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The Man Who was Thursday: The Man Who was Thursday, A Nightmare
The Man Who was Thursday: The Man Who was Thursday, A Nightmare
The Man Who was Thursday: The Man Who was Thursday, A Nightmare
Audiobook6 hours

The Man Who was Thursday: The Man Who was Thursday, A Nightmare

Written by G. K. Chesterton

Narrated by David Thorn

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Chesterton leads us on a merry ride of mystery, intrigue and above all, fantasy in this tale of anarchism filled with suspense and sitting-on-the-edge-of-ones-chair fright. Sometimes it is referred to as a metaphysical-thriller and Chesterton himself refers to it as "a nightmare". We are kept wondering and in suspense until the very end of this masterpiece by the creator of Father Brown.

Table of Contents
Chapter 01: The Two Poets of Saffron Park
Chapter 02: The Secret of Gabriel Syme
Chapter 03: The Man Who Was Thursday
Chapter 04: The Tale of a Detective
Chapter 05: The Feast of Fear
Chapter 06: The Exposure
Chapter 07: The Unaccountable Conduct of Professor de Worms
Chapter 08: The Professor Explains
Chapter 09: The Man in Spectacles
Chapter 10: The Duel
Chapter 11: The Criminals Chase the Police
Chapter 12: The Earth in Anarchy
Chapter 13: The Pursuit of the President
Chapter 14: The Six Philosophers
Chapter 15: The Accuser
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 2009
ISBN9780982185391
The Man Who was Thursday: The Man Who was Thursday, A Nightmare
Author

G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was a prolific English journalist and author best known for his mystery series featuring the priest-detective Father Brown and for the metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Baptized into the Church of England, Chesterton underwent a crisis of faith as a young man and became fascinated with the occult. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and published some of Christianity’s most influential apologetics, including Heretics and Orthodoxy. 

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Reviews for The Man Who was Thursday

Rating: 3.7804878048780486 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loved the symbolism, disorientation, and potent dose of philosophy at the end. A goldmine of ideas in a dream narrative, but not really a thriller by today's standards.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a favorite novel of mine and a delightful fantasy. More than a romance set in the streets of London, subtitled A Nightmare, it is in part a meditation on the meaning of anarchism. The chase scene at the close is "worth the price of admission", as they sometimes say, and the book is unique in many other ways. Chesterton knew how to spin a good tale and set your head spinning at the same time.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    With amazing suspense and continual anticipation, Chesterton positions the reader to the edge of their seats on a wild ride with twists, turns, and delightful encounters. It was a joy to read this work of genius. It was a shorter book. However, with the style and prose of Chesterton, it takes longer than usual. It was well worth the time and investment.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Der Abenteuerroman datiert aus dem Jahr 1907 und ist vom Stil her doch etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig. Inhaltlich geht es um eine Anarchisten-Elitevereinigung, deren sieben Mitglieder die Wochentage als Decknamen tragen. Die erste Hälfte gestaltet sich relativ spannend, spätestens dann aber zeichnet sich der Ausgang der Geschichte zu deutlich ab und mindestens das letzte Drittel gestaltet sich sehr langatmig. Zudem finden sich doch einige krasse Handlungsbrüche und Ungereimtheiten im Handlungsaufbau. Da hilft es auch nur bedingt, dass dem Leser letztendlich offenbart wird, dass es sich bei dem Erlebten der Protagonisten nur um einen Traum handelt. Allerdings: Einem Autor, dem folgendes, wunderbares Zitat zugeschrieben wird, verzeiht man so einiges: "Märchen erzählen Kindern nicht, dass Drachen existieren. Kinder wissen um deren Existenz. Märchen erzählen Kinder, dass man Drachen töten kann."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    You've got to be curious about any book described as a "surreal anarchist fantasy" (Wordsworth edition introduction). I was pleased to find the classic wit of Chesterton on every page.This book's paradoxical. Chesterton's writing is expansive and leisurely, yet the pace of the mystery is breathtaking at times. It's difficult to find a writer who can make paragraph length blocks of dialogue come alive so effortlessly.The plot itself is very curious. The story's about a group of seven anarchists (named after the days of the week), who have been infiltrated by a spy from Scotland Yard. I hesitate to share any more lest I give too much of the plot away. By the last couple chapters, I found myself questioning how Chesterton could possibly bring such a tale a fitting conclusion without being predictable. He exceeded my expectations. I'll return to that last chapter more than once to let it sink in.Chesterton's at his best: relaxing and thrilling, silly and profound. The entire narrative is laced with Christian symbolism that comes to a poignant theological head without sounding preachy. This is a great summer read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is part thriller, part fantasy, and even part comedy. It is certainly a strange combination, and not always successful. The was written during a time of anarchist bombings in London, and takes the core idea of the plot from those events. Detective Syme is assigned by Scotland Yard to infiltrate a group of anarchists. Each man is named for a day of the week. As he gets to know the men, he begins to fear for his safety. But the more he learns, the more he realizes none of them are exactly what they appear to be on the surface. The complete title of this novella is The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. I think one must keep that in mind when reading, as the events and situations can come at the reader at near breakneck speed. The book's ending was a bit disappointing, but overall I will give this one 3-1/2 stars.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Allegories aren't my favorite kind of stories, but this one really stands out.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When The Man Who Was Thursday was first published, in 1907, the big terrorist threat came from anarchists, who threw bombs and assassinated people for a variety of complicated reasons. They turn up quite regularly in the literature of the time, quite often as vague caricatures representing some kind of destructive force or forces of evil. This is the case in The Man Who Was Thursday, where Chesterton uses the anarchists to represent all that is negative in the world, and doesn't tie them in to any particular political movement.The book's an allegory, so no character can be taken at its face value--and to complicate matters, within the novel every character is revealed to be quite different from what he seems. (This is almost exclusively a male tale, born of a society where the men of the English ruling class were expected to move in men-only circles from an early age, through boarding school to clubs to Parliament.)The plot is relatively straightforward: the poet Sykes infiltrates a group of anarchists nicknamed according to the days of the week (Sykes is Thursday). He is co-opted into the anti-anarchist police by a mysterious personage whom he meets in a completely dark room. The anarchists are led by a larger-than-life, terrifying character called Sunday.The book has a repeating pattern of wild chases and moments of revelation that build on one another to become funnier as the plot thickens. For this is a comedy, although a subtle and disturbing one. I'd hate to spoil the book for you by explaining exactly what's going on, but I can say that terror alternates with relief and a sense of the ridiculous. The climax of the book is quite thrilling and profound. The novel's subtitle, A Nightmare, may give you a hint about the plot's strange shifts and reverses.If you ever liked the Narnia books, you'll like Thursday, which in some ways is the adult counterpart to C.S. Lewis's books. One day I will go through my bookshelves and make a special section for books that deserve to be re-read at intervals during my life; this book will make the cut.There are many different editions of Thursday: the one I read was published by Ignatius Press, edited by Martin Gardner. I did not particularly like the edition, which was idiosyncratic and self-serving. There must be a better one out there.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Martin Amis calls it 'thrilling' in the introduction to my version of the book. I failed to find it so. I was attracted to the book by a passage from it that I read. The passage was the one describing Gabriel Syme's childhood. It is probably the best bit, and the rest of the book fails to live up to the humour of those paragraphs. The story line was not very surprising (and not even completely coherent, I suspect). Chesterton presents Christianity as the only answer to Chaos. I wonder if he would still think that in today's world.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a genre that might best be called "high farce," or even "surreal politico-comedy." A quick read, it does repay slower contemplation, especially in those sections where the narrator offers his metaphysical musings. This is an expertly narrated detective-action plot that lightly veils Chesterton's philosophical-religious themes, but the book is not weighed down by them. Chesterton is too good a wordsmith and crafter of compelling plot for that. Except for brief respites, the action puts us on the move, whether on foot, car, horseback or hansom cab, through the streets of London and the French countryside. And although it would be too simplistic to say Chesterton was writing a simple anti-anarchist literary manifesto, he certainly condemns anarchy's flight from human communion. His lead character Symes accuses what he believes are a group of anarchists (though it turns out that they are anti-anarchists), in a beautiful passage describing an old iron lantern (suggestive of the light of the world?) amidst one of the high points of the action: “You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. . . . You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world.” But perhaps the narrator best sums up the quality of the book as a whole when describing, in the last chapter, a mesmerizing masquerade ball which "was, somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a love story." Perhaps I'm being stingy in not giving it five stars, but I felt the end was, not unsuccessful, but even in a book of countless twists and unanticipated escapades, somehow both too much and too little. I think some rereadings of that last chapter are in order--and it's the most beautifully written chapter in a book that revels in great word play and imagery.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    On the cover of The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, there's a sentence from a review by Kingsley Amis where he calls this book "The most thrilling book I have ever read." Clearly, strong recommendations from well-known authors can be a powerful selling tool, but I'll admit, it was the rest of the cover that sold me on this book. You can't always judge by it, sure, but you can certainly be reeled in by an attractive one. Look at this! Can you feel the energy? It's a small little volume, too, but on paper that's more appealing than the usual mass-market paperback. The crisp white and the stark black and red... Hats off to the art department at Penguin. Something about this small volume called to me and after reading the back cover description, I knew this was going to be good.The best way that I've found to describe this book is that it feels like you're reading a car chase. In a good way. No, the whole book is not a car chase (though there is a car chase at one point), but it's a fantastic thriller that had me riveted as it raced through twists and turns in the plot, which featured poets, anarchy, and the question of what makes reality. G.K. Chesterton published this book in 1908 and it opens on the meeting of two poets in turn of the century London -- Lucian Gregory and Gabriel Syme. Gregory loses his temper when Syme suggests that Gregory is not a true anarchist. So to prove his commitment to anarchy, Gregory extracts a vow of silence from Syme and then takes him to a secret meeting of anarchists... only to find (after Syme requests a similar promise from Gregory) that Syme is part of a secret anti-anarchy group of Scotland Yard. The two are at an impasse, unable to expose the other, and so Gregory is completely at a loss when Syme gives a rousing speech at the meeting and the secret agent is elected to serve as the local representative (called "Thursday") on the worldwide Central Council of Anarchists. And this is only the beginning as Syme joins the Council and meets its president, Sunday, who comes to represent all that Syme is battling against in this world.Wikipedia will tell you that Adam Gopnik ran a piece in The New Yorker which described this book as "one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges." Even 101 years later, I could feel that this was that missing literary link that finally made me understand how the jump to writing and appreciating Kafka's work was made possible. That tradition of literature was never my focus, and I feel that had I been asked to read this before Kafka in school, I could have found a more coherent place for it in the sequence of literary styles. I had always been dissatisfied with explanations of how Kafka brought forth such a surreal narrative, fully-formed in its own unique style, a man suddenly made insect. I knew there must have been some premonitory clue, and here I feel as though I've stumbled upon something that makes that a little clearer. Though it seems amusing to use the term "clarity" here, as the simultaneous trust in and distrust of reality is what makes it all terrifying/fascinating.Oh, and it might be narcissistic, but I'm always going to have a small affinity for a book that treats redheads with respect. There's a fantastic line that you can bet I'll remember: "My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world." Awesome. And I'll leave you with an early paragraph where Syme is speaking with Gregory's sister that I particularly enjoyed:He stared and talked at the girl's red hair and amused face for what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow, this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so improbable that it might well have been a dream.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Weird but absolutely brilliant.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Unusual. A book that suprised me to the very end. That hasn't happened in a long time. Allegorical detective story where evil unmasked from goodness @ the end of a "normal" detective story is completely reversed when good is unmasked from an evil person.The man who was Thursday is a Scotland Yard detective that infiltrates the grand European Council of Anachists. It is revealed, eventually, that all the members on the council are undercover policemen. There is order instead of anarchy and, Sunday, president of the council is the same man that sent the undercover detectives on their mission. There is only one anarchist character. There is much Christian allegory and the annotated edition by Martin Gardner, from Ignatius Press is helpful. Not sure I still understand it. A healthy challange.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Chesterton is best known for the Fr. Brown mysteries. This is a very different stand-alone allegorical mystery featuring poet-detective Gabriel Syme and a circle of anarchists bent on destroying the world.

    There are some interesting philosophical / theological arguments between characters, but the work is dated. It was first published in 1908, and it shows its age. There were parts that reminded me of the McCarthyism communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s-1960s.

    QUOTE: “The work of the philosophical policeman,” replied the man in blue, “is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses and arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime.”
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I was really prepared to love this, but couldn't. The story it's self is wonderful, but I could not get past the narration. Plodding, monotonous...this narrator leant nothing to this work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There are so many reviews which comment on the religious allegory of this book so I will refrain from doing that, except to say I enjoyed the "dueling with the devil" scene the most. There are also many reviews that mention how weird the story gets. Agreed. Completely. This is one of those situations in a story where purpose overshadows plot because the whole thing is really quite ridiculous. In a nutshell, Gabriel Symes is an undercover detective who infiltrates an anarchist group (Council of the Seven Days) only to find that the entire membership, with the exception of its leader, is made up of undercover New Detective Corps members. Each member goes by a day of the week for an alias, hence the Council of the Seven Days. Symes has just been nominated as "Thursday". As a collective week they are all trying to get at the elusive leader, "Sunday". Except, they are all in the dark as to each others true identities. What I find curious is that when Sunday sniffs out a spy his fears are confirmed when the undercover policeman reveals he is carrying his membership card to the anti-anarchist constabulary. Wouldn't you remove that piece of evidence, especially if you bother to go through the trouble of wearing an elaborate disguise? Gogol posed as a hairy Pole, accent and all. The Professor posed as an invalid old man with a huge nose. Turns out, all six policemen are carrying the tell-tale blue identification card. Not one of them thought to leave it at home. But, I digress. For most of the story it is a cat and mouse game with the good guys chasing the bad guys (until one by one, they find out they are all good guys). The theme of "who can you trust" is ongoing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very good annotations by Martin Gardner. As this is the second time that I have read it, I'll have to admit this is the first time that I really understood it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    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.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is an allegorical novel that on the surface is about a group of anarchists, but questions many other things along the way. Being a nightmare, it has nightmarish qualities throughout, and the descriptions of scenery, weather and people reflect this. Had I liked this better, I’d reread it to really dig into more of that, and if this is your sort of novel it is worth reading more than once.
    This novel is an allegory dressed as a nightmare, and the only thing that saved it from being a total nightmare or a read for me were some of the amazingly brilliant lines and prose. Had I not realized it was written as a nightmare, I’d have never made it through during this second attempt at reading this novel. I realize it has many fans. This review is based purely as my take on it as a literary novel, and not on any theological underpinnings or references to the book of Job, since discussing Chesterton’s theology is fodder for an entirely different kind of forum
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    At first, I was a little unsure of what I was reading. I'd missed the subtitle 'A Nightmare'. But in a short time the tone of the book, and its brilliant humour become, more clear. In the moment comes the delight. The recruitment of those who become what they think they're supposed to oppose, in order to stop it, only to discover they all share in that task, that none of them are who they thought, and that even the real opponent is not who they assumed; the impossibility of appearances at telling the truth, and our own personal vulnerability at seeing what is true; the experience of being pursued as something you are, or might not be, when the truth of a situation is lost to opinions and perspectives and conjecture: all these are the foundation of the nightmare. There is a role we're to play in the world: what if someone confused and scuttled it, or rendered the task impossible to really discern? What if reality and God Himself were somehow disguised beyond our description, and we had no bearings among our peers left? A clever depiction, perhaps, of the horror the secular world has brought. Some spectacular quotes lie within for whomever is willing to see the truth ;-p