Strange and intriguing book. It has much in common with "The Man Who Was Thursday" (one of my favorites). It has the same feeling of being in a feverish dream.
I thought of reading this because on the same week i saw a quote from it in a Neil Gaiman book, and also read somewhere it being used as a critique of G W Bush's government.
I don't think it applies readily to modern American politics. I'm not really sure what it applies to, but it's fascinating. Written at the start of the 20th century, the book imagines London at the start of the 21st century, as a world where people don't believe in revolution, only evolution, and most political problems have been solved by slow, gradual, rational improvements - evolution. Into this unsuspecting world, burst a comedian and a madman, bent on restoring the old ways of chivalry, heraldry and holy war. Emotion versus reason, revolution versus evolution.
The comedian and the madman are the yin and yang of humanity, or perhaps they stand for God and man.
Good, crazy read. I read the whole thing in one day - couldn't put it down.
Quotes:
It is too often forgotten that just as a bad man is nevertheless a man, so a bad poet is nevertheless a poet.
I have never been to S. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood-red cup and the beating of the wings of the Eagle.
In the beginning of the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men. They were so common that a stupid man was quite exceptional, and when they found him, they followed him in crowds down the street and treasured him up and gave him some high post in the State.
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