Manalive!

G.K. Chesterton doesn't write on a wide variety of themes, but the issues he hits on are the biggest. He writes about things on such a wide scope using such imprecise generalizations that it can be fairly bewildering to attempt and pin him down. Perhaps this is one of the reasons he writes such good fiction.

Manalive is typical Chesterton, and that means it's good. It's about society, as individuals, trying to deal with someone who wants to grasp life by the horns. It's about a man trying to be alive.

Innocent Smith is, therefore, the most remarkable person in the book. I am not sure, however, that he is the main character. In some ways, he is not even the most important character. He is a catalyst for the main characters: the residents of the boarding house into which he catapults during a frantic windstorm. As such, we cannot identify with him, who is too far from normal, but we can be changed and inspired by him to become a little less normal. We can, like the boarding house residents, be inspired to be a little more alive.

Smith's trick is to do all the parts of his life in such a way that defies convention but gains for him their essential joys. He robs his own house to appreciate property, he repeatedly remarries his own wife to appreciate marriage, and he travels around the world to discover his own home all over again as the place to which he belongs. All of his outrageous adventures, however, are told through others' words. These normal people's lives are changed in one of two ways: either they reject him as dangerously unusual or embrace him as dangerously unusual. As readers, we are offered the same option.

I've decided what I want to do with Innocent Smith - you should read the book and find out what you would like to do with him, too.