Wednesday, February 04, 2009

What, Exactly, is Wrong with Graham Greene?

Luxuriating in the chance to read something I didn't have to, I picked up Greene's The Quiet American. I've not read Greene for years and all I remember of the experience was a vague feeling of distaste. I assumed I was missing something - hence The QA. The distaste returned almost at once. Readable as the book was in its way, I didn't enjoy a minute of it. Yet it possessed so many solid virtues - mostly well-realised characters, a formidable sense of place combined with some fine, lyrical descriptive passages and a subtle balance of dialogue and action. So why the distaste? Well, the narrator, Thomas Fowler, is intended to be an unpleasant man, but, having read Shirley Hazzard's superb memoir, Greene on Capri, and, long ago, reviewed a very sympathetic biography, it seemed clear that he was, in fact, Greene. Meeting Greene would, I suspect, have been like meeting Fowler - an informative but essentially lowering experience. Many great writers are, of course, very nasty, but, in this case, there seemed to be a connection that prevented the book taking off. I have the same problems with Woody Allen films. But the real complaint I have is the excess of plot - not a horizontal excess, but a vertical one. The plot hangs like a threatening sky over the book. Unlike Conrad - obviously an influence on Greene - who created plots that ticked over beneath the surface of the action, Greene makes plots of which one is always oppressively aware. One notes the pieces being moved about the chess board with irritation and, when it's all over, it's just, like your average thriller, over. And that's all I have to say about Graham Greene.

6 comments:

  1. I find him sorta, translated, if you know what I mean. Everything that should be there is, and at the same time if you turned up the volume, rather than fill, it would distort. I find a lot of that sort of stuff around, and I wonder if there is not an excess in the hand of the editor.

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  2. Blimey, Graham Greene! Brighton Rock was on the national curriculum and I happily(?) read a lot of his books immediately after that. but I'm not sure I'd want to now, I'm in a totally different place (okay, I'm older).

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  3. Rather Catholic, Greene - a sense that we live in a world of mechanical and inhuman laws, and will probably all go to Hell. Good for him! - but it does making reading him feel a bit like you've been shut in a box and buried underground.

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  4. Rather Catholic? You mean like Joyce, or Manley Hopkins and Flann O'Brien?

    With the exception of Travels with My Aunt, I've can't think of any Graham Gloom novel I've enjoyed reading.

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  5. You need the lighter Graham: Try "Our Man in Havana." I haven't read "The Quiet American," but the movie version of it was incredible. Michael Caine just smoked it, and Brendan Fraser was hardly recognizable because he was...ACTING. The guy has talent, but who knew???

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  6. I recall that Greene sent an extremely abusive letter to Sir Ralph Richardson after a play of Greene's in which Richardson was appearing received patchy reviews. I certainly get the impression he wasn't the loveliest of people

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