The Tenth Man - Graham Greene



With the usual thanks to Surrey Docks farm for this solid 50p investment. I bought it thinking it was a joking take on The Third Man, and had it not been for the fact that it wasn't exactly expensive I wouldn't have bought it after reading about its troubled publication history (I mean, the author himself had forgotten about writing it in the first place!).



And I honestly wonder how Graham Greene could have ever forgotten about it. Not remembering bits and pieces, sure, but forgetting about the genius idea (or at least what I think is a genius idea!) of a man buying his way out of an execution and persuading someone else to take his place appears to me to be impossible.

The novel has such a wonderfully French feel, probably a reflection of Greene's unique ability to write books about pretty much any country and making it feel authentic. Much like the reader feels the dilemmas of the main character are authentic, despite the fact that he finds himself in a most unique position.

The End of the Affair - Graham Greene

Ok, at this point I may really stop reading Graham Greene novels. I just couldn't bring myself to do it after the mediocrity of Monsignor Quixote, but The End of the Affair is the real deal, and possibly the best Graham Greene I've ever read.

The twists of the plot are surprising and intriguing, the reader can sympathize with the main character without liking him (in my case the problem wasn't the affair, but his treatment of the private investigator), and the novel makes Clapham Common come alive in a remarkable way.

Also, the book is so good that I found, for once, that the frequent shifts of focus on Catholicism added to rather than detracted from the novel (something that, for instance, I found excessive in the case of Brighton Rock).

Monsignor Quixote - Graham Greene

And this is the reason why I was saying that I've probably read too many Graham Greene. Despite the quote from a review from The Spectator on the book's cover, the novel is not Greene's best, or the most absorbing, or adept - it is possibly his most effortless though, as it costs the reader nothing to read it, but I'm afraid it also cost Greene very little to write it.

I probably (well, surely actually) didn't like the picaresque tone of it, but with this I'll probably stop reading Greene novels no matter how much I've loved so many of them*

* That's a blatant lie, I might stop after reading The End of the Affair.

The Comedians – Graham Greene

I bonded with the former Registrar at LSE over our common love for literature – although, honestly, I was mostly listening to his suggestions rather than offering much of my own (with the exception of some tips on some Italian novels, at best). I remember telling him that I wished I could teach the Vietnam War by starting with a discussion of The Quiet American, and him saying that his favourite Graham Greene book was actually The Comedians. I can see where he was coming from (although this is not my favourite Greene novel – that’d probably be Our Man in Havana, at least at the time of writing).

In terms of white men trying to find their place in Latin America, I liked The Comedians a lot better than The Honorary Consul, and that’s probably because Haiti to me is much more exotic than Argentina and Paraguay. Also, the Live and Let Die-vibe of the book is truly excellent, as is the self-criticism of Mr Brown (who really reminded me of Rick in Casablanca). I just can’t understand how they managed to make an awful movie out of this book…

Now I think I’ll have to stop reading books by Greene, chiefly because I’ve read a few too many over the last couple of years and I am afraid I might be overdoing (my relationship with Ian McEwan serves as a serious warning here).

Oh, and whoever designed the back-cover of my Penguin edition is an absolute ass committed to spoiling the plot – bravo!

Brighton Rock – Graham Greene

Probably the last Graham Greene book that I still wanted to read (I’ve read plenty of others, it’s time to move on). And, as it’s often the case, this one was a good buy at Fopp.

I actually think it was the Greene book that I enjoyed the least, and that’s chiefly because Pinkie is so purely nasty that it made me actually quite uncomfortable. It’s bizarre, I have no issues with violence (I love McCarthy!), or with evil characters, but nastiness is just a bit much for me. Ida is a great counterpart, but her desire to do good was just not enough to make up for the goosebumps that Pinkie gave me.

Had it not been written so well, I think this book would have ended up at the charity shop with American Psycho.

And I also could have done without all the comments on Catholicism – I’m Italian, I have a feeling I know quite well the moral contradictions of Catholic guilt and repentance.  

It’s a Battlefield – Graham Greene

What a bizarre Graham Greene novel, and surely one that, had it not been for the wonderful place that was Books for Free in Stratford, I would have never picked up…

Out of all the books by Greene that I have read, this is the first one to be set in England (yes, I know he wrote plenty of other novels set here, I just haven’t read them…). Despite being familiar with so many (almost all?) of the corners of London that he describes, I found these to be so far away from me because of their perceivable bleakness and eeriness.

It’s a Battlefield is an extremely interesting book, despite the fact that all the important characters are not just unlikable, but fundamentally plain awful (and rather miserable). However, it’s quite a shame that Greene never gives Drover a chance to speak ( after all the prisoner is by far the most enigmatic and interesting character in the novel, with his attempted suicide after avoiding a death sentence being one of the best plot-twists I’ve ever come across) 

The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene

Greene considered this to be one of his best works (at least according to Wikipedia – and who am I to question this claim?). However, in all honesty, I disagree: The Honorary Consul is enjoyable, but doesn’t have the suspense of The Quiet American or the hilarious turns of Our Man in Havana.

To me, Dr Plarr is simply too British to have spent his entire life in Latin America, and his constant remarks on “machismo” seem like those of an outsider rather than those of a self-critical local. Also, in a novel in which so many characters are fighting for their lives, I found it weird that not a single one of them was actually bad: Plarr and the desperadoes have their heart in the right place – although the latter have no methods – Fortnum is just a poor nobody, Colonel Perez is a good policemen who knows his people, and hell, even the British diplomats and politicians seem to be sensible. Only the General is probably bad, but he is only mentioned and doesn’t appear in the novel…

The book does pick up from the moment of the attempted creation of an Anglo-Argentine club, but to me it was too little too late.

And for someone who doesn’t really go to church, the lengthy discussions on God are just fairly painful and trite (and a reminder of high-school philosophy debates…)

The Quiet American – Graham Greene

The first Graham Greene I’ve read. The one that made me wish I could teach a course based on his writing about the early Cold War. Surely most historians of the Vietnam War probably cringe at the mention of a “Third Force” theory, but the book was written in 1955 and its insight is undeniable.

The book is about rich white Westerners playing god in the rest of the world (something we normally do oh so well…). Despite the fact that it’s clear that neither Fowler nor Pyle will die when they find themselves in the watchtower, those pages remain incredibly gripping and tense. Again, nether one of the two is likable – yet the reader (or, at least, the European leader) wants Fowler not just to survive, but to be happy wherever he is, be it Vietnam or the UK.

I am sure in real life Graham Greene must have been a snobby and stand-offish arrogant bore, but man could he write…

Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene

I teach a couple of courses on 20^th century history in what is meant to be an elite global university. I wish my students would read this book before our class on the Cuban Missile Crisis (just as I wish they would read The Quiet American before our class on the Vietnam War). However, I have the feeling that my students have the attention-span of a goldfish and cannot cope with many of the books and movies that I suggest they read and watch (one of them even told me that, as far as historical movies go, my Battle of Algiers and Deer Hunter pale in comparison to her Pearl Harbor).

Our Man in Havana is one of those books that made me laugh out loud, much to the surprise and worry of my wife. Yet, when you realize that the lives of Cifuentes, Wormold, Hasselbacher etc. might really be in danger, you just want to get to the last page of the book as quickly as you can to make sure they are all ok in the end. Sadly, not all of them are.

The book’s last-line is, to me, as wonderful as it gets.

As far as tales of misunderstandings and mistaken attempts on innocents’ lives go, this might even beat North by Northwest.