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The Amazon Store at MillionDollarPetPix.com ( In association with Amazon.com )The Man Who Was Thursday (Oxford World's Classics)by: G. K. Chesterton  Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912 EAN: 9780192823595 ISBN: 0192823590 Label: Oxford University Press, USA Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 240 Publication Date: November 21, 1996 Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA Studio: Oxford University Press, USA Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: In an article published the day before his death, G.K. Chesterton called The Man Who Was Thursday "a very melodramatic sort of moonshine." Set in a phantasmagoric London where policemen are poets and anarchists camouflage themselves as, well, anarchists, his 1907 novel offers up one highly colored enigma after another. If that weren't enough, the author also throws in an elephant chase and a hot-air-balloon pursuit in which the pursuers suffer from "the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon." But Chesterton is also concerned with more serious questions of honor and truth (and less serious ones, perhaps, of duels and dualism). Our hero is Gabriel Syme, a policeman who cannot reveal that his fellow poet Lucian Gregory is an anarchist. In Chesterton's agile, antic hands, Syme is the virtual embodiment of paradox: He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realization; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.... Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left--sanity.Elected undercover into the Central European Council of anarchists, Syme must avoid discovery and save the world from any bombings in the offing. As Thursday (each anarchist takes the name of a weekday--the only quotidian thing about this fantasia) does his best to undo his new colleagues, the masks multiply. The question then becomes: Do they reveal or conceal? And who, not to mention what, can be believed? As The Man Who Was Thursday proceeds, it becomes a hilarious numbers game with a more serious undertone--what happens if most members of the council actually turn out to be on the side of right? Chesterton's tour de force is a thriller that is best read slowly, so as to savor his highly anarchic take on anarchy. --Kerry Fried Product Description: Widely considered as Chesterton's masterpiece, "The Man Who Was Thursday" (1908) defies classification. Subtitled "A Nightmare" by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective story. This critical edition includes several short related pieces, "A Picture of Tuesday", "Introduction to the Book of Job", and "The Diabolist", as well as a map of contemporary London and detailed explanatory notes. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Sparkling prose littered with gemsTo this point in my life, I've now read three works by Chesterton: his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse and his biography of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Man Who Was Thursday is a completely different work from the abovementioned pair. It is subtitled "A Nightmare" and that's exactly how it reads. Thursday starts out like a quirky spy/detective novel, but as the plot progresses, it becomes obvious that this is no typical pot-boiler. It is well to keep in mind when reading this book ... Read More Rating:  - Early terrorism thrillerToday it's al Qaeda... in Chesterton's time it was anarchists, ("no government is good government," sort of early-period extremist Libertarians). But here Chesterton spun a fascinating tale of a policeman who goes under-cover to foil a bomb plot. The seven anarchists involved use day-of-the-week code names; thus, our policeman becomes "Thursday". As you approach the end of this fine work you might ask yourself, "Where the heck is this thing going?" But just hang in there -- ... Read More Rating:  - Vapid and more than a little pretentiousMost people find themselves unable to clearly express their ideas not because those ideas are brilliant, but because they are jumbled. I think Chesterton belongs to this latter sort. The book contains few original thoughts, although it does retell some basic philosophical problems semi-competently. That's about all there is to it--and, well, the prose is good. The action is vague and hackneyed--like a hollywood blockbuster. The characters are stilted, lifeless and asexual. One has to smoke a lot of good ... Read More Rating: - Your blue sock is behind the dryer. I went into reading this book with such strong misconceptions concerning what it was about. Like the characters whom see things completely different it seems like the readers of this book see its meaning quite differently as well. It is a crazy allegory but of what? On a stylistic level Chesterton's prose is unique and well crafted. Chesterton has his own voice in his writing powerful, artful, and clear. On an abstract level I can't help but feel I got something out of the book but I am at ... Read More Rating: - Chesterton hits close to home with this thrillerI wasn't sure what to expect when I was given this book by a friend - all I knew is that Chesterton is an amazing writer and I was not disappointed in the least after reading The Man Who was Thursday. The story is intriguing and moves the reader along page by page until one is almost finished with the book before even knowing it. The characters are interesting - and as one person commented about the book - the real characters are the ideas, not the individuals themselves. Chesterton is a master at communicating ... Read More 
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