Manalive (Novel)

A high wind springs up one day in London, having in it something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind of the proverb—for it was the good wind that blows nobody harm. Arriving on the back of this wind at Beacon House, Innocent Smith quickly introduces to its inhabitants an air of excitement, of mirth, and of wonder. Buoyed and buffeted alike by this air, those in Smith’s fellowship are forced to examine life in a new light, encountering the enigma of Smith and his fresh, perhaps even holy, foolishness, and entreating him for explanation. When enigma does give way to explanation, it does so with an explosive force that both shatters deception and illusion and sheds brilliant light on the power of innocence. 

“The glory of God is man alive.” Easy enough as they are to exclaim, these words of Saint Irenaeus are yet difficult to plumb to their depths. Innocent Smith, however, is game to take up the challenge. In telling the story of Manalive, Chesterton offers a practically irresistible invitation to join in the awesome, almost wild, merriment of that sport.

Compiled by Evelyn Waugh and first published in 1958, just months after Knox’s death at the age of sixty-nine, the essays in Literary Distractions are of unremitting quality, each one as marvelously amusing as it is exquisitely written.

Paperback, 214 pages.