Book Review: The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton

To celebrate the 200^th review on Books, Time, and Silence, I will be re-posting 10 of my favourite reviews. 

On day three it is G.K. Chesterton's often overlooked masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday.

Read: May 2008

The Man Who Was Thursday in one Tweet-sized chunk:
A riotous escapade into the absurd which nonetheless contains truths rarely found in more serious works. 

In a review on Waterstone's.com, my esteemed former colleague Henry Coningsby (writing what is probably the best sentence I have read on that site) claims that “the mind of G.K. Chesterton is perhaps best compared to an ocean of champagne: there is vastness, there is effervescence - and, if you're not used to it, the effect can be quite overpowering.”

I am delighted to report that after only one chapter of this glorious book I was thoroughly, inexplicably, wonderfully, light-headedly...drunk. 

The Man Who Was Thursday plots the adventures of Gabriel Syme, a poet and policeman who goes undercover in the Central European Council of Anarchists in the hope of uncovering a conspiracy. But once he has taken up the role of Thursday on that secret council, he begins to discover that he is not, as he first imagined himself to be, alone amongst enemies. It is all rather more complicated than that. And, in the course of a wild, journey across London and northern France to prevent an anarchistic bombing, the black and white forces of order and disorder come together in battle, with the result that those opposing, black and white forces become a whole lot less distinct. 

Chesterton has made much of the fact that he subtitled this novel A Nightmare. He likes to play the jester, to support the notion that this book is something like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a weird and wacky journey through a masked world of uncertainty, whose culmination is waking up once more to a world of nature, and of hope, and peace. He wrote it at a time when he suffered depression and it is almost as though he is writing himself happy again. The Man Who Was Thursday is one of the most all-encompassing novels I have read. If it is a nightmare, then at the same time it is a blissful daydream and a deep, restful sleep. And probably all the levels of wakefulness as well. It is a riotously funny and enthralling, farcical adventure and at the same time a book with more ideas bristling about than hairs protruding from an old English Gentleman’s ears. Indeed the real characters in this book are not Syme and his fellow council members, but the ideas they debate. Anarchy, nihilism, the moral ambiguity of force, poetry and many others are thoroughly turned over, and all in only 200 pages. And the ideas are not only intelligent, they are hilarious. There are even reports that reading this book is prescribed by psychiatrists for the treatment of depression! I can see why; it certainly made me laugh out loud, and could, I suspect, have renewed my faith in mankind amidst even the roughest of times. 

Take this dialogue from the first chapter for instance: 
“’Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt.’ 
‘There again,’ said Syme irritably, ‘what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be seasick...Revolt in the abstract is — revolting. It's mere vomiting...It is things going right...that is poetical!’” 

And so much of it is like this: quick witted, inteligent, thought provoking. I thought I had worked out the plot from about half-way, and in one sense I had. But then it went on and on, the ideas are mind boggling, and all taken to a level further than any other book I have ever read. With every page the plot twists and turns; from secret underground lairs, and seafront battles, to elephant chases across London and hot air balloons over the shires. With all the ideas bubbling around in my brain I was light-headed, amazed, enchanted. I sat there nodding along with Gabriel Syme’s witty repost, his very British Gentlemanly style, and eccentricities, and concerns. 

And the result of all this? I am disorientated, still trying to work through everything in my mind. I am overpowered by Chesterton’s wit, his love of ideas, his thick satirical pen. Like an English turn-of-the-century Catch-22 this is a riotous novel I cannot wait to re-read. And I am not sure if one is meant to agree so completely with Syme’s world-view – perhaps Chesterton is laughing at me from wherever he now is – but I have not felt my own thoughts represented on paper so clearly for an awfully long time. 

It is almost impossible to write a review of this book. It is too good to pin down with normal words. You must read it yourself to see what I mean. It is as Jonathan Lethem writes in the Modern Library Classics edition introduction, “How do you autopsy a somersault? G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday is one of the great stunts ever performed in literary space, one still unfurling anytime you glance at it”. It has been said that Chesterton is “the master who left no masterpiece.” I cannot comment on any of his other work, but if this is not a masterpiece, then I don’t know what is. 

9.5 out of 10

American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis

Read: March 2006

You know, I didn’t really enjoy American Psycho. There is nothing I find less rewarding than novels which supposedly get inside the mind of a maniac. They are usually contrite and dull, the plot leading inextricably towards some cataclysmic ending which has been predictable from page one.

But there is something about American Psycho that sets it apart from its contemporaries. In the two and a half years since I read American Psycho it has steadily grown in my estimation. Partly this is because it is crammed with incredibly funny satire. In some strange way it is like Red Dwarf in the deft manner it slices through 1980’s culture. And while Red Dwarf targets the Perrier drinkers of the middle classes, for Brett Easton Ellis it is those obsessed with Les Miserables. I cannot think about or hear the musical without laughing quietly – and sometimes not so quietly – to myself. Patrick Bateman, you see, is obsessed with Les Miserables, particularly the British Cast Recording which he rates as far superior to its American counterpart. He mentions it consistently, to the point of total ridicule.

There are so many little humorous japes scattered throughout American Psycho that it is difficult not to look on it warmly. The way Bateman can name the designer of every piece of clothing someone is wearing but not remember anyone’s actual name; the long turgid chapters in which he waxes lyrical on his favourite bands; – Genesis, Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis and the News! – his fear of visiting the video rental shop; and the geekish pride in what is now completely out-of-date audio visual technology. It is all very, very funny. All these subtle hilarities combine to create a razor-sharp farce which hacks the 1980’s yuppy culture to bits, more viciously than any of Bateman’s murderous fantasies. It is all subtly done, and in my idiocy I missed much of it as I blundered through the plot. And because of that, I really didn’t enjoy it much. But the ending is one of those endings which brings all that has preceded it into a different light. As the world Patrick Bateman dreams up around him slowly merges with the real world the impression begins to dawn on the reader that he may not be all he professes himself to be.

Despite being littered with murder, rape, insanity and police chases, Amerian Psycho is as erotic as pornography, disturbing as a walk in the woods, exciting as being stuck in a traffic jam. Reading it I was just a little bored. In his Generation X nihilism, Brett Easton Ellis is not trying to entertain, but to ridicule. For the character of Patrick Bateman is based loosely on his father, a fact which gives weight and passion to the targeted absurdity.

In hindsight American Psycho is a hilarious, subtle and intelligently characterised novel. Everything I have identified as a weakness is a deliberate plot or character device, there is nothing which has not been carefully considered. While it is not my favourite type of book, its subtlety is so carefully hidden behind a big bludgeoning battering ram than I have huge respect for its achievement. Brett Easton Ellis will never be as good a writer as his good friend Donna Tartt, but then few people are and in American Psycho, he delivers exactly what literature needs: a huge hammer blow which is both intensely cool and at the same time full of subtle substance.


6.5 out of 10

The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton

Read: May 2008

In a review on Waterstone's.com, my esteemed former colleague Henry Coningsby (writing what is probably the best sentence I have read on that site) claims that “the mind of G.K. Chesterton is perhaps best compared to an ocean of champagne: there is vastness, there is effervescence - and, if you're not used to it, the effect can be quite overpowering.” I am delighted to report that after only one chapter of this glorious book I was thoroughly, inexplicably, wonderfully, light-headedly, drunk. The Man Who Was Thursday plots the adventures of Gabriel Syme, a poet and policeman who goes undercover in the Central European Council of Anarchists. But once he has taken up the role of Thursday on that secret council, he begins to discover that he is not, as he first imagined himself to be, alone amongst enemies. It is all rather more complicated than that. And, in the course of a wild, time bending journey across London and northern France to prevent an anarchistic bombing, the black and white forces of order and disorder come together in battle, with the result that those opposing, black and white forces become a whole lot more grey. Chesterton has made much of the fact that he subtitled this novel A Nightmare. He likes to play the jester, to support the notion that this book is something like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a weird and wacky journey through a masked world of uncertainty, whose culmination is waking up once more to a world of nature, and of hope, and peace. He wrote it at a time when he suffered depression and it is almost as though he is writing himself happy again. But there is too much here to sum it up simply as a nightmare. The Man Who Was Thursday is one of the most all-encompassing novels I have read. If it is a nightmare, then at the same time it is a blissful daydream and a deep, restful sleep. And probably all the levels of wakefulness as well. It is a riotously funny and enthralling, farcical adventure and at the same time a book with more ideas bristling about than hairs protruding from an old English Gentleman’s ears. The real characters in this book are not Syme and his fellow council members, but the ideas they debate. Moral anarchy, nihilism, the moral ambiguity of force and many others are thoroughly turned over, and all in only 200 pages. And the ideas are not only intelligent, they are hilarious. There are even reports that reading this book is prescribed by psychiatrists for the treatment of depression! I can see why; it certainly made me laugh out loud, and could, I suspect, have renewed my faith in mankind amidst even the roughest of times. Take this dialogue from the first chapter: “’Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt.’ ‘There again,’ said Syme irritably, ‘what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be seasick...Revolt in the abstract is — revolting. It's mere vomiting...It is things going right...that is poetical!’” And so much of it is like this: quick witted, inteligent, thought provoking. I thought I had worked out the plot from about half-way, and in one sense I had. But then it went on and on, the ideas are mind boggling, and all taken to a level further than any other book I have ever read. With every page the plot twists and turns; from secret underground lairs, and seafront battles, to elephant chases across London and hot air balloons over the shires. With all the ideas bubbling around in my brain I was light-headed, amazed, enchanted. I sat there nodding along with Gabriel Syme’s witty repost, his very British Gentlemanly style, and eccentricities, and concerns. And the result of all this? I am disorientated, still trying to work through everything in my mind. I am overpowered by Chesterton’s wit, his love of ideas, his thick satirical pen. Like an English turn-of-the-century Castch-22 this is a riotous novel I cannot wait to re-read. And I am not sure if one is meant to agree so completely with Syme’s world-view – perhaps Chesterton is laughing at me from wherever he now is – but I have not felt my own thoughts represented on paper so clearly for an awfully long time. It is almost impossible to write a review of this book. It is too good to pin down with normal words. You must read it yourself to see what I mean. It is as Jonathan Lethem writes in the Modern Library Classics edition introduction, “How do you autopsy a somersault? G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday is one of the great stunts ever performed in literary space, one still unfurling anytime you glance at it”. It has been said that Chesterton is “the master who left no masterpiece.” I cannot comment on any of his other work, but if this is not a masterpiece, then I don’t know what is. 9.5 out of 10

Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell

Read: July 2008

Voted by the good people of a Scottish village as their favourite of the Best of Booker shortlist, The Siege of Krishnapur is J.G. Farrell’s humorous take on the British Empire in India, 1860’s style.

After years of global supremacy, the age of Britain’s unrivalled Empire is coming to an end. The Indians are finding their voice, and a series of mutinies have broken out in small cantonments. Small and isolated, Krishnapur could be next. How do we know? Because chapattis have begun to appear all over the place, in collections of three. No-one knows exactly why, or what it means. But to the Collector, obsessed with the demonstration of human potential at the Great Exhibition, it spells disaster. It is an example of the new speed of communication between people hostile to British rule, their organisation, and impending threat.

First of all he is mocked. People whisper that senility is claiming him. But soon his fears are proved correct. And as the Sepoys close in on Krishnapur, the British are forced to retreat to the Collector’s residency and build their fortifications. But they are a ramshackle bunch of administrators, retired servicemen, women and children; against the organised enemy they stand no chance. So, with falling rations, awful sanitation, and no contact with the outside world, they set themselves to wait out the siege until someone comes to rescue them. Yet with resolute determination and imperial arrogance the soldiers just about manage to repel the attacks in their makeshift, stumbling sort of way. But as the months pass by, more and more is sacrificed to defend both the lives of the people living within the compound, and the British way of life itself. But if help doesn’t arrive soon, they are doomed.

The Siege of Krishnapur is witty, intelligent at interesting. There is a fascinating battle between the two doctors, one a quiet young Scottish physician; the other a superb orator, confident, learned, absolutely convinced of his methods. When an epidemic of cholera breaks out the two are brought into conflict for the hearts and minds of the people, and the validity of their scientific methods questioned. The people of Krishnapur take sides, following like sheep with wilful abandon, transforming their loyalties at the flick of a switch. They carry cards indicating which doctor they wish to treat them, and often these cards demonstrate that they have switched allegiances regularly. Old orators may rule the roost, but faced with life and death it is practical results which will judge who is correct.

And for the Collector there is an even greater test: will his treasured new technology be able to save their lives?

There is one great problem with this book, however. At no point in the plot did I really feel involved in the action. There are various characters and they are involved in some pretty hairy situations, but to be honest, I didn’t really care whether they survived or not. There is the Collector, who is reasonably interesting, a young lad named Fleury who is wet as a fish, a deluded and arrogant doctor, another quiet and reasonable doctor, a committed but out-of-touch reverend, and a bunch of other people with generic names such as The Magistrate. Half the time, I wasn’t even sure who was who! Many say this is a great, exciting novel. But to be honest, I found it pretty slow going. In my opinion it doesn’t matter whether a book is intelligent and witty, if it doesn’t have a narrative which compels you to read on, then it will never be the joy it should be.

That the people of the Scottish village rated this book is probably enough praise for you to buy and read it. And you will probably enjoy it. But in my opinion, The Siege of Krishnapur is not in the same league as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, or J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. It’s doesn’t even belong to the same universe.


6 out of 10