max's review
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Modern Library Classics)
by G.K. Chesterton
max's review
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Modern Library Classics) by G.K. Chesterton
max's review
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G.K. Chesterton's morality play offers a template for later distopias, especially Orwell's: prim prose, insistent caricature, switchback plot twists, verbal mind-battles, and moral backlighting provided by the author's absolute sense of right and wrong.
Despite a strong opening gambit featuring anarchists debating at a bohemian garden party, Chesterton quickly loses solid descriptive ground of London streets to a vast a completely unbelievable underground populated by what we today would call bomb-throwing liberals.
As this slender volume progresses, Chesterton becomes bored with his responsibilities as a novelist, content to let each character introduced represent a single idea on his chessboard and simply shuffle the pawns through their positions, killing time before he unveils his deus-ex-machina.
Despite a strong opening gambit featuring anarchists debating at a bohemian garden party, Chesterton quickly loses solid descriptive ground of London streets to a vast a completely unbelievable underground populated by what we today would call bomb-throwing liberals.
As this slender volume progresses, Chesterton becomes bored with his responsibilities as a novelist, content to let each character introduced represent a single idea on his chessboard and simply shuffle the pawns through their positions, killing time before he unveils his deus-ex-machina.
