{"id":6,"date":"2010-01-19T20:53:31","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T20:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aerieproductions.com\/thursday\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:56:09","slug":"the-classic","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/?page_id=6","title":{"rendered":"The Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I discovered the book The Man Who Was Thursday<\/em> on a list of the top ten classic detective novels.  The setting and the concept hooked me, so I cracked open the public domain text online.  This is something I’ve done many times for many books, and usually never get very far into the text.  This book, however, instantly captured me and didn’t let me go until I had finished it in a day or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G.K. Chesterton<\/a> (1874-1936) was an author and theologian in Britain.  Some say that C.S. Lewis got all his ideas from Chesterton.  A contemporary of other notable authors such as H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, he would often debate them openly in his books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Man Who Was Thursday<\/em> is Chesterton’s most popular work of fiction.  To describe it properly is to not do it proper justice, so I’ll quote from an expert on the subject, this is from Dale Ahlquist (No relation to my last name Wahlquist), who is President of The American Chesterton Society<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At first glance this is a detective story filled with poetry and politics.  But it is a mystery that grows more mysterious, until it is nothing less than the mystery of creation itself.  This is Chesterton\u2019s most famous novel.  Never out of print since it was first published in 1908, critics immediately hailed it as \u201camazingly clever,\u201d \u201ca remarkable acrobatic performance,\u201d and \u201ca scurrying, door-slamming farce that ends like a chapter in the Apocalypse.\u201d  One reviewer described how he had read it in one sitting and put it down, \u201ccompletely dazed.\u201d  Thirty years later, Orson Welles called it \u201cshamelessly beautiful prose\u201d and made a radio dramatization of it with his Mercury Radio Theater of the Air.  This story of anarchists and policemen first reveals that civilization is a fragile thing.  Our world is under attack not by mere terrorists and their bombs, but by ideas and philosophies that are far more destructive.  There are revelations beyond that, as we discover the true identity not of the Man who was Thursday, but the Man who is Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Read the book free online at Project Gutenberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I discovered the book The Man Who Was Thursday on a list of the top ten classic detective novels.  The setting and the concept hooked me, so I cracked open the public domain text online.  This is something I’ve done many times for many books, and usually never get very far into the text.  This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manwhowasthursday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}