Interesting to read about the nihilist story fad of the late 1800s at least. In this context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Was_Thursday https://en.

Interesting to read about the nihilist story fad of the late 1800s at least. In this context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Was_Thursday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Was_Thursday (1908) makes more sense - as a parody of the genre as much of anything else.