Great piece. I too started with the Quiet American and found it prescient.
I'm working my way through all his books. I think towards the end he dropped the serious/entertainments distinction.
One humorous anecdote I'm aware of is the satirical magazine Private Eye in London ran a Graham Greene competition in the 60s, inviting people to write a short story in the style of Greene. Greene himself entered and won second place!
Excellent article! I need to read all his other stuff. I may not have had the maturity to appreciate them in years past, though.
I can't be called a Greene fan, really, as I've not explored most of his works, but his novel, "The End of the Affair," affected me greatly. Read it long ago when still a lapsed Catholic on a wayward path, dabbling in all this and that nonsense and bundles of half-truths. Yet, the understandable depth of Maurice Bendrix's puzzlement at the ironclad fidelity of Sarah Miles to her faith-prompted promise just struck at my heart like few other novels have. That was one of the most powerful novels about Catholicism that may have helped draw me back to the Faith several years later, even if Greene kept the core conflict at the utterly human level that could resonate with anyone through Bendrix. The movie version foreshortened some elements (due to the nature of cinema vs. books), but was overall a good adaptation.
Great piece. I too started with the Quiet American and found it prescient.
I'm working my way through all his books. I think towards the end he dropped the serious/entertainments distinction.
One humorous anecdote I'm aware of is the satirical magazine Private Eye in London ran a Graham Greene competition in the 60s, inviting people to write a short story in the style of Greene. Greene himself entered and won second place!
Excellent article! I need to read all his other stuff. I may not have had the maturity to appreciate them in years past, though.
I can't be called a Greene fan, really, as I've not explored most of his works, but his novel, "The End of the Affair," affected me greatly. Read it long ago when still a lapsed Catholic on a wayward path, dabbling in all this and that nonsense and bundles of half-truths. Yet, the understandable depth of Maurice Bendrix's puzzlement at the ironclad fidelity of Sarah Miles to her faith-prompted promise just struck at my heart like few other novels have. That was one of the most powerful novels about Catholicism that may have helped draw me back to the Faith several years later, even if Greene kept the core conflict at the utterly human level that could resonate with anyone through Bendrix. The movie version foreshortened some elements (due to the nature of cinema vs. books), but was overall a good adaptation.