Graham Greene is an immensely popular as well as powerful and idiosyncratic writer. His leading characters are murderers, spies, fugitives and outsiders and his most typical plot is that of the hunter and the hunted. In this book, originally published in 1983, John Spurling sets about tracking down the author behind the protagonists. Beginning with an analysis of the patterns of Greene’s mind as revealed in the 40 or so works of fiction, drama, criticism, travel and autobiography he has published, the author goes on to explore the way the patterns are modified from the political thrillers of the 1930s through the ‘Catholic’ novels of the 1940s and 1950s to the post-war comedies and ‘Third World’ novels. Greene is the odd man out of a generation of remarkable writers born around the turn of the 20th Century who lived through the destruction of the 19th century world order. John Spurling’s highly original study tells us why.
Part 1: Patterns of Mind 1. Greene and Brown 2. Berkhamsted and Liberia 3. Women and Men 4. Big Terms 5. The Lost Dimension Part 2: Catholic Novels 1. The Border with Hell 2. Farewell to England 3. Scobie’s Burden 4. God’s Machinery Part 3: Comedy and Politics 1. Making for La Mancha 2. The Chromium World 3. Banana Politics Part 4: The Man Within 1. Greeneland 2. Berkhamsted Revisited 3. Greene and Others.
Biography
John Spurling
Original Review of Malcolm Lowry:
‘An engaged and energetic survey of Lowry’s work, concentrating largely on Under the Volcan but also usefully discussing the rest of the corpus, especially the early short stories…Binns offers an admirable condensed spy-hole onto Lowry’s work.’ Malcolm Lowry Review
