Manalive - G. K. Chesterton

Manalive (Chesterton, 1912)

Chesterton delivers yet another book with nuggets of wit and wisdom spread throughout a funny, quick story.  The book follows the adventures of a man named Innocent Smith, whose unorthodox actions enliven the people he meets as he clings to creed while rejecting custom.

The story has all the speed and exaggeration of allegory, with the commonplace details left out in favor of significant events and conversations. Smith descends on a boarding house and stirs up a bunch of modern, disaffected young people with his whimsical acts - climbing trees, having tea on the roof, proposing marriage after a day, declaring independence from Britain for the house. The tenants realize they've been ignoring how much they need others, specifically each other, to enjoy life, and they are all about to get married when an American detective (possibly one of Chesterton's funniest characters) shows up with charges against Smith of attempted murder, robbery, family desertion, and bigamy.  However, they convince the detective to try Smith at the boarding house (which, after all, is its own sovereign state now), and together they try the facts of Smith's past misdeeds.

Chesterton excels in the small things, for instance, describing his characters:

"...[Dr. Warner] undoubtedly had brains; and perhaps it was not his fault if they were the kind of brains that most men desire to analyze with a poker."

"Inglewood had a politeness instinctive and yet awkward. His life was full of arrested half gestures of assistance."

"[Diana] was no other than the strenuous neice whose strength alone upheld that mansion of decay.... It would be wrong to say that she commanded; for her own efficiency was so impatient that she obeyed herself before any one else obeyed her."

"[Mary] had the knack of saying everything with her face: her silence was a sort of steady applause."

For all the people he meets, Smith wakes them up to the enjoyment to be had in life. Indeed, in all his adventures, he seems to have a need to prove he is alive. Though unlike existential or nihilistic antiheros with the same goal (I'm looking at you, Fight Club), Smith proves his existence through celebrating the normal, even if it is in a very bizarre way.  As he puts it, a revolution is merely a circle, and the goal of all revolution is to get home.  And rather than trying desperately to be a unique individual, Smith celebrates his normality in his telegram reply to Inglewood, who had been inquiring after his health: "Man found alive with two legs."

Manalive mixes mirth and philosophy the way only Chesterton can.  It's a great read, I had some good laughs, and I might have learned a few things along the way. My only regret (as with most of Chesterton's fiction) is that it isn't a more substantial work. But Chesterton probably knew that words on paper aren't nearly as substantial as actually having tea on the roof.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 bizarre celebrations of the normal