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    The Man Who Was Thursday
    The Man Who Was Thursday
    The Man Who Was Thursday
    Ebook257 pages4 hours

    The Man Who Was Thursday

    By G. K. Chesterton

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    In Edwardian era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti-anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him at a party and they debate the meaning of poetry. Gregory argues revolt is the basis of poetry. Syme demurs, insisting the essence of poetry is not revolution, but rather law. He antagonizes Gregory by asserting the most poetical of human creations is the timetable for the London Underground. He suggests Gregory isn't really serious about his anarchism. This so irritates Gregory that he takes Syme to an underground anarchist meeting place, revealing his public endorsement of anarchy is a ruse to make him seem harmless, when in fact he is an influential member of the local chapter of the European anarchist council. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOtbebookpublishing
    Release dateDec 27, 2015
    ISBN9783956763175
    Author

    G. K. Chesterton

    G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English writer, philosopher and critic known for his creative wordplay. Born in London, Chesterton attended St. Paul’s School before enrolling in the Slade School of Fine Art at University College. His professional writing career began as a freelance critic where he focused on art and literature. He then ventured into fiction with his novels The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man Who Was Thursday as well as a series of stories featuring Father Brown.

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    Reviews for The Man Who Was Thursday

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      A strange and startling book. At one level, a spoof of anarchism. At another level, a spoof of police efforts to infiltrate gangs and expose them. At still a deeper level, a metaphysical dream novel. The last point comes to sneak up on you, and hits you hard in the last few chapters of the book. It does well to remember the subtitle of the book, as Chesterton himself pointed out very shortly before he died.
    • 5/5
      I suspect that this dream will linger within me for years to come. The philosophical and political currents pale compared to the intrinsic visions within, the idea that the six all saw their childhood in the penultimate geography is a telling terror.
    • 4/5
      A poet who is converted by Scotland Yard into an undercover policeman trying to take down a group of elite anarchists finds himself thick in their midst, elected to their top council of seven leaders, each going by the name of a different day of the week. As his adventure unfolds, Syme (aka Thursday) begins to question not only his own role in the drama, but the very fabric of the world.Whoa, this was one crazy ride. I'm not certain that I completely understand what's going on in here, but I do know that it's a complete hoot. Think The Prisoner meets a darker, more urbane Narnia.
    • 4/5
      Expect the unexpected.
    • 4/5
      Unique. And very, very good. While some things are clearly forseeable, the book leaves you puzzling until the end, and after (if you count what Chesterton wrote about it 30 years later). The little notes that appear during the (paper?) chase are hilarious. ("What about Martin Tupper now?" What indeed.
    • 1/5
      I don't know why this book is listed as crime. There is no actual crime involved. Just a lot of hysterical policemen running around trying to arrest each other when they are all undercover. If you want to read this book start by expecting Alice in wonderland. It make about as much sense. It even references Alice a few times. It then devolves even further to some sort of religious allegory that even the author says he was pulling out if a hat. ( last couple of pages on the penguin edition I read ) In short, if you want a story that has no logic, reason or intelligent characters but is heavy on religious symbolism this is the one for you. Personally it just made my brain itch. And not in a good way.
    • 5/5
      This is a heck of a book. Do not shelve it next to The Iron Dragon's Daughter because I think they would annihilate each other or something.
    • 4/5
      Welp.

      This started off as a charming and fast-paced mystery story, and went completely fantastical/nuts by the end. Reminded me a bit of the Temptation of Saint Anthony combined with Kafka. As if PKD was plopped down in Victorian England and told to write a story before his drugs kicked in.

      I've always liked G. K. Chesteron - for distributism, for fighting eugenics, etc. As it turns out, he's also a very charming writer. I'm glad to become more acquainted with him.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed this book until I got to the end. I was expecting a straightforward mystery/thriller, and then the ending was really strange. G.K. Chesterton is hard to understand sometimes.
    • 4/5
      ‘Humanity crushed once again’. ‘50 dead, 120 injured’. ‘Grave face of terror strikes again’. Familiar headlines scream through the pages of the newspapers each time a bomb goes off annihilating blameless lives. Through teeth gritting resilience, public outcry resonates through the deafened ears of failed intelligence and faith in the state’s law and order hangs by a thin string. As the weeks pass by rapid sketches of the alleged bombers, email links, forensic reports, collected evidence from the attacked ground and pictures of rehabilitating victims are splashed across the dailies. If by any chance the investigation comes through, anonymous visages covered with black rags are photographed outside the courtroom, readied for trial procedures, which may go on for months, maybe even years. As the days go by, life returns to normalcy (yes! It is a tricky word); everything is forgotten and the news fade until once again “humanity is crushed” by another dastardly attack. The analytical carnival starts once again. This is the time I dearly wish we had ‘philosophical policemen’ just like Chesterton describes in his book. Policemen- (officers of law), who would discover the book of sonnets and verses from where the crimes will be committed; those that recognize the intricate web of intellectual crimes. The derivation of dreadful thoughts- the human mind, so malicious and calculating camouflaged within an affluent, composed and erudite exterior. It is that very egocentric brainpower which churns out sadistic alterations from harmless verses and then picks vulnerable actors to craft that design into realism.

      “Evil philosopher is not trying to alter things but to annihilate them”.

      This book is more than a mere plot of undercover detectives and their clandestine exploration of the Secret anarchist Councilmen. Chesterton pens that a small time criminal is more of a good person. His aim is to eradicated only a certain obstacle and not annihilate the edifice. What caught my eye in one of the chapters was the elucidation of stereotyping poverty to rebellious festering.

      “You’ve got that eternal idiotic ides that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats are always anarchists; as you can see from the baron’s wars”.

      When a bomber or an active terrorist is caught, he mostly turns out to be from an impoverished background, where his ravenous mind and mislaid faith is manipulated to find refuge in an illusionary godly abode. These are mere actors for crying out loud, chosen by the scheming selfish elements who are coward enough to remain behind the backstage curtains. The affluent as elucidated in this narration are the ones to be feared. They have an abundance of monetary resources, have sheltering capacity in far away lands, if need be and have a mind that concocts the unexpected. Where do you think the enormous funds come for fertilizing terror? I do not want elucidate detailed reports of various pathways of monetary funds wired to definite cults or “charitable” institutions that ultimately fund the immoral actions. But, the currency sure is not a bequest from the poor or some excise complements from our paychecks. The respective courtesy comes from those societal fundamentals that remain unscathed or unfazed by decree. Who do you suppose manages the advanced scientific technologies in various bombing devices? The knowledgeable elite, isn’t it? The erudite or should I say the crème de la crème of religious preachers who instead of spreading peace and equality manipulates vulnerable populace digging their raw wounds every time through words that revolt in their bleeding wounds? I could go on and on, as it angers me to see such naivety among the elements of law and order or purposefully turning a blind eye on the so-called modernists who may be responsible in concocting the ongoing mayhem of lawlessness. Why couldn’t there be some ‘philosophical policemen’ here in India or any place that incessantly plays the role of a powerless victim?

      Chapter 4- The Tale of the Detective is the deciding chapter that outlines infinitesimal details of who Gabriel Syme really is. Syme sneaks his way into a clandestine council of seven men, each named after a day of the week. Syme becomes the inevitable Thursday though a pact he made with Lucian Gregory ,a poet and a true anarchist. Fear catches with Syme as his path deepens into the sinister world of the other six council men; the President being the most feared of all. Chesterton throws a light on various aspects of fear that thrives within and outside us. We rebel against the only side that corrupts us. What makes a mutineer and destroy the very notion of survival? We try and run from fear and pain, until one eventually catches up and makes us susceptible to uncouth rudiments that shelter our mental nakedness. It is the most treacherous survival, if every time we need proof of familiarity to feel safe. When fear caught up with Syme suffocating his senses, he would feel protected only if a blue card ( a source of identification given to every policemen in England) was shown to him. How vulnerable was Syme to live in a world of treachery and deceit? Makes me think of all the trepidation we feel every time we walk outside our homes or travel; the security checks, the sense of familiarity that we seek in bloodcurdling situations, the proof of safety that we search or reveal; spins a web of utter vulnerability that looms within the safest corners of our thoughts. The Man Who Was Thursday is a treasure that needs to be dug up by reading between the lines of a puzzling narrative to know what Chesterton is really saying.

      “Revolt in its abstract can be revolting. It is like vomiting.”

      Lastly, if everything leads to God and when nature if dissected reveals the face of God, then should I assume that evil is illusionary? Is malevolence the creation of couple menacing minds? If God means endurance then why is such mutinous extermination carried in God’s name after all?

    • 3/5
      Bizarre but interesting story. At first, this seems to be a straightforward suspense thriller of police versus anarchists, but as the story progresses, it gets stranger and stranger.
    • 5/5
      Allegories aren't my favorite kind of stories, but this one really stands out.
    • 4/5
      A long time ago I read several of the Father Brown mysteries. This is a less-conventional bird, but didn't live up to its billing as an unpredictable ride. This novel's genre is heralded as difficult to pin down, but it's easily categorized as Christian allegory. There's plenty of meant-to-be-fun nonsense about police versus anarchists that becomes a slog if you see the emerging pattern. Much of this tale rings less farcical in today's world. Anarchists are anything but comic when anyone with an extreme viewpoint seems abundantly prepared to inflict massive casualities to make their point. Modern perspective's wounding of this story comes to a head with the conclusion. Read as giving answer to terrorists, it's a terribly poor one. I'm not convinced it was a great answer by the allegory interpretation either, but at least more palatable.
    • 3/5
      I do love Chesterton's writing, but this one got away from me a little bit. I had difficulty following the characters (could have been a personal problem).Gabriel Syme, poet & undercover detective, meets a man on the street, and after challenging him about his supposed anarchism, follows him to a meeting of anarchists. Somehow, Gabriel ends up being voted to the "grand council" of anarchists, all of whom are named after the days of the week. Gabriel becomes Thursday, and finds himself caught between planning a bombing and, of course, the fact that he is a policeman. The story gets more and more bizarre and convoluted, often hilarious, until towards the end, when I found it a mess.But it wasn't long, and I'm glad I read it.
    • 4/5
      Strange story, typically Chesterton, magic realism of his own kind, wonderful details. There is some point to this book, I think, but with GK the point is not the thing. The magic is more interesting than the realism, and there is more of it.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed reading this startling, at times riotously funny, often gorgeously written book. The ending perplexed me, however, and that's why I ultimately dropped my rating to 4 stars. I wouldn't recommend this as anyone's first foray into Chesterton, but if you've enjoyed Orthodoxy, this is likely a good place to start with his fiction. He's a marvelous writer.
    • 5/5
      It's a classic spy novel of sorts. It's also absolutely hilarious, beautifully written, and happens to be a Christian allegory. I didn't quite catch all the allegorical elements, but I enjoyed it immensely just the same.
    • 4/5
      How does one review this? Let's see, it is the story of a dream, and as with all dreams I suppose, is open to interpretation. I'm not sure what to make of the meaning of it, the meaning floats in and out of my mind and I can't pin it down. However, the story itself was fun, quick to read and full of lovely word images. Now I must go and read more about it, then possibly read it again. Reading it again would be a pleasure.
    • 3/5
      A detective inflitrates a gang of anarchists in London, cunningly gaining entry to the super-secretive 'Council of Days', led by the godly Sunday. His mission: to prevent a plot to blow up the Czar on his visit to Paris.The first half of the book is an exciting tale of wit and invention, but soon the tale becomes grossly absurd; the climax is surely allegorical but for me it was greatly unsatisfying, especially considering all the drama that had led to it.
    • 1/5
      I found a recommendation of this book in an article in the Atlantic, sought it out online and acquired an unusual printed on demand hardcover - it has Harry Lyme from the Thin Man movie on the cover. I was disappointed. The plot is the gradual revelation of a group of anarchists as all being in an intellectual police force, all recruited by the same man who is also the head of the anarchists association. They are named for the days of the week, with “Sunday” as the chief anarchist. There is a great deal of philosophical speculation and discussion, and an improbable chase across London, ending in the revelation that Sunday is somehow God Almighty. Antique language, unbelievable plot and characters, ending in religious blather.
    • 3/5
      The first half of this book is amazing, wonderful and very tightly conceived but I think it loses itself a little in the second half, when they go after Sunday. It is still memorable, though, and scenes have stayed with me. The ending is odd, as I was warned, but not uncharacteristic and I think it leaves a lovely taste in the mouth.
    • 4/5
      Both policemen and anarchists go undercover as anarchists. If there were a central message, it escaped me, but the novel contains many entaining parts.
    • 5/5
      Oakes is right about this one. Of course, Oakes is usually right.
    • 4/5
      'You spoke of a second question,' snapped Gregory. 
'With pleasure,' resumed Syme. 'In all your present acts and surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an aunt who lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people living for preference under a public-house. You have a heavy iron door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the humiliation of calling yourself Mr Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel instruments which make the place, if I may say so, more impressive than homelike. May I ask why, after taking all this trouble to barricade yourselves in the bowels of the earth, you then parade your whole secret by talking about anarchism to every silly woman in Saffron Park?'Gregory smiled.'The answer is simple,' he said. 'I told you I was a serious anarchist, and you did not believe me. Nor do they believe me. Unless I took them into this infernal room they would not believe me.'First published in 1908, "The Man Who Was Thursday" is the story of secret policeman Gabriel Syme's infiltration of an anarchist gang and election to its ruling council whose code names are taken from the days of the week. The subtitle says it all really, as the events become more and more dreamlike as the story progresses, and less and less like a real world spy story.
    • 5/5
      This is one very good book! Well written, short and fun. I need to re-read it though, thoroughly deserves a re-read.
    • 5/5
      first line: "The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset."I love Chesterton's language: from brilliantly witty dialogue to perfect visual descriptions. While social philosophy is not something about which I'd generally read, I love how this book presents it. Chesteron sublimates the silly, and treats the cosmos like a carnival. In his world, things may not always make sense...but I think that for Chesterton, more important than complete understanding is complete experience.
    • 5/5
      A fantastical story with more twists and turns than a labyrinth; this was a great read. I was able to anticipate some of the “surprises” but that in no way diminished my pleasure and the ending was magnificent—although many reviewers disliked it because it did not neatly tie up all the loose ends. However, this book was not about answers but questions.
    • 5/5
      Few books managed to give us the sensation that the world may be dream. This is one of those books. Chesterton's allegory give us a feeling of unreal world, where we are no more awaken than the protagonist. He created a world that Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Caroll before him and Borges and Kafka after managed to create. A nightmare that we follow with hardship.
    • 3/5
      Not having read Chesterton before, but knowing of him generally, I was expecting something along the lines of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, at least as regards the struggle between fiction and religion. In that novel, I have always found Raskolnikov’s conversion to Christianity to be unconvincing. What makes that novel amazing is its ability to conjure up Raskolnikov’s psychological character in full, and his jailhouse conversion seems to run contrary to what the novel has spent the bulk of its effort establishing, namely the interior of Raskolnikov’s mind. Christianity emerges not from within the novel, not from within Raskolnikov’s nature, but from without, imposed by the author.As he was a devout Christian, I expected Chesterton to fall into a similar trap in The Man Who Was Thursday, and to allow his convictions to delimit his imagination. In that regard, I was pleasantly surprised. The ending is wholly consistent with the rest of the novel, but in transitioning the novel fully into the realms of allegory, it leads to a different set of problems. The novel is not a form especially conducive to allegory, and if you don’t believe me, try to read Pilgrim’s Progress. As a set of ideas, it makes perfect sense, but to modern readers, it will seem like the barest skeleton of a narrative. Syme, Bull and the Marquis de St. Eustache are not fully imagined human beings in the way that Raskolnikov is, but Chesterton avoids Dostoevsky’s problem because he does not intend his characters to be anything other than what they are.As such, if Thursday is to be judged, it must be judged as an allegory. Allegories can take an abstract, intellectual argument and make it come to life. Two exemplars that suggest where Thursday falls short are Kafka’s “On Parables” and the story of the Prodigal Son from the New Testament. In a quarter page, Kafka produces a phenomenal riddle that seems to contain one of the mysteries of life. In the tale of the Prodigal Son, the whole essence of Christ’s message is condensed into the story of one man.It is no accident that both of these examples are parables. Part of the genius of allegory is its ability to condense whole lines of argument and give them a tactile reality, a genius that is best displayed in parables. The novel is a far more expansive form that the parable, and it is unclear what Chesterton accomplishes in a 200-page allegory that could not be performed more concisely in a parable. Those two hundred pages are not at all painful to read, but they add little to the allegory revealed in the final chapter. Furthermore, allegory cannot achieve its own end. In the story of Sunday, the text hopes to present a convincing theodicy, a mark it falls far short of.I also find it striking that when Chesterton and so many other turn of the century authors (Conrad, Dostoevsky) cast about for a danger that would imperil society, they fingered anarchism, not knowing that World War I lay just around the corner.
    • 5/5
      This is an unimprovable work, a jack-in-the-Chinese-box of a book, an instinctively balanced marriage of convention and somersault. It is a "thriller," yes, a "political parable," yes, any of a number of things; and like all masterpieces it "transcends genre," yes. But "the genius and wonder of the thing" is *how*: not by overstepping the genre, not by giving it some "twist," but rather by following the form so faithfully-- even, dare one say, formulaically-- that "formulaic" turns into a badge of honor and one is almost stunned by what the form is capable of holding. Chesterton aimed not to destroy the law, but to fulfill. His law in this case was the law of the surprise ending, and he was so scrupulous in his observance that we can ourselves observe the surprise coming a mile away-- and yet when it comes we are not only surprised, but astonished by a kind of (not unmixed) Joy; not because we were wrong, but because we are right, and yet knew not how right we were. It’s like the paradox of the unexpected hanging (look it up, it may save you an unpleasant shock someday). The "trick" of "Thursday" can be anticipated by any reader of average intelligence-- G.K.C. is a true democrat-- well in advance of the ending. Nor is it, like the tired already-cliché broken stingers in the tail of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, meant to "blow your mind"-- which may be why it does. For having guessed, we keep reading, partly to see how it will come about (like watching "Oedipus Rex" or "Colombo"); partly driven by the fierceness and farce of the language; and at every step, with recognition and surprise, exclaiming, "Yes. Yes! Yes, *of course!*" even as the very thing we thought would confirm our expectations exceeds them. With all due respect to the reviewer who felt G.K.C. was commending Christianity as the only antidote to chaos, "Thursday" is not a tract for the times. It is true that G.K.C. was a Roman Catholic and wrote many skillful and beautiful apologetic works, but "Thursday" is not one of these, nor yet exactly a novel. Rather-- as he cautioned-- it is "a Nightmare," albeit a comic one in precisely the Dantean sense. During a night of drinking with his poet-friend, Gabriel Syme unexpectedly finds himself as a double-agent embroiled in an anarchist conspiracy that is progressively unmasked over a hundred or so pages as-- as-- as I hardly know what; as elephant and blind men, poem and punchline all together. On one level, the denouement is as conventional as any joke; yet the brilliance is that the whole point is how much of a joke, and how *good* a joke, convention is. On another level, though, the joke is a cosmic epiphany: Krishna addressing Arjuna on the battlefield, the Lord answering Job from out of the whirlwind. The darkness of Chesterton's nightmare, like Job's, is dark indeed, and heavy, albeit mostly by implication; the single best summary of it I know is Borges', whose essay on Chesterton-- an elegant and frightening piece of three-quarter-truth-- I commend to all. The light, also, is--well, light; and a delightful light, dazzling, an answer to prayer *de profundis*. Some have indeed found it *too* dazzling, or at least a little too bright. But cumulatively the whole book makes an impression of both chiaroscuro and revelation. I, for one, turned the last page "a sadder and a wiser man." It's as though you completed a Rubik's cube to discover, dazedly, that you have squared the circle. And then the thing "resets" in your hands to scrambled, leaving you wondering if it ever happened; for alas, "Thursday" is, after all, only a book. That's what makes Chesterton's slapdash-nonsensical adventure, cloaked in carefully predictable formulae, a study in nakedness as the best disguise. It's also why, as another reviewer has remarked, the ending is so puzzling, in ways both at harmony and at odds with how it is profound. The Man Who Was Thursday, like the creation of the world itself, is indeed "Very Good:" a perfect crime and its own perfect alibi in one.

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    The Man Who Was Thursday - G. K. Chesterton

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