A Nightmare
by G.K. Chesterton (1908)
''No man should leave in the universe
anything of which he is afraid."
- Gabriel Syme
I was waiting for a train,
(NJ Transit from Penn Station to Linden, NJ)
when I first opened up this under-appreciated,
mostly-forgotten, British thriller.
It's a story that moves very fast, often in directions you don't expect.
Bouncing quickly between various genres,
the piece, at times, could be considered
a mystery novel, a detective story, a satire,
a Christian metaphor, a horror story & great adventure tale.
"The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it."
- Gabriel Syme
I don't want to spoil the story for you,
the secrets & plot-twists are important to the experience,
but for the sake of explanation, the novel starts off as
our protagonist, Gabriel Syme, is engaged in a heated debate
with the town's local anarchist poet, Lucian Gregory,
over what the "purpose of poetry" is.
For the sake of proving to Syme that he is indeed
an anarchist, Lucian takes Gabriel to the secret headquarters
of the local anarchists.
This is where the story shifts gears,
so I won't go any further for now.
Chesterton paints a very surreal picture of
turn-of-the-century London, with equal portions
of quaintness & grime, secret tunnels & vast golden fields,
all the while, carrying with it a dark sense of humor,
married with impending sense of dread which
seems to lurk just around every new corner.
Chesterton's novel is not an easy read.
This is not the kind of book to read on a lazy day at
the beach. It has a very 'British/European'-style voice that
does take a few minutes to get adjusted to, but once you've
become accustomed to the dialogue of the author,
the second half starts to fly-by.
Personally, I love this book & I hope you will, too.
“The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite. The poet always loves the finite. For him, the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon.”
- Narrator
No comments:
Post a Comment