"The Man Who Was Thursday" by Chesterton. Gaiman calls it a "novel of genius." Is he nuts?

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I just finished reading Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday." Neil Gaiman, in his blog, called it his one "novel of genius."

How does he justify that comment?

The book bored me senseless. It was utterly predictable and tedious. It's only 185 pages long and yet I found myself skimming. There are several pretty prose passages and a couple nice bits of description, but gawd, what a slog. It felt like a endless movie car chase, complete with exploding fruit carts.

Where's the genius?

Please enlighten me.

Mouse, Saturday, 3 April 2004 06:35 (twenty-one years ago)

yes the ending was kinda obvious

prima fassy (mwah), Saturday, 3 April 2004 22:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Funnily enough I was talking to my mum about this book yesterday and it turns out that an old friend of hers used to know Chesterton, and he was a complete alcoholic. With this new found knowledge I suspect the book maybe somewhat better after a few glasses of whisky. Although I don't intend to plough my way back through it to find out.

Cathryn (Cathryn), Monday, 5 April 2004 12:20 (twenty-one years ago)

It's a great, fun book! Blithering ending, though.

Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 17:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Sorry, can't relate. Of course everything Chesterton wrote had a theological agenda and tends to lecture the reader--he was primarily an essayist--but if you like him or what he has to say, as I do, that's really not much of a problem.

I do think that he copies the shifting-through-several-moods atmosphere of a dream fairly well, as well as anything I've read. I'm assuming this is one reason for Gaiman's well-known appreciation for him.

It's a fable crossed with a dream-vision--emphatically NOT a novel. I think lack of understanding of this point is one of peoples' problems with it.

Phil Christman, Tuesday, 6 April 2004 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

"emphatically NOT a novel"

Not sure what you mean. Obviously the novel utterly loses steam once the villain is revealed and the dream-strcuture is a cop-out. But up until then I thought it was really inventive and wise, Holmes-meets-Wells-meets-Fleming in a proto-Alan Moore kind of way. I tend to think of Chesterton like Raymond Chandler --- a classic short story writer, and one of the best sentence constructors in the English language, but a pretty wretched novelist, structure-wise.

Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Tuesday, 6 April 2004 19:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know. I kinda liked it to begin with, don't know why, but then got bored and only managed to reach the halfway point. Incidentally, I wouldn't take Neil Gaimain's advice on good literature too seriously.

writingstatic (writingstatic), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 05:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I read this book years ago and really enjoyed it. It's like Kafka, only funnier.

DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 18:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Funnier than Kafka?

*

I've never read Chesterton, but I've always loved this metaphor of Wodehouse's:

"The drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin."

Baravelli. (Jake Proudlock), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 20:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I almost agree with the Vicar, although Kafka can be pretty funny. But mostly I agree with writingstatic. If you're looking to Neil Gaiman for literary advice, well...

accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Thursday, 8 April 2004 09:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I, too, just finished "Thursday," my second or third re-reading in half a lifetime as a Chesteron fan. G.K. aimed above all else to surprise, so I think he'd be disappointed to hear anybody found the book predictable.

Perhaps it is at some level, especially if you know Chesterton well enough to expect exactly the most unexpected turn. I certainly don't think the ending is predictable, as it approaches the supreme paradox of the existence of evil in a good creation, of the possibility of happiness amid wretchedness. As in many other things, Chesterton was, in his resolution of this conundrum, both a Romantic antiquarian and a practical futurist.

That his answer -- the Incarnation -- is rendered only fleetingly gives many readers a sense of incompletion. I think G.K. left it so because, I might say to the poster who accused him of being didactic, he didn't want to lecture. A 1908 audience, moreover, needed perhaps less explanation than we.

Paul Bonner, Thursday, 8 April 2004 19:27 (twenty-one years ago)

stop cheating, paul

tom west (thomp), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:02 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm wondering if the first poster is american. mostly i like this book because i think of it every time i'm on a london train platform. that opening dialogue is a great, great thing; admittedly i barely remember the rest.

i think by the second or third guy turning out to be another secret agent you're meant to have twigged the pattern, you know..?

and fat + jocund god strikes me as a nice god to have, despite the "a nightmare" bit, and chesterton's grouchy afterword glossing it. i dunno.

tom west (thomp), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:07 (twenty-one years ago)

"the man who was thursday"

tom west (thomp), Thursday, 8 April 2004 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Cheating? Certainly. But how?

Paul Bonner, Friday, 9 April 2004 18:04 (twenty-one years ago)

"if you found it predictable you read it wrong"

i really want to reread this now.

tom west (thomp), Saturday, 10 April 2004 00:41 (twenty-one years ago)

>I certainly don't think the ending is predictable, as it approaches >the supreme paradox of the existence of evil in a good creation, of >the possibility of happiness amid wretchedness. As in many other >things, Chesterton was, in his resolution of this conundrum, both a >Romantic antiquarian and a practical futurist.
>That his answer -- the Incarnation -- is rendered only fleetingly >gives many readers a sense of incompletion. I think G.K. left it so >because, I might say to the poster who accused him of being >didactic, he didn't want to lecture. A 1908 audience, moreover,

Wow. Well said.

And my guess is that formally, he's maybe aiming closer to the old medieval genre of the dream-vision than he is to the novel (that's what I meant in the comment several layers above this one)--weirdly shifting scenes, plot mostly advanced by dialogue and description of setting/"feel," etc.

Phil Christman, Saturday, 10 April 2004 02:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I started reading "The Man Who Was Thursday" once, dropped it in the middle, never finished. Recently I read Gaiman's "American Gods" and decided I had to read it this time. Thanks for reminding me.

Carol Robinson (carrobin), Monday, 12 April 2004 20:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I went back and read GKC's "grouchy glosses" in Martin Gardner's annotated edition. I noticed, remembering the post above on Chesterton's dipsomania, G.K. himself seemed to enjoy a chuckle over a reviewer's calling it "The Man Who Was Thirsty." I also realized/remembered why the resolution seems fleeting -- not so much intentionaly, but because this is a youthful work in which Chesterton was still working out his theology.

He'd got as far as answering the late Victorian pessimism, as he says, of Schopenhauer and Whistler with the idea of order and chaos being two sides of the same coin, but only tentatively approached the real problem of a just God. For that reason, and getting back to the original question, "Thursday" may not really be Chesterton's masterpiece, as Gardner's edition calls it (my vote would go to his epic poem "The White Horse.") I still think it's a remarkable book, though, and, yes, a work of genius (but then I want to say that of nearly everything he wrote).

Paul Bonner, Monday, 19 April 2004 21:19 (twenty-one years ago)

. martin gardner! i might want that.

how do you feel about the father brown stories?

tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I loved reading this. It was fun, madcap at times, yet still intriguing. The ending, however, really bothered me. It's kinda like finishing a great pint of beer to find a chunk of old food at the bottom; no matter how much you enjoyed it, you feel slightly ill, and question everything that you've just digested. A shame, because it really did start rather well.

derrick (derrick), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 08:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Ew, Der-rick! I don't remember the ending being quite that bad. You've made me quite queasy now.

accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 09:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Tom: The Father Brown stories aren't my favorite Chesterton. Probably the most variation in quality here. As someone else noted on this board (or was it Gaiman's?) a few of the stories, especially among the later ones, are rather clunkers. The first volume, "The Innocence of Father Brown," is the best of them.

Paul Bonner, Wednesday, 21 April 2004 16:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I like the idea of an elephant stampeding through Kensington. I enjoyed the ending too, although I was also watching Airplane II at the time and the two merged a little.

Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, 22 April 2004 07:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Life immitating art (version 1)

While discussing this book at bookclub last night we were evacuated from the pub by the bomb squad.

Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, 29 April 2004 08:31 (twenty-one years ago)


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