Customer Reviews

Greene on Capri: A Memoir

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Graham Greene is one of those writers whom you wouldn't necessarily want to meet socially -- however great their works might be. You could be in for some scintillating conversation, or just as likely for embarassed silence or a dose of that gold-plated chip on the shoulder. At one point in a restaurant, Greene stands up and makes a loud public announcement that some poor tourist was eavesdropping on his conversation. Another time, he publicly berates the author's husband, translator Francis Steegmuller, for feeding stray cats.

For over 40 years, Graham Greene spent Spring and Autumn at his villa in Anacapri. During much of that time, Shirley Hazzard and Steegmuller were also in attendance and struck up as close a friendship as that truculent Englishman would allow. Rather than a formal biography, GREENE ON CAPRI is a delightfully impressionistic book about Greene, the island they all held in common (though Green knew astonishingly little about its history), and the famous literary visitors whose lives partially intersected, most notably Harold Acton and Norman Douglas.

As I am planning a visit to Capri in the foreseeable future, I was pleasantly surprised how much information about the island and its history is conveyed in the book's 149 pages. Everything but the Blue Grotto was there. I was particularly delighted to see a photo of the villa that figured so largely in one of my favorite films, Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT (1963): it was built by the Fascist -- later Communist -- writer Curzio Malaparte.

Many of my favorite books point the way to interesting new authors, works, and places. GREENE ON CAPRI is a keeper, and I expect it will help inform my future reading and (hopefully) travel for some time to come. Shirley Hazzard is a delightful writer, and Greene a fascinating if prickly subject. The result: a literary gem which merits my highest recommendation.

A beautiful portrait of a time and place and an intriguing glimpse of the elusive, contradictory and beguiling Graham Greene. It's a snapshot - not meant to be a full length portrait. Hazzard's tone is measured, thoughtful, at times nostalgic, at all times compassionate and deeply human.I loved this book.

I loved this book, a memoir of Graham Greene's many years spent vacationing on Capri. If you are interested in travel, in Italy and Capri, in WWII-era Europe, in the literary personages of the time and -- most of all -- in beautiful prose and poetry, you will also enjoy this tale. But keep a dictionary handy, and be ready to send for Shirley Hazzard's earlier works -- one, a National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, 1981.

I am completely baffled by the negative reviews on this book, especially the comments on Ms.Hazzard's prose. If this prose appears to be too difficult for you, stick with comic strips! This is clearly one of the most beautifully written books I have come across in a very long time. The beauty and grace of Ms. Hazzard's prose leave me breathless at times. The way she describes Graham Greene makes me believe I used to know him. The images she evokes of Capri and the times she and her husband spent there are vivid and all encompassing. This book makes you long to be there. La nostalgie est une chanson douce! I cannot imagine a sweeter song than "Greene on Capri" by Shirley Hazzard.

This brief, finely-written memoir does a remarkable job of capturing--without false sound and fury--the later years of one of our century's best writers of English. Greene will ever be underestimated a little because he wrote so cleanly and clearly, without the pyrotechnics of prose that win the shriveled little hearts of campus critics. Greene is thrown into a handsome, twilit relief by the changing seasons of Capri, and, all in all, the book was a delight. It shames one, however, as a member of the baby-boom generation, to realize how much we have lost in our trend-ravaged educations. The book begins with a woman completing a line of poetry for a stranger in a cafe, and is full of conversational references that simply would not occur today--who memorizes poetry, or even reads it seriously? The only reason I did not give this book five stars is the insufferably snotty postures struck by the author herself. While I would have loved to know Greene, I suspect I would have run screaming from the pretensions of the woman who has managed to give us this otherwise fine book. Not a substitute for Norman Sherry's masterful life of Greene, but a delicious dessert read afterward.

I read Shirley Hazzard's book prior to visiting Capri for the first time in 20 years, and took it with me to read on the flight to Italy. In fact, the book made the journey with me to the island. This is an excellent portrait of Graham Greene and the information Ms. Hazzard adds concerning Capri certainly whetted my appetite and increased my anticipation to get to the island to see the places she mentioned.

The book is written in a beautiful style. One hears Ms. Hazzard's voice in her writing and shares her experiences. I must confess that I really did not like Graham Greene very much as a person but I understand a great deal about him and what drove him. I was most touched by what Ms. Hazzard had to say about Harold Acton, so much so that I re-read that part of the book. Mr. Action was such a wonderful scholar and writer with such a wonderful presence that I would very much have liked to have known him. I will never forget the last visit of Ms. Hazzard to Harold Acton when he said he regretted not being able to see Naples one more time. Since I was reading this in Naples I was able to understand what he meant all the more.

Someone else I enjoyed learning about was Ms. Hazzard's husband Francis Steegmuller, and some of the books he wrote. In particular the discussion about Mr. Steegmuller's book about Flaubert in Egypt sparked my interest to read it. Another book mentioned by Ms. Hazzard that has my interest in The Viper of Milan, historical fiction on the war between the dukes of Verona and Milan, which sounds like quite an exciting read.

So this is a wonderful book that gives us a unique perspective on a great writer - Graham Greene - but also gives us a glimpse into the island of Capri and the people who came to live on this paradise of a place over the years, some who came and left and others who never did. I gained insight into places of the island, such as the Villa Jovis and the town of Capri, and met some interesting people, chief of whom is Ms Hazzard herself. I highly recommend this book for the superb memoir that it is and also for the excellence of the writing.

I can only conclude from other reviews that Shirley Hazzard is an acquired taste, but would add that it's worth giving a go. She is a supremely old-fashioned writer, which I think some find mannered or awkward. It's odd, because I find her prose illuminating and exciting to read - each word is measured and beautiful. Her novels are luminous things of beauty, particularly The Bay of Noon and The Great Fire. She's just won Australia's top literary prize - very well-deserved. If you have time and patience, for her books need careful reading, they are richly rewarding. It's only an inexpensive paperback, go on, try some, you never know, you might like it!

Really no more than a very, very long New Yorker sort of profile blown up to book size, GREENE ON CAPRI A MEMOIR is an irresistible sort of book and pure opium for those of us who like to read about people with so much money they can afford to live on several continents at once. Shirley Hazzard writes so creamily that it was only after several chapters that I started asking myself, where is all this money coming from? For none of the characters, save the distantly observed fishermen, have anything to do with their time but sit around all day at one of Capri's many colorful cafes, sip aperitifs, and cap each other's quotations from the Brownings.

It's a form of literary sleight of hand that at its best is positively alluring, but when the illusion falters for even a minute a certain distast sets in. All travel writing is sort of alike, and there are two sorts of readers, one who loves nothing better than a book about Capri, and the other, who would rather undergo a Brazilian body wax without anesthesia than have to read a book like this one. Beyond this certainty, there are a few other problems with Hazzard's book. One is the problem noticed by most reviewers: that she really doesn't care much for Greene, so you ask yourself, then why write a book about someone who you just can't stand? The feeling creeps in that she was fascinated by his bad manners and his egotism, but that she was too drawn to his fame (the way her husband, Francis Steegmuller, became known as a permanent barnacle of the fame of Cocteau) to resist.

Another debit is the photo selections which render Shirley Hazzard, not a bad looking woman, as the victim of a truly evil costume designer. No matter what decade it is, you see her wearing blouses with long Peter Pan style collars in which the tabs droop down practically to her breasts, a bizarre style which makes her look like a bejeweled and preening horse. It must have been Graham Greene's revenge. Probably long ago, in 1962, in Capri, he might have sent her a little CARE package from some demented designer in Antibes, and advised her it would make her look less like Lillian Hellman. His unpleasantness was legendary, the "irrational and cruel paroxysm of the playground," as Hazzard hazards. The odd thing is that Greene went to Capri at all! He was of the generation of Englishmen, she avers, that was actually blind to the beauty of physical surroundings. Perhaps they thought it unmanly. He was just there because it was "away." Her explanation isn't very convincing, but she does provide some interesting sidelights, such as the fact that Greene thought Olivier a terrible actor, much preferring the mundanities of Ralph Richardson or Paul Scofield. Hazzard also provokes a chuckle when she talks about how bad Graham Greene's own performance is, in Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT. "In a companion scene of the same film, a cat does far better."

Shirley Hazzard's memoir of Graham Greene on Capri came rather later than the main flood of memoirs and biographies that followed the death of the master. The author shares her memories of evenings and meals spent with Greene and her husband (the writer Francis Steegmuller, whose "Flaubert in Egypt" is one of the jewels of my book collection) on that exotic island, home to so many notable expatriates of yesteryear, Lenin and Norman Douglas among them. The book is interesting for its depiction of Greene in all his annoying lovability, although when you finish it (in little more than an hour) you might feel the need for more substantial fare. "Greene on Capri" probably won't be of interest to most people, but for diehard devotees of that difficult genius it makes for a worthwhile read.

Graham Greene came to Capri in 1948, fell in love with the island's beauty and serenity, and died still in love with the island in 1989. Across those 40-plus years Greene, one of the twentieth century's greatest sytlists in the English language, lived many months of the year in Capri, giving it up only in the last years of his life as the burden on the journey became to exhausting. The island, just off the coast of Italy, is only five square miles in size but offers a staggeringly different set of visions -- soaring mountain peaks, fertile lowlands, beaches with the inky Mediterranean lapping the shore, and a distinct way of life. This sort of idyll attracted not only Greene but a panorama of English, French and Italian literary figures. Shirley Hazard, an award-winning novelist, came to the island with her American husband in the late-1960's and here recreates the feeling of being with Graham Greene on Capri through the last two decades of his life there.

Greene was a man of great contrasts. He could be engaging and charming but was, at the same time, defensive, argumentative and infuriating. His knowledge of literature, mainly English literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, was encyclopedic. In fact, Hazard met Greene on a winter morning at the main piazetta in Capri when he and a friend were discussing a poem by Robert Browning, the last line of which had escaped Greene. Hazard knew the line, "or so a little longer", and supplied the final words. This chance meeting sparked the friendship with Greene, one that would last for rest of his life.

This small memoir of these years forms the basis of Hazard's story. There are two main actors in this memoir. One is Greene himself, who is always near the center of the memories. He is now gone so his personality can only be approached by reading his books, each written meticulously at a slow, even pace, or by the remembrances of his close friends. The second main actor in Hazard's book is Capri itself. The island still looks the same physically as it did when Greene lived there. It still has the twin peaks, atop one of which sits Villa Jovis, where Tiberius ruled the Roman Empire for more than three years. It still has the vast Mediterranean surrounding it. It still has the remarkable volcanic outcroppings that continue to have the power to amaze. Hazard speaks of Capri's aura like very few other writers and this gives this seemingly simple memoir of Greene its special magical glow.