What a delightful little book to remind us that we must turn the world upside down from time to time in order to really live.

First-rate British cheek mixed with contrarian common sense and a healthy dose of theology.

In Thursday and this I feel I've found a theme or two. Both books are vividly, almost unreadably surreal at times. They both tend to lose the reader in fast paced bizarre sequences in first half or so, but the picture becomes much clearer in hindsight. Chesterton doesn't focus so much on the plausibility or even sequence of events, but hinges his work on the enjoyability of the prose, the characters, and the fleshing out of the underlying philosophical probing. The books feels like it was written in a rush to get the concepts out on paper before he forgot them, but then the concepts really are quite impressive to consider. Chesterton is master of the mind-bender.

At first, I didn't think I would enjoy this book, but it's like Chesterton held the gun up to me and reminded me to be alive while I'm still living. It was an inspiring book and a unique, interesting look at life.
My favorite quote from the book: "Oh, it isn't like anything but itself."

Grass and garden trees seemed glittering with something at once good and unnatural like a fire from fairyland. It seemed like a strange sunrise at the wrong end of the day.

Extremely quotable, excessively enjoyable, occasionally mystifying. Not quite on a level with the other Chesterton novellas I've read but vastly better than most modern literature. Full of northernness and the aching beauty of goodness midst evil. Well worth the read.

Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.

"Imprudent marriages! And pray where in earth or heaven are there any prudent marriages? You never know a husband till you marry him. Unhappy! Of course you'll be unhappy! Who the devil are you that you shouldn't be unhappy, like the mother that bore you?"

"You spoke with authority, and not as the scribes. Nobody could comfort me if you said there was no comfort. If you really thought there was nothing anywhere, it was because you had been there to see. Don't you see that I had to prove you didn't really mean it? Or else drown myself in the canal."

"I don't want people to anticipate me as a well-known practical joke. I want both my gifts to come virgin and violent, the death and the life after death. I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him. Only to bring him to life."

"Every revolution — like every repentance —is a return... My revolution, like yours, like the earth's, will end up in the holy, happy place, the celestial, incredible place — the place where we were before."

"I do believe in breaking out; I am a revolutionist. But don't you see that all these real leaps and destructions and escapes are only attempts to get back to Eden — to something we have had, to something at least we have heard of? Don't you see one only breaks the fence or shoots the moon in order to get home?"

We are all in exile, and no earthly home can cure the holy homesickness that forbids us rest.

"God bade me love one spot and serve it... so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything."

The man's spiritual power has been precisely this: that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.

I liked the first half a lot. The second half had good flashes, but most of the accounts were WAY longer than they needed to be, which made me dread returning to the book.

This book manages to be always proclaiming “everyone just have fun” yet simultaneously shouting “get off my lawn!” CK Chesterton’s 1912 novel, Manalive, is a plea for living life with joy, to wake ourselves up from the drudgery and social formalities and enjoy the one life we have to live while also spreading that joy to others. Central to the story is a mysterious stranger who arrives with the wind, an archtypal holy fool that frequently feels like a prototype for Mary Poppins, character that feels like whimsicality personified as he breaks all conventions in pursuit of joy and bringing others along with him. A comedic work marred by a bit of a clunky style that feels a bit overwritten—but then suddenly shines with some rather spectacular quotes—and an unfortunate dose of misogyny and racism as casual norms throughout the text, Chesterton’s tale is often considered his closest text to a treaties on how to live life by embracing joy despite a perception of mental instability.

‘I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.’

This was our recent read for my book club and I was excited to finally see what Chesterton was all about, though I can’t say that I’m all too eager to try another anytime soon. It is rather inspiring and lighthearted—I can’t help but enjoy the idea that giving in to whimsy and joy to live a more fulfilling life even at the expense of being a social outcast. I love the idea that just breaking from convention can unlock a vaster, richer life, and idea that has been used frequently in shows and films (I kept thinking of the Seinfeld episode where George becomes successful by doing the exact opposite of what he would normally do). It does hit with very blunt religious overtones—which aren’t always my favorite thing but I’m also reading Chesterton so it is to be expected—and Chesterton sees this more free life of joy as one better fit to serve God.

‘If Innocent is happy, it is because he IS innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments.’

The story begins Innocent Smith blowing into town dressed loudly, performing flips and general tomfoolery that is a sharp juxtaposition to the drab life of those staying in the boarding house Beacon House. There is almost a dark millennial humor of the tenants asking each other things such as ‘do you have any friends’ in a comical caricature of drab, depressing life to which Smith serves as a foil. And while Smith’s path of whimsy is one against social norms, many of which are oppressive, it is also positioned as antithetical to “worldly” logic and science, which Chesterton shows as mortal weights holding people down from the glory of God’s kingdom.

In his autobiography, Chesteron writes that ‘the object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy’ and Manalive is his expression of that. Smith’s antics are intended to wake people up to this, though firing a gun at people to make them embrace life still seems a bit uncool. Though maybe I’m just a curmudgeon for not having properly enjoyed having a gun pulled on me before, and that whole scene reminded me so much of a similar moment and dialog in [b:Fight Club|36236124|Fight Club|Chuck Palahniuk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558216416l/36236124._SY75_.jpg|68729] that I’m curious if it was an inspiration for it. It is all very silly and I enjoyed the second half where the trial for all of Smith’s crimes turns out to be a misunderstanding where Smith has robbed his own home and had an affair with his own wife as part of their romantic role-playing.

Sure its all fun and games that the guy can be viewed as breaking social rules and celebrated for it but at the same time women were being tossed into asylums on claims of "hysteria" simply for having an opinion without so much as a trial like Smith receives. Chesterton's idea of "insanity as freedom and joy" by disregarding social conventions seems a bit exclusive to white men at the time. The causal racism is there to remind you of that, though even white folks like the Irish or people with albinism get rather disparaging depictions and comments as well.

‘there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.’

Overall, not a bad read and one that does make you feel good at the end, though perhaps not one I necessarily enjoyed. I think I enjoyed discussing it with the book club more than actually reading it and we had quite the array of opinions on this one from people who really loved it (so perhaps you will to) to one reader who really hated it. I will say the rather verbose prose (he loves adjectives and stringing them together) makes this one a bit of a slog despite the short length but I also suspect there is a lot to digest on a second or third reading as this feels intended for multiple reads. It won’t be from me though.

3.5/5

‘Grass and garden trees seemed glittering with something at once good and unnatural like a fire from fairyland. It seemed like a strange sunrise at the wrong end of the day.’