Who’d’ve thunk with the hot-air balloon, elephant and attentive waiters? -30-
