Book Review: ManAlive! by G.K. Chesterton

In a world of walking zombies, being alive may mean more than simply being ambulatory. It may mean being alive by way of something, to something, for something.

In ManAlive!, Chesterton immerses us in a kind of dream world that has us circling the entire globe (literally!) while remaining in the comfortable confines of an English boarding house drawing room. We are presented with a menagerie of characters, each an aspect or image of the Modern Man, who reveal the absurdity living life without a purpose, & without even trying to discover the purpose. In the end, we remain with a question: Are we alive?

Part of Chesterton’s genius is the reverse play: the only one who is truly alive in this very tall tale appears at first to be a buffoonish, murderous, philandering thief doing business under the name Innocent. Naturally, there’s more to the story than first appears. Sometimes a fellow really does have to hoof it around the whole world just to come back around to his house (Believe me! I know a thing or two about that!). Perhaps there is a lesson here regarding what a truly Christian life would look like. As was famously said, “Holiness always looks mad by earthly standards.”

Blowing in with the westerly wind are a host of classic Chesterton quotes, each a jewel in itself, but even more precious when positioned within their proper place in the story...

“I mean,” he said with increasing vehemence, “that if there is a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp post and a hedge. I mean God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praises of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp post after all.” – Innocent Smith

“Nothing brings down more curses than a real benediction.” – Michael Moon

“As too many British officers treat the Army as a review, so I had treated the Church Militant as if it were the Church Pageant… Then I realized that for 1,800 years the Church Militant had not been a pageant, but a riot – and a suppressed riot… In the face of that I had to become revolutionary if I was to continue to be religious.” – Curate Percy

“Do you, perhaps,” inquired Pym with austere irony, “maintain that your client was a bird of some sort – say, a flamingo?”

“In the matter of his being a flamingo,” said Mood with sudden serverity, “my client reserves his defence.”

People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.

“I will not be so uncivil as to suggest that Dr. Pym has no common sense; I confine myself to recording the chronological accident that he has not shown us any so far.” – Michael Moon

“If it be true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency to murder, is it not equally true -” here he lowered his voice and spoke with crushing quietude and earnestness, “is it not equally true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency to get murdered?” – Michael Moon

“There is something pleasing to a mystic in such a land of mirrors. For a mystic is one who holds that two worlds are better than one. In the highest sense indeed, all thought is reflection... This is the real truth in the saying that second thoughts are best. Animals have no second thoughts; man alone is able to see his own thought double, as a drunkard sees a lamp post. Man alone is able to see his own thought upside down as one sees a house in a puddle. This duplication of mentality, as in a mirror, is (we repeat) the inmost thing of human philosophy. There is a mystical, even a monstrous truth in the statement that two heads are better than one. But they ought both to grow on the same body.” - Curate Percy

Will you kindly tell me what the deuce is the good of a jewel except that it looks like a jewel? You can’t fight with golden swords or eat golden biscuits; you can only look at it.

Things look so bright just before they burst.

Only saints and sages ought to be robbed. They may be stripped and pillaged; but not the poor little worldly people of the things that are their poor little pride.

"There should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet." - Curate Percy

H.E. Rating: 4 aspergillum shakes