Another Young Adult Novelist Inspired by Chesterton

James Kennedy interviewed by Chicagoist:

C: It’s very, Roald Dahlian? Dahl-esque?

JK: Oh, he is exactly what I want to be like.

C: It’s very James and the Giant Peach-ish. I take it his writing was--

JK: Love Dahl. Love everything about him.

C: One of the biggest inspirations in this book?

JK: He’s one of the inspirations but he’s not the biggest. Probably the biggest is—have you read anything by GK Chesterton?

C: No.

JK: He wrote a book in around 1905 called The Man Who Was Thursday. It’s about a group of anarchists in turn-of-the-century London, each of them named after a day of the week. They’re led by Sunday, who’s this larger-than-life, beyond-good-and-evil character. The hero, a policeman, infiltrates the group as Thursday, to get at Sunday. The Belgian Prankster and Sunday have a lot in common. Sunday seems to float above the narrative. His character reminded me of like, when you see Bill Murray in a movie, he sometimes seems like he’s detached from the movie he’s in, that he’s ironically distant from the story that his character is in. Anyway, the idea of Sunday fed into my idea of the Belgian Prankster, who’s ironically removed from the entire world. Of somebody who he wants to make the worst joke ever.