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3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
An interesting memoir, easy to read.
Written when he was 66, this is a reflection on the author's early life up to the unsuccessful aftermath of his first novel, 'The Man Within', published when he was 25. He ascribes his motive for writing the memoir as: "a desire to reduce a chaos of experience to some sort of order, and a hungry curiosity." This curiosity is principally about himself and how he became a novelist.
Rather remarkably for a novelist, other people in his life, with the exception of his father and Father Trollope, who initiates him in the Catholic faith, remain shadowy; this is very much his own story about his development as a writer. "The girl I was to marry" almost appears to be introduced solely to explain why he started his instruction with Father Trollope. The publication of his first novel and ensuing retainer to write two more novels enabled him to get married but wedded bliss is summed up as: "I married, and was happy."
Reading this memoir in 2018, I was surprised how alien the world described seems: Greene's school, his experiences at Oxford, the sub-editors' office at the Times and even the publishing environment are so far from contemporary experience as to be of value as a historical record.
Yet, tucked away in the morass of this “sort of life” in the early decades of the twentieth century are some gems such as Greene’s reflection on memory: “Memory is like a long broken night. As I write, it is as though I am waking from sleep continually to grasp at an image which I hope may drag in its wake a whole intact dream, but the fragments remain fragments, the complete story always escapes.” Perhaps that is why Greene’s novels are, for the most part, so much more satisfying than this memoir. He was able to complete the stories.
Rather remarkably for a novelist, other people in his life, with the exception of his father and Father Trollope, who initiates him in the Catholic faith, remain shadowy; this is very much his own story about his development as a writer. "The girl I was to marry" almost appears to be introduced solely to explain why he started his instruction with Father Trollope. The publication of his first novel and ensuing retainer to write two more novels enabled him to get married but wedded bliss is summed up as: "I married, and was happy."
Reading this memoir in 2018, I was surprised how alien the world described seems: Greene's school, his experiences at Oxford, the sub-editors' office at the Times and even the publishing environment are so far from contemporary experience as to be of value as a historical record.
Yet, tucked away in the morass of this “sort of life” in the early decades of the twentieth century are some gems such as Greene’s reflection on memory: “Memory is like a long broken night. As I write, it is as though I am waking from sleep continually to grasp at an image which I hope may drag in its wake a whole intact dream, but the fragments remain fragments, the complete story always escapes.” Perhaps that is why Greene’s novels are, for the most part, so much more satisfying than this memoir. He was able to complete the stories.
Being the first volume of Graham Greene's autobiography, this book details his early life well.
"Memory is like a long broken night," writes Graham Greene, in his sometimes poetic, often navel-gazingish autobiography. I mean sure, an autobio is supposed to gaze hard and fast at the belly, like some Japanese warrior in the final moments before sepuku, but it means that sometimes the anecdotes drip with irrelevance. At the same time, some of the stories from Greene's youth are so beautifully and touchingly rendered to make it worthwhile...if you're in the right mood.
"As I write, it is as though I am waking from sleep continually to grasp at an image which I hope may drag in its wake a whole intact dream, but the fragments remain fragments, the complete story always escape."
I like how Greene describes how we try to make sense of things (Didion once similarly described nonfiction as the 'imposition of a narrative line on disparate images'):
" And the motive for recording these scraps of the past? It is much the same motive that has made me a novelist: a desire to reduce a chaos of experience to some sort of order, and a hungry curiosity. We cannot love others, so the theologians teach, unless in some degree we can love ourselves, and curiosity too begins at home."
"As I write, it is as though I am waking from sleep continually to grasp at an image which I hope may drag in its wake a whole intact dream, but the fragments remain fragments, the complete story always escape."
I like how Greene describes how we try to make sense of things (Didion once similarly described nonfiction as the 'imposition of a narrative line on disparate images'):
" And the motive for recording these scraps of the past? It is much the same motive that has made me a novelist: a desire to reduce a chaos of experience to some sort of order, and a hungry curiosity. We cannot love others, so the theologians teach, unless in some degree we can love ourselves, and curiosity too begins at home."
informative
reflective
medium-paced
reflective
medium-paced
Remarkably revealing. I haven't enjoyed an autobiography this much in quite some time. Graham Greene provides a frank history of his early years up to the time of his first successful novel, The Man Within, and the immediate aftermath of failure and then the legal problems arising out of Stamboul Train. The book itself is filled with passages expressing wit, irony, melancholy, excitement, and failure, all reflective of the somewhat troubled and manic-depressive life of Greene.
There is something of a unique style to this work. Greene avoids a strictly linear description of his life. Instead, he offers passages and sections that are entirely associative in his memory. Thus the reader not only discovers about the books that interested him as a child and young man but incidents he later saw as populating his fiction--although he claims to have been unaware of it at the time of his writing.
Too, there are especially interesting notes towards the end. Greene learned much from his initial lack of success. And he describes what amounts to a guideline for writing that rejected the imitative failures he produced for Doubleday and Hienemann following the surprise success of The Man Within.
There is much atmosphere and mood to his description of working at The Times as a sub editor. And it is equally appealing to see his descriptions of working with his editors at Heinemann and Doubleday. This was the heyday of the novel, a literary age that is all but unrecognizable to the contemporary world. The Western world itself, of course, was much more literary. Newspapers provided for the immediacy of news, while novels and magazines devoted to short stories outpaced even the motion pictures as a venue for entertainment and enlightenment. And Greene was there in its midst, almost failing. So near was he to doing so that he came close to accepting a teaching appointment at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. The book ends on his meeting with his friend, the department chair at the university, who offered him the job. It is some twenty years later, and Greene remarks upon the man's once promising career as a poet, which he allowed to slip away because of initial failures, leading to his exile in Siam. Only by the surprise success of Stamboul Train did Greene himself escape the same fate.
There is something of a unique style to this work. Greene avoids a strictly linear description of his life. Instead, he offers passages and sections that are entirely associative in his memory. Thus the reader not only discovers about the books that interested him as a child and young man but incidents he later saw as populating his fiction--although he claims to have been unaware of it at the time of his writing.
Too, there are especially interesting notes towards the end. Greene learned much from his initial lack of success. And he describes what amounts to a guideline for writing that rejected the imitative failures he produced for Doubleday and Hienemann following the surprise success of The Man Within.
There is much atmosphere and mood to his description of working at The Times as a sub editor. And it is equally appealing to see his descriptions of working with his editors at Heinemann and Doubleday. This was the heyday of the novel, a literary age that is all but unrecognizable to the contemporary world. The Western world itself, of course, was much more literary. Newspapers provided for the immediacy of news, while novels and magazines devoted to short stories outpaced even the motion pictures as a venue for entertainment and enlightenment. And Greene was there in its midst, almost failing. So near was he to doing so that he came close to accepting a teaching appointment at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. The book ends on his meeting with his friend, the department chair at the university, who offered him the job. It is some twenty years later, and Greene remarks upon the man's once promising career as a poet, which he allowed to slip away because of initial failures, leading to his exile in Siam. Only by the surprise success of Stamboul Train did Greene himself escape the same fate.
There were a few good bits in this, but it was generally disappointing. It seemed just a thrown together account of what I'm sure was really a very interesting life. I got the impression that this book was one of those painful pledges made to his publishing company.
As someone else noted, the bit about action writing was interesting:
"Action can only be expressed by a subject, a verb and an object, perhaps a rhythm -- little else. Even an adjective slows the pace or tranquilizes the nerve... But I was too concerned with "the point of view" to be aware of simpler problems, to know that the sort of novel I was trying to write, unlike a poem, was not made with words but with movement, action, character. Discrimination in one's words is certainly required, but not love of one's words - that is a form of self-love, a fatal love... I was only saved by failure."
Yeah, so anyhow... fortunately I've got a number of Greene's works of fiction still to read. Fiction was obviously his thing.
As someone else noted, the bit about action writing was interesting:
"Action can only be expressed by a subject, a verb and an object, perhaps a rhythm -- little else. Even an adjective slows the pace or tranquilizes the nerve... But I was too concerned with "the point of view" to be aware of simpler problems, to know that the sort of novel I was trying to write, unlike a poem, was not made with words but with movement, action, character. Discrimination in one's words is certainly required, but not love of one's words - that is a form of self-love, a fatal love... I was only saved by failure."
Yeah, so anyhow... fortunately I've got a number of Greene's works of fiction still to read. Fiction was obviously his thing.