The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare in The Dusty Bookshelf

Sep 17, 2011 Anne (Booklady) Molinarolo rated it really liked it

Shelves: thriller-suspense, fall-2011, classics, sci-fi-fantasy

Originally published in 1908, THURSDAY stands the test of time and cannot be pigeon-hold into a specific genre. It is both satirical and allegoric. It is both spiritual and pragmatic. It is foremost a fantastical detective story, but secondly I believe THURSDAY is a rhetorical answer to Chesterton’s longtime “philosopher poet” friend, George Bernard Shaw.

During a radiant, but fiery sunset in the suburb Saffron Park two poets meet and befriend one another, though their personal philosophies are Originally published in 1908, THURSDAY stands the test of time and cannot be pigeon-hold into a specific genre. It is both satirical and allegoric. It is both spiritual and pragmatic. It is foremost a fantastical detective story, but secondly I believe THURSDAY is a rhetorical answer to Chesterton’s longtime “philosopher poet” friend, George Bernard Shaw.

During a radiant, but fiery sunset in the suburb Saffron Park two poets meet and befriend one another, though their personal philosophies are at extreme opposite ends. But both men are so passionate! So much that each young man elicits a promise from the other that will put them at odds with each other throughout the narrative. A promise that both “poets” are honor bound to keep, much to the enhancement of Chesterton’s story.

Gabriel Syme loves order and its beauty, especially the Law of the catholic family (the Christian family, not of Roman Catholicism). Lucien Gregory extols the virtues of anarchy and the beauty of the poor man in chaos. He tells, Syme:
“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.”

But Syme counters in a most unusual way and is elected the Anarchist High Council: The Table of the Seven Days. He is to become Thursday. Shrouded in a great cape, sword stick in hand, cigar in his mouth (much the way Chesterton appeared on the streets of London), and a revolver in his pocket, the new council member steps into a barge on the dark Thames under the pale light of the Moon. He thinks of the mysterious and much feared Sunday as he travels. How clever of his equally enigmatic mentor to fight the anarchists intellectually and to install himself, rather than the soap-box poet Gregory, upon the Council. But Syme soon realizes that intellectual discourse will not work – the Council means to bomb and kill the Czar while the leader is in France. Bound by his promise not to expose the anarchists, Syme must do the unthinkable: stop the bombing without alerting the police and the intrepid Sunday. For he has been told Sunday is everywhere and omniscient.

Here Chesterton begins Syme’s “nightmare” with lots of cheeky humor: a cat and mouse chase through the alleys of London with a fellow “Day”; a duel in France; unmasking spies; elephant and hot balloon chases to the two by two entrants to the great banquet at the end of the novel. All is revealed then and we readers may decide who or what the Great Council Sunday is.
...more

Like · see review