I’d never heard of G.K. Chesterton before reading David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. For some reason, Friedman ends his anarchocapitalist manifesto with a defense of G.K. Chesterton against accusations of antisemitism. I learned that Chesterton regularly debated George Bernard Shaw in public on the question of socialism, which endeared him to me without my knowing anything else. I later learned that Chesterton had written a mystery novel about a man who goes undercover to investigate a cell of bomb-throwing anarchists. That sounded like something I had to have a look at, but I’ve read so little fiction in the past 4 years that I never got around to it.

Then last week, LearnOutLoud.com announced that ChristianAudio.com was giving away a free audiobook of G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday for the month of April. You still have a week left to grab it.

The text of the novel is available at Project Gutenberg and also at Bartleby.com.

I’ve only listened to the first chapter (which I then downloaded and read aloud to my wife), but I’m already tempted to give the book high praise. Here’s an excerpt from the opening:

Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour.

"An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried. "You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway."

"So it is," said Mr. Syme.

"Nonsense!" said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!"

"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!"

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Clinton’s play has gotten some impressive reactions. Here’s one:

Am I Black Enough, Yet? Written by Clinton Johnston Directed by George Grant Produced by Charter Theater with the Hamner Theatre Reviewed by Debbie Minter Jackson This creative script tackles sensitive, poignant, hilarious even bizarre issues involving race and race relations. A cast of five lightening quick actors pop into a variety of roles, improv style, and rip roar through scenes that will induce chuckles, bursts of laughter, stunned silence, or even painful acknowledgment of the fractured life scenes depicted on stage. Written in George C. Wolfe’s Colored Museum type of humor and style, a kind of Wolfe-lite, Am I Black Enough, Yet? has just enough bite to make a point without puncturing, posturing, or preaching.

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