Tuesday, June 20, 2006

A Voice That Made Men Drop Drawn Swords

That's a great quote from the book that my mom is reading outloud to my brother and I, The Man Who Was Thursday By G.K. Chesterton.
It describes the voice of the leader of the supreme anarchist council, an organization into which a police detective has intruded, having been elected to it by a very strange circumstance. Each of the members is known by the name of one of the days of the week. So Gabriel Syme is now in the awkward position of being on the supreme Anarchist council without any friends and unable, due to an oath of honor, to inform any policeman of his predicament. But perhaps he is not as alone as he thought.....
He begins to make friends and together they decide to attempt to stop the orginization of anarchists who are on their way to ruling the world.

We are in the midst of this unusual novel right now, and it really keeps you on the edge of your seat.
I really like it so far and I highly recommend it.

7 comments:

Dr. Thursday said...

Excellent idea - I am a little older than a teen but that does not matter when we are talking about GKC.

Here is a quote you might want to use somewhere:

"He has lived but fifteen years," said the Admiral. "How can I ask him to have learnt to respect age, if I in sixty years have not learnt to respect youth?"

[GKC, The Coloured Lands 130]

With all due respect then, I look forward to more from our young nephews and nieces of Uncle Gilbert!

A Secular Franciscan said...

It is a great book (and a wonderful description of that voice!)

Glad you are doing this blog.

Ria said...

We've been trying to figure out a good quote for this blog, it is not an easy task. That one might be good though, hmmmmm.....
Maybe we should have several main quotes, you know like 5(:

Oh we finished The Man Who Was Thursday yesterday, I loved it. The ending was a little difficult to understand though, I can't figure out if the whole adventure was a dream or if it only seemed like a dream. Maybe I should reread that part.

Dr. Thursday said...

Yes, you should re-read it. Do not be concerned if you still find it a little difficult - it is subtitled "a nightmare" after all!

There is a good commentary by GKC himself on it; I will let you know.

And there is no reason why you cannot have multiple quotes - or vary them according to season, day of the week, phase of the moon...

Ria said...

A commentary by GKC???? That's really neat, I would love to read that.

Yes, that's a good idea, maybe one every other month or something.
Now I have to start going through some Chesterton books to figure out what they should be.
If anyone has any suggestions please comment, a wide variety would be nice. Maybe we'll get enough to do them monthly.

Dr. Thursday said...

I will post one comment on my own blogg shortly.

The other is a little long, so I will ask: Do you have a copy of the book called GKC as M.C.? It is a collection of his introductions to books by other people. His Thursday was adapted into a three-act play by his sister-in-law, Ada Chesterton (wife of his brother Cecil) and Ralph Neale in 1926, so GKC wrote an introduction to it.

Let me know if you cannot find it.

love2learnmom said...

In Collected Works #VI there is a foreward by Chesterton to The Man Who Was Thursday that looks like it was written a little while after the story. Is that the same one? It starts out talking about the Bolshevists making it into anarchist play.