The title of Richard Green’s comprehensive biography of novelist Graham Greene refers to the writer’s efforts as a young man to combat the melancholia and ennui that frequently threatened to engulf him. On the first occasion, he had ventured onto Berkhamsted Common with a revolver he had chanced upon in a drawer in the family home (as one does), and loaded one chamber with a live round and set it spinning. The relief that this brush with death brought tided him over several months before succumbing to the need to take a second dose.

The struggle with boredom was to be a defining characteristic of Graham Greene. One of the leading British writers of his generation, Greene was never satisfied that he received the recognition to which he was due. I think it is fari to say that he did not make things easy for himself. Richard Greene’s account delivers several instances of his querulousness, and his infinite capacity to fall out with people who could have helped him … indeed, frequently already had helped him. He was also the victim of a capricious conscience, that did not stop him from behaving in ways that hurt people close to him, but did punish him severely for it afterwards.

Greene’s was a full life, encompassing work as a novelist, playwright, occasional spy, writer of films and political polemicist. It was also one that was frequently tinged with controversy. As his politics moved increasingly leftwards, he found himself ostracised in America as a consequence of his perceived support for Castro’s Cuba. His novels are set in countries all around the world. The Quiet American is set against the early phase of the Vietnam War, at a stage when American involvement was still under guise of advisers to the French regime, while The Comedians takes place in Haiti, against the backdrop of Papa Doc’s brutal regime. Our man in Havana, perhaps my favourite of his novels, is self-evidently set in Cuba, while The Power and The Glory takes the reader to a terror-stricken Mexico. I could go on. Greene’s capacity to capture these differing locales reflects his work as a journalist, and his acute observer’s eye.

Richard Greene documents all of this in pleasing, yet not obsessive detail (perhaps learning from the error’s of Norman Sherry whose two volume biography of Graham seemed to try to catalogue everything that the subject did, and every conversation that he had). He also refreshingly avoids becoming bogged down with some of the more scandalous aspects of Greene’s life.

I came to this novel already knowing a lot about Graham Greene, having read most of his novels, and his various volumes of memoirs, and as much of Norman Sherry’s biography as I could stomach. I still found this enjoyable, and fresh, which I think is a testament to the clarity of Richard Greene’s writing, and his clear empathy and understanding of his subject. This was one of the best biographies that I have read for a long time. ( )

Some of it is gossipy, and some of it is already well-known or accessible via Wikipedia (and possibly in Richard Greene's other books about Greene) but the insights into Green's thinking and beliefs were invaluable. The novels and other writings of significance are traced from inception to publication, and linked to Greene's experiences and the people he encountered.

Green explains the way in which this occurs in a letter to the Spanish Monsignor Durán—who influenced Monsignor Quixote (1982). Books, he says, take on a life of their own:

A novel is a work in which characters interrelate. It doesn't need a plot. The novelist's own intervention must be very limited. What happens to the author is rather like the pilot of a plane. The pilot needs to get the plane off the ground. It takes off with the aid of a pilot. Once it is in the air, the pilot does virtually nothing. Once everything has started working, the characters begin to impose themselves on the author, who no longer controls them. They have a life of their own. The author has to go on writing. Sometimes he writes things which appear to have no raison d'être. Only at the end is the reason apparent. The author intervenes to allow the plane to land. It is time for the novel to end. (p. 434)

It was also interesting to read (on p. 397) what Greene, in a rare TV interview, said could be an epigram for all his works. Quoting from Browning's long poem 'Bishop Blougram's Apology' he said:

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demirep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books—
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/01/19/russian-roulette-the-life-and-times-of-graha... ( )