February 2013: Graham Greene

I know it's not Feb yet but I figured what the heck, we have the name, I'll toss the thread up. :)

Has anyone read any Greene before?

I've read The Power and the Glory a bunch of years ago and thought it was pretty good, and then I read his Complete Short Stories about two years ago. They tend to be a bit of downers, not exactly full of "happily ever afters," but they have that special something, I think. I've got a few more of his on my shelves, not sure what I'll read for him yet!

Monsignore Quixote just arrived, so I'm ready. I'm not sure if I've ever actually read the book, but I used to borrow a video from the library years ago. We also have several others around the house if I get ambitious.

Yes I've read Brighton Rock which I loved, and The Quiet American which I wasn't so keen on. I definitely have The Human Factor on my tbr stack and it's possible I have another lurking there - it is becoming more clear as I write these posts that I need to tackle mount tbr this year as I no longer know which books I have in the house!

I have only read one book by Greene for an English literature class (10 years ago) that was focusing on post colonialism. One of the books was The Comedians by Graham Greene. I found it hilarious in a tragic kind of way. It's a lesser work so If that wasn't even his best I'm looking forward to reading more by him!

In February I will probably read The Quiet American as I own th book so it fits into that goal of reading my own books and also it's about Vietnam which fits in a 13/13/13 category.

My options from my shelves are The Quiet American, The Man Within, and Brighton Rock. I have no idea which one I'll choose!

I've read The Heart of the Matter twice, and would highly recommend it. I've also read The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock, The End of the Affair, and The Third Man. That still leaves nine more Graham Greene novels on the shelf I haven't read. I'm not sure yet what I'll read for this challenge.

I know it's a bit early in February still but has anyone started reading any Graham Greene this month? I had to ILL Our Man in Havana and a book of his short stories, but neither has come in it so obviously then I haven't started any Greene yet.

Not yet. Gawd I'm so overloaded! lol. I'm trying to get started on Les Mis, I'm in the midst of Black Elk Speaks, I have my Huxley book out from the library for next month that I need to read this month before it has to go back lol, I have 3 "regular" comics/GNs out plus the 2nd insanely huge Hellboy library edition vol 2, Hannibal, and I stupidly checked out an Oxford Gothic collection which is huge and I will never have time to read with all these others now! lol oy. hahaha. But I will try to make it to Greene before the month is out, or if not I'll get to him next month instead! lol.

I hope to fit one in this month.....vacation coming soon.....

Also have packed myself out this month with books, but have a a week off coming up so should get to it in a few weeks.

I just finished Monsignor Quixote. I really enjoyed it.

>12 MarthaJeanne: What was it about? What'd you enjoy about it? I'm completely unfamiliar with that title!

A poor parish priest from the Mancha district by the name of Quixote gets the monsignor title against the advice of his bishop, and takes off with his friend, the Communist former mayor of the town in the priest's worn out car, Rosiante. The two of them have a variety of adventures.

I hadn't read it before, but had seen a video made of it which I loved. So it was both new and old to me.

Greene plays with the way both Quixote and 'Sancho' try to live up to the ideals they believe in in spite of their doubts, and in contrast to the church/party.

I see that the movie was made for television with Greene's participation. That explains why the final scene was at least as good there as in the book. He was also very good at cinema. We watch The Third Man regularly.

I think Monsignor Quixote is one of the most Christian characters I Know in fiction.

Interesting, I'll have to look out for that one :))

I just read Leihen Sie uns Ihren Mann? : Komödien der Erotik by Graham Greene, my first Greene, and I enjoyed the 12 stories.

Ah I have (& have read) his collected stories, so I imagine those are included. I enjoyed them, overall, though they can be a bit of "downers." I tend to find that's more often the case with short stories, though.

> 16, 17 Ah, yes, short stories do often tend to the melancholic side. These claim to be humorous though. I just picked up this book over the weekend, but I haven't started it yet.

I'm actually just starting in on a collection of Gothic short stories, so I'm curious if they'll fall into that as well, or if the horrorish aspect will serve that purpose. It's due back to the library in a couple weeks (and huge), hence starting it now before I get to Greene. But he'll be next! lol

So I just started Our Man in Havana finally. The brief introduction in my edition includes background information on Greene and his works. It seems like most of us are reading his novels and/or short stories, but he also wrote four travel books, three autobiographies, two biographies, four children's books, several plays, and numerous critical essays and film reviews. Talk about prolific! I'd be interested to know what his other literary efforts are like.

Anyway, I didn't get very far into Our Man in Havana at all yet, but I liked this one quote so I thought I'd share: "You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced." Ignorance is bliss.

I finished Orientexpress. Rich in characters and details, also rich in prejudices

rich in prejudices

That's one thing I've noticed already with Our Man in Havana -- not at all politically correct, to put it mildly.

Agh I'm annoyed I've not yet managed to get to choosing one of his novels on my shelves yet—I was bad at the library and picked up more than I should have! lol. I will get there soon!!

I've have a book ready to read all month just haven't got to it as my reading time has been sapped. When I read it I'll come back and comment

Thought this might interest some of readers here - New PBS special out that looks at Graham Greene's life.

http://www.wgbhinternational.org/index.php?sid=3mt9nkgb4uy8aq2j7khzwqxj30hlv0xn&...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2334796/

http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=19453346

Ooh that looks interesting!

And I decided to go with The Quiet American, so I'll finally be starting that today! :)

I finished Our Man in Havana earlier this week. I wrote a lengthy review of it here on LibraryThing but long story short, I quite enjoyed the first half of the book and then felt it petered mid-way through. Overall though I enjoyed and would most likely recommend it. It definitely had some amusing and also thought-provoking quotes; a few of my favorites are below.

“He was aware whenever he entered the shop of a vacuum that had nothing to do with his cleaners.”

“Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it. But somehow, through no virtue of his own, he had never taken that course. Lack of character perhaps. Schools were said to construct character by chipping off the edges. His edges had been chipped, but the result had not, he thought, been character – only shapelessness, like an exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art. … That evening hour was real, but not Hawthorne, mysterious and absurd, not the cruelties of police-stations and governments, the scientists who tested the new H-bomb on Christmas Island, Khrushchev who wrote notes: these seemed less real to him than the inefficient tortures of a school-dormitory. The small boy with the damp towel whom he had just remembered – where was he now? The cruel come and go like cities and thrones and powers, leaving their ruins behind them. They had no permanence. But the clown whom he had seen last with Milly at the circus – that clown was permanent, for his act never changed. That was the way to live; the clown was unaffected by the vagaries of public men and the enormous discoveries of the great.”

" 'As long as nothing happens, anything is possible, you agree? It is a pity that a lottery is ever drawn. I lose a hundred and forty thousand dollars a week, and I am a poor man.' "

Yesterday I started in on his Collected Stories (apparently no touchstone available), which includes stories from three previous collections - May We Borrow Your Husband?, A Sense of Reality, and Twenty-One Stories. I've only read the first two stories so far, but I'm quite enjoying them. These are from May We Borrow Your Husband? and are meant to be "comedies of the sexual life," but I think they are tinged with a bit of tragedy also. Very well-written and absorbing. So far I'd recommend.

By the way, has anyone read Greene's Ministry of Fear? The movie version quite unexpectedly came into my radar recently and I was intrigued; I'm wondering if it's any good ...

>27 sweetiegherkin: I haven't, no.

I finished Quiet American, it was very good. It definitely took some turns I was not expecting. I really disliked one of the characters, but then that was pretty much the point, so... lol. The end also surprised me a bit, being quite familiar with his short stories, I wasn't expecting things to go quite how they did. I'd easily recommend it.

I felt the same way about Our Man in Havana - definitely took unexpected turns and it ended up a place I wouldn't have guessed necessarily. It seems Graham Greene took a very different writing approach for his short stories versus his novels. The edition of his Collected Stories I have begins with an introduction where he describes this. He notes that in a novel "at any moment the unexpected might happen – a minor character would suddenly take control and dictate his words and actions. … With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed – he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in" in a short story.

P.S. I know we've got authors picked for this month and next, but is it perhaps time to start thinking about voting for the months after that?

I suppose I should think about rereading The Power and the Glory, since I don't remember the details at all. I think it had the same sort of atmosphere as the short stories, though. But I could be remembering that wrong lol.

Hmm, interesting. I've never read The Power and the Glory so I don't know. I am of course judging his short story writing style vs novel writing style entirely on a limited scope of his work, so I am admittedly not the expert there! It was just interesting to hear that you had a similar experience with one of his novels as I did.

P.S. Thanks for starting the next round of voting :)

Yeah I read it over a decade ago I think, somewhere around then anyway, so I remember almost nothing of it, aside of thinking it was well-written, heh.

I have many memories like that!
Me: "That's a good book"
Other person: "Oh, cool. What's it about?"
Me: "Uhhh......"

:)

Ways of escape
Finished reading: 7 April 2013



Ways of escape is a sequel to Graham Greene's earlier autobiography A sort of life. In fact, in the preface to Ways of escape, Greene apologizes to readers for overlap between the two works, a fact I would welcome rather than regret, since I read A sort of life more than 20 years ago.

I do not recall the style and tone of A sort of life, but what struck me reading Ways of escape is how incredibly impersonal an autobiography it is.

There is "very little of life" in this volume, and upon finishing the book, the readers may still wonder as much as before reading it, who Graham Greene is. There are none of the usual musings, descriptions of dwellings, friends and literary influences, which may transport the reader to the (imaginary) world of the past in which to observe the author and his or her development through history.

Instead, Ways of escape merely described Greene's travels and how they inspired the conception of his novels. Ways of escape was written as an amalgam of a series of introductions to the Collected Edition of Greene's books and "essays written occasionally on his life and troubled places in the world". In his own words, Greene compares his travels to his writing as "ways of escape," apparently, an escape from life. As this escape from life in the form of extensive travel and writing in itself also constitutes a form of living, one feels the author's regret that what would perhaps have been the most ideal title for this second volume, i.e. A sort of life, is no longer available.

As a result, the reader of Ways of escape will feel a sense of detachment. Ways of escape is not really what it purports to be, and readers who are looking for a biography or work of travel had better look elsewhere. Ways of escape would mostly interest readers wanting to read more about the background of Graham Greene's novels and the political conflicts which form the backdrop to many locations forming the setting of his fiction. There is too much hobnobbing with illustrious and often notorious heads of state.



Other books I have read by Graham Greene:
Dr. Fischer of Geneva or the bomb party
The Ministry of Fear. An entertainment
May we borrow your husband? and Other comedies of the sexual life
The quiet American
The end of the affair
A sort of life
A sense of reality
The tenth man
The honorary consul

I have read most of his books and have about 28 books by Greene, (http://www.librarything.com/catalog/&tag=Graham%20Greene) and the three volume Bio by Sherry Norman, one by Barbara Greene on their African trek ... and have loved them all.

No, he was not too "PC" - but then in his (our) day there was little sensitivity on this aspect and his own life was very mixed and often tough.

He is a marvellously deep and rather cynical writer, drawing on his own direct experience in British Intelligence to create real atmospheres and believable intrigues. A friend knew him well and in fact his portrait of Greene is in the national Gallery in London. (http://www.librarything.com/author/palliseranthony)

But ... I have re-read the books so often I have just 'gifted' all of them to my sons!

Just reading Our Man In Havana now...

First Greene I've read since A levels at school some 20+ years ago (yikes!)...really enjoying it so far...

> 35 Thanks for the explanation of Ways to Escape. It sounds like an interesting book, although not the one a reader thinks they are getting into.

> 36 No, he was not too "PC" - but then in his (our) day there was little sensitivity on this aspect and his own life was very mixed and often tough.

He is a marvellously deep and rather cynical writer

Yes, one thing I noticed when reading his short stories (more to come on that later) was that he did not shy away from risqué topics and while he could certainly be funny, it was often a cynical kind of humor, especially in his later stories. You could tell that he was a well-travel man who had encountered many different people and experiences.

> 37 How do/did you like Our Man In Havana?

So yesterday I finally, finally finished reading all of Graham Greene: Collected Stories. As I believe I may have mentioned earlier, this book contains 40 stories, pulled from the collections May We Borrow Your Husband?, A Sense of Reality, and Twenty-One Stories (formerly Nineteen Stories with three new ones published here). This represents several decades of Greene's work, beginning in 1929 and continuing on "to the eve of the 1970's," although for some reason I'm not sure I understand, they are arranged in reverse chronological order here so that the last story of the book was written in 1929.

I quite enjoyed the stories from the May We Borrow Your Husband? collection, which are meant to be "comedies of the sexual life," but I think they are tinged with a bit of tragedy also. For instance, the titular story is about a young married couple who come for their honeymoon at a hotel where a pair of homosexual interior decorators are also staying. These two men view the young man as fresh meat and are hell-bent on seducing him, which isn't all that difficult given that he's clearly realizing now that he is also homosexual. Meanwhile the young wife is completely oblivious to all this going on under her nose. As the narrator points out, it's a farce because of this. He notes that the tragedy would be if she knew what was happening and was stuck in this situation. But the reader can't help but feel bad for this innocent young woman who thinks that she isn't pretty enough for her husband to love and is completely unawares that these wonderful new friends they have met are talking about her behind her back and are intent on destroying her marital happiness even before her honeymoon has ended. There is something tragic in that, n'est-ce pas? Another story, "Mortmain," tells the tale of a newly married man whose ex-girlfriend of 10 years will not stop sending/leaving letters to him, which are the surface seem innocent enough but are designed to drive him mad.

This section also contains "Awful When You Think of It," a funny little story about a man "conversing" with a baby on a train, which made me laugh, and "Cheap in August," a wonderful story full of pathos and rich characters. This part of the book closed with "Two Gentle People," another excellent work, which tells the tale of two people who meet by chance at the park and realize too late the happiness they could have had in marriage if they had met someone else more like-minded rather than the spouses they settled with many years ago.

Many of these stories are told in the first person by a narrator who we know little about and is sometimes unnamed even. (There seems to perhaps be a bit of the autobiographical in these stories -- many of the main characters are male writers of a certain age who are divorced and travelling alone. It was interesting to see that literature plays a role in almost every story for the later years of his writing career with the main characters and/or narrators either being writers or meeting writers.) But the other characters are rich and interesting enough, even in these short glimpses we get of them. Overall, these are descriptive and evocative stories.

A Sense of Reality had the fewest number of stories, which turned out to be a good thing. I did not care for these stories as much and was a bit disappointed by this section. Despite Greene's claim that "Under the Garden" being one of the finest stories he ever wrote, I struggled to get through this one (I think the longest story in the whole book) with its rather bizarre premise and characters. "A Visit to Morin," another one that Greene boasted about, held little interest for me. The only one I really enjoyed was "Dream of a Strange Land," a rather tragic but incredibly well-written and absorbing tale.

The final collection - Twenty-One Stories - is the oldest and again full of interesting ones. Unlike May We Borrow Your Husband?, these are generally told in the third person and have a huge variation in the main character's age, disposition, etc. and stories being told. We travel from England to Africa back to England again and from retirees to small children. My favorites in this collection were "The Blue Film," in which a married couple away on vacation visit a pornographic film theater at the wife's insistence and the husband's reluctance only to find that the theater is running decades old films including one that the husband participated in; "The Innocent" in which a man returns to his childhood home town and recalls memories of a first love; "The Basement Room" in which a young child is left at home with servants while his parents vacation only to be dragged into the sordid secrets of the butler and his wife; and "Brother," a short picture of an anti-Communist French bartender who finds himself strangely moved by the toils of a group of Communists who disrupt the peace at his café.

All in all, this is a volume I'd recommend for people who love a good literary short story.

Here is a random sampling of quotes from the book:

'I've never know a blessing save a life,' he said. The sentence sounded like a familiar quotation. from "The Blessing."

One does not feel alone abroad. - from "A Visit to Morin"

'What are you thinking?' Patience asked. 'Are you still in the Rue de Douai?'
'I was only thinking that things might have been different,' he said.
It was the biggest protest he had ever allowed himself to make against the condition of life. - from "Two Gentle People"

What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom. - from "Two Gentle People"

The silence after that was a comfortable silence: the two ghosts went away and left them alone. Once their fingers touched over the sugar-castor (they had chosen strawberries). Neither of them had any desire for further questions; they seemed to know each other more completely than they knew anyone else. It was like a happy marriage; the stage of discovery was over - they had passed the test of jealousy; an dno wthey were tranquil in their middle age. Time and death remained the only enemies, and coffee was like the warning of old age. After that it was necessary to hold sadness at bay with a brandy, though not successfully. It was as though they had experience a lifetime, which was measured as with butterflies in hours. - from "Two Gentle People"

Sweetiegherkin - That's a great review of a really interesting sounding collection. Thanks! I'll let you know about Our Man In Havana when I'm done. I'm only listening in short bursts here and there, but so far I'm intrigued by the setup and I like the characters too... So it's fair to say I'm enjoying it more than I did The Power and The Glory when I was a sixth-former in school (I think Americans call that a 'High School Senior'?) - which I didn't really understand and consequently didn't much like.

> 40 Yes, I think sixth form equates to senior year of high school but to be honest I'm always a bit confused about the equivalences in American and British schooling systems. At any rate, I'm glad you liked my review. :)

I will be interested to hear your final thoughts on Our Man in Havana. Like you, I found the setup and characters compelling but then I felt it petered out a bit midway through; I'm curious to know if others feel the same way.

Travels with my aunt
Finished reading: 1 December 2013



At the funeral of his mother, his aunt Augusta, aged 75, appears in the life of the stodgy nerd and retired banker Henry Pulling. From the earliest moments of their involvement, Henry's life changes from quiet and boring to a roller-coaster of adventure, in which no cliche of slap-stick is left unused. Aunt Augusta develops as a kind of diametric personality to James Bond. She is adventurous, eccentric, practical and pragmatic, and very, very unconventional. Up to a high age, she has been having a sexual relationship with an African servant, Wordsworth, who is completely devoted to her. She cannot see any wickedness in Wordsworth's smoking of marijuana. Aunt Augusta herself regularly engages in illicit trade, smuggling currency, gold and art to finance her trips and secure financial independence. She is under constant vigilance by the police, but is clever at eluding them, and leading her extravagant, international lifestyle.

Aunt Augusta's interest in Henry is far from coincidental, as suggested at the beginning of the book. Her influence shows, as Henry is persuaded to marry a 14-year-old girl, tat the end of the novel, as he settles with Aunt Augusta and her life-long criminal lover, Mr Visconti in Paraguay.

Travels with my aunt is an unexpectedly funny novel by Graham Greene.



Other novels I have read by Graham Greene:
Ways of escape
Dr. Fischer of Geneva or the bomb party
The Ministry of Fear. An entertainment
May we borrow your husband? and Other comedies of the sexual life
The quiet American
The end of the affair
A sort of life
A sense of reality
The tenth man
The honorary consul

That sounds like a great book, yet another Greene I need to acquire! And wow you've read a lot of them; funny that with all those, you don't have listed the two unread on my own shelf, or the other two of his works I've read!

I have not read Greene's Collected Short Stories, but according to sweetiegherkin's review here that collection consists of all the stories from May We Borrow Your Husband? (which I read), A Sense of Reality (read), and Twenty-One Stories.

I did list The quiet American above.

Actually, I had never heard of or even seen a copy of The Captain and the Enemy. I have seen The Man Within in an edition together with The Third Man, but often hesitate to buy (confusing it with The Tenth Man.

Actually, I do not like Graham Greene that much, I read his work just out of habit and to see whether he can surprise me. Well, he did with Travels with my aunt!

I know you listed The Quiet American, but I've read Greene's Complete Short Stories and The Power & The Glory as well :P The Captain and the Enemy I picked up for €1.50 from a thrift shop, a very good condition hardback spotted on the shelves, couldn't pass it up! :D

Interesting. I don't think there's any author that I'd read more than 3 works of if I didn't like them. Well alright, some day I will get to A Farewell to Arms and that will be #4 for Hemingway, whom I can't stand, but I have to read those super prominent classics, it's just what I do! Haha.

The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
Audible audio performed by Colin Firth
3.5***

Maurice Bendrix recalls the affair he had with the married Sarah Miles. Bendrix is a writer, and he uses his experience exploring characters’ motivations and emotions to look at the attraction, passion and ultimate love-hate relationship he had with Sarah.

And that push-pull of the love-hate relationship is at the center of this little novel. Greene repeatedly has Bendrix reference it:
“So this is a record of hate far more than of love, …”
“Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love; it even produces the same actions.”
“I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end….It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”
“My desire now was nearer hatred than love,..”
(All these quotes are in the first 50 pages.)

And this pretty much describes my relationship with this novel. On the one hand I love the way Greene writes, and the way he draws these characters, revealing them little by little, so that the reader eventually forms her own opinion about them. They are complex and conflicted, sometimes obtuse, often wary and prone to prevarication.

On the other hand, I really disliked all of them. I didn’t care about Bendrix and his obsession with Sarah (whether to love her or to hate her). I didn’t understand Sarah’s motivations at all. Always dissatisfied and constantly searching for “something more, ” she seemed to just walk through life, leaving a trail of destruction behind her. And yet, I’m supposed to believe that she was deeply religious – or becoming so – and sought atonement and forgiveness.

Colin Firth does a fine job narrating the audiobook. He’s a talented actor and breathes life into Bendrix’s sad tale of obsession and loss. He almost made me like Maurice!

>46 BookConcierge: hm, I didn't realize Colin Firth narrated audiobooks in addition to his screen acting. I'll have to look for some of those. Thanks for sharing :)

Our Man In Havana – Graham Greene
Book on CD performed by Jeremy Northam
4****

Jim Wormold is not very successful as a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana. His chief accomplishment is his lovely daughter, Milly, who attend a private Catholic school and has developed expensive tastes and attracted the romantic attention of Police Captain Segura. He happens to meet Hawthorne, a man who is a British intelligence agent, and who recruits him to spy for the mother country. It comes with a reasonable salary, as well as an expense account, and the promise of more as Wormold signs up additional local sources / agents. Before long Wormold is inventing a string of sources, sending amateur sketches of a nefarious weapon (really vacuum cleaner parts), and finding his life really in danger.

This delightful send-up of espionage / spy thrillers was published in 1958, just a few months before Castro’s successful revolution and takeover in January 1959. Greene gives us a wonderful supporting cast of shady characters, corrupt police officials, and clueless bureaucrats, a nice romantic twist and a not-to-be-believed ending. Great fun, though the British humor is a bit dry. I've never seen the movie but kept picturing Sir Alec Guinness in the lead role.

Jeremy Northam does a fine job performing the audio version. He was able to give the many characters sufficiently unique voices so I could keep the story straight. He was a little less successful differentiating between Milly and Beatrice, but they don’t have many scenes together so that wasn’t a major problem.

>49 BookConcierge: Neat. I had mostly enjoyed this book when I read; Greene certainly is a good writer. Again, you found someone who I knew off only as a screen actor now reading audiobooks. I'll have to look for some read by Northam also.