“Graham Greene: I’ll
Be Damned”
Hitchens’ review of The
Life of Graham Greene, Vol. II 1955– 1991, by Norman Sherry.
A scathing cut down of Greene (noted author of religious, political and espionage novels, e.g. The Quite American) as blindly anti-American and pro-communist (although somehow staunchly Catholic) in his life yet, ultimately, not very revolutionary in his writing. Hitchens writes: “By what means did this pinkish rouĂ© [Greene] gradually mutate into a reactionary? The first and easiest reply is: By means of the sameness of his plot formula. This tends to consist of a contrived dilemma, on the horns of which his characters arrange to impale themselves with near masochistic enthusiasm.”
Evidently not a fan.
A scathing cut down of Greene (noted author of religious, political and espionage novels, e.g. The Quite American) as blindly anti-American and pro-communist (although somehow staunchly Catholic) in his life yet, ultimately, not very revolutionary in his writing. Hitchens writes: “By what means did this pinkish rouĂ© [Greene] gradually mutate into a reactionary? The first and easiest reply is: By means of the sameness of his plot formula. This tends to consist of a contrived dilemma, on the horns of which his characters arrange to impale themselves with near masochistic enthusiasm.”
Evidently not a fan.
New Learning: Greene was a lifelong friend of Kim Philby,
the Soviet mole in the British intelligence service and “contributed the
introduction to Philby’s Soviet-edited memoir, My Silent War, in which he
wrote, ‘He betrayed his country— yes, perhaps he did, but who among us has not
committed treason to something or someone more important than a country?’"
New word: semblable = literary term for a counterpart or
equal to someone.
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