"The main characters in a novel must necessarily have some kinship to the author, they come out of his body as a child comes from the womb, then the umbilical cord is cut, and they grow into independence. The more the author knows of his own character the more he can distance himself from his invented characters and the more room they have to grow in." (Graham Greene in Ways of Escape, 1980)
| Graham Greene was my favorite living British writer, until he died. Writers have a way of doing that, even the older ones, dying that is, and its really disappointing for two reasons: (1) It means there will no more new novels or short stories or screen adaptations by that author, and, (2) It reminds you of your own mortality. I don't know which of the two makes one feel worse. Depends on the day you're having I suppose. Mr Greene sometimes, like Charles Dickens or Joseph Conrad, seemed to create a whole world in his books, or a fine facsimile. Critics began in the fifties or so to call his creation, "Greeneland". It is peopled in the main by haunted men and women--decent and moral people suffering with some inner turmoil that cannot resolve itself. It could be a guy suffering over a love affair with a married woman ("The End of the Affair", "The Comedians"), a priest who can't live up to his vows but can die like a saint ("The Power and the Glory") or a Brit ex-pat in Cuba bilking British Intelligence to pay his daughter's Private school bills by supplying phony info from bogus agents ("Our Man in Havana") or a journalist sharing a mistress with a naive American who thinks he knows more about Vietnam then he really does ("The Quiet American".) Hmmm.. Lots of affairs and menage a trios going on in this Mr. Greene's work. You don't think the writer himself would have ever...? Well, think what you want, but if you're a Greene fan like me sooner or later you turn to Professor Norman Sherry's authorized autobiographies of the man and you find where fact and fiction intertwine. I should note to those who haven't read Greene that his not his sometimes "complicated" personal life that makes his work so readable, it's that he understands people so well. Like Conrad--a writer he admired greatly along with Henry James--his talent allows you to believe he is writing about real people who live and breathe, not just a journal of recounting of sordid adventuring by the author, which is close to what I got from Henry Miller. Julie, a friend of mine with literary good taste to burn, and, most importantly, a fellow Greene enthusiast, was the one who recommended "The Heart of the Matter" (1947), to me. It's perhaps Mr Greene's most famous novel and the one he should have won a Nobel Prize with. (He never did, much to the consternation of many.) Before that, I had read a couple of his lighter books (what Greene called "entertainments" to distinguish them from his more serious books.) After "Heart of the Matter" there was no going back for me on another fiction writer for quite a while. Reading some of his novels led me to the two memoirs he published "Ways of Escape" and "A Sort of Life". And then it was on to the short stories and then much of the three volume Sherry biography, an award-winning look at a man who got a great deal out of life and, in his travels and political wrangles and amorous pursuits, made even the great wandering scribe Ernest Hemingway look provincial in contrast. (e.g., Back in 1948 or so, Greene went on a combat mission for a couple weeks in the jungles of Malaysia with a group of Nepalese Gurkha soldiers in the British Army. A few years later, he went "up river" in equatorial Africa to document conditions in a leper colony for a novel. He also covered the French war in Vietnam. I imagine we're he alive and healthy today you'd find him at a bar or in the field near Baghdad or Kabul.) I'd read most of his major novels, as did a lot of other people, and I always look forward to finding some more of his work. Recently I caught up to one of the last published novels, "The Tenth Man" (1985). It's the story of a wealthy French lawyer, Chavel, locked up with a pack of his fellow countryman in a German concentration camp in World War II. He is about to be executed when he makes an offer to exchange all his property and wealth to anyone who will take his place. A fellow prisoner takes him up on it--a younger, poorer but streetwise Parisian--to give his sister and mother a better life after the war off the lawyer's wealth. Chavel is spared but later leaves the liberated camp with only a couple hundred francs to his name and nowhere to go. Except back to his "home" in the suburbs of Paris, which is now by title the home of the deceased man's family. What happens is nothing like you'd expect, but totally plausible, which may be the secret to a fantastic thriller. |
It would be daft to try and cover a lot of Graham Greene's life in a blog entry. I have put in a few links for those who might want to get more info on "The Tenth Man" and other aspects of his life. As far as his writings and his life go, no matter what you pick up by or about the provocative, practically fearless and enigmatic Mr. Greene, I doubt very much his life and work will fail to engage anyone.
Greeneland: The World of Graham Greene
Norman Sherry Interview with Don Swaim (BBC)
Featured Author: Graham Greene (New York Times)
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