Customer Reviews

The Life of Graham Greene: Volume II: 1939-1955 (Life of Graham Greene, 1939-1955)

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I have read very little of Graham Greene and I have not read Vol 1 of this biography. However I found this Vol 2 (1939-55) an enthralling read. It covers his life during the second world war and then later in Vietnam and Africa. There is a bit too much about his lovesick affair with Mrs Walston (a peculiar arrangment and a bit uninteresting at times) The record of his war service and his time in publishing is fascinating.I guess if you have read the books and are already a fan then this biography is even more valuable. The life of G.G. is a novel in itself,full of colour,sadness and bravery.These biographies can be turgid in the wrong hands but Sherry only uses the details necessary to tell a vivid story.His prose is excellent and flows along. A very enjoyable read and it made want to get reading the novels-and Vol3 which is due in 2000 I believe.

If you grew up in the fifties reading blockbuster novels and watching hit movies based on Graham Greene's books, you will be fascinated reading about the man behind the stories.

If a three-volume biography is more than you want to read about anyone, you will be more than satisfied reading the second volume of this trilogy. It covers the most productive years of Graham Greene, the man who wrote "The Power and The Glory," "The Third Man," "Our Man In Cuba," and "The Quiet American" to name just a very few; these years (1939 - 1955) are also the most interesting and challenging years for the western world in modern history. The second volume does contain an introduction which encapsulates the first volume.

Norman Sherry's writing is a bit uneven, some quite good, but much fairly mediocre. The good news is that Sherry tends to devote chapters to one of three facets of Greene's life: his literature; his relationships; and, his public/private world of adventures in Africa and spying for the British.

If one does not particularly care to read about his relationships, it is easy to skim a particular chapter. If one is interested in additional background to the British double spy Kim Philby, one can read slowly a chapter devoted to the relationship between Greene and Philby. It is hard to believe that Graham worked directly for Philby and may have remained in the service of her royal majesty even after Philby fled the country.

It is even more difficult to believe that one man could pack so much into one lifetime: trekking across Africa because of his fascination with Joseph Conrad; seeing his house destroyed during the German blitz of London; converting to Catholicism for the sake of his first wife; hobnobbing with the major authors and film stars of the era (everyone from Truman Capote to Ingrid Bergman). At the end of the second volume, after you have read about a man who packed more into one lifetime than seems humanly possible, Norman Sherry tells the reader that Graham has "thirty-six more years wheeling obsessively round the world, compelled it would seem to wander the earth until death."

I knew nothing about Graham Greene before I randomly picked up this book (I was not reading novels in the 1950's) and I was barely aware of something called "The Power and the Glory," which, by the way, resulted in a private audience with the pope for Graham Greene. I am so fascinated by him after reading this second volume, I will now read at least one of his novels.

Deeply discounted soft cover copies are readily available. Try the second volume; if you enjoy it you may want to have the three-volume hardcover trilogy in your library.

Sadly, even in death Greene, the master at secrecy, again succeeds at keeping his official, authorized biography at a much distance from himself and his life. Coming in at a bit over 500 pages of primary text, Vol. II is thankfully about 225 pages shorter than the much-too-long Vol. I. But since it covers only about 16 years as opposed to 35 years in Vol. I, each year averages nearly 30 pages. As with Vol. I, this edition needs to be pruned. The middle portion of Vol. II, covering Greene's problems in love (with his wife, first major mistress, and mistress #2) from about 1944-1950, is a jumbled, boring mess. This approximately 150 page section is filled with far too many excerpts from Greene's pathetically repetitive letters to his long-suffering wife and first mistress, and to the new love (who will be replaced in Vol. III). Instead of covering this period chronologically, Sherry separates out portions of Greene's life based on what he was doing (e.g., the period in the 1940s when he was a publisher) and then goes back in time for the next major life activity. This ensures that both Greene's work on two of his major novels (The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair) and even his messed up love life are not addressed in a coherent section. Sherry again relies far too heavily on using Greene's fictional works as primary sources to substantiate his suppositions about Greene's life, as well as Greene's not-to-be-trusted autobiographical works. Fortunately Sherry admits early on that Greene went out of his way to make any biography difficult. For example, Greene sometimes kept two sets of diary entries (one edited, one truthful) and often destroyed the truthful entries. So the reader is warned that the biographer's task was not one of cooperation with the subject, but attempting to cut through the subject's distortions and attempts to keep everything revealing hidden. Unfortunately, since Sherry still had Vol. III to go, it seems like he deliberately chooses not to probe too deeply about far too many interesting issues (e.g., What was Greene talking about when describing a hospitalization tied to his genitals bleeding? And the issue of cigarette-burning sado-masochism?). The best and easily most readible portions of the work are those addressing WWII, especially the various bombings of London, and Greene's travels in Malaya, Vietnam, and Kenya. Thankfully that means the first and last 200 or so pages are most readible, if not always as revealing as such a massive work implies!

Norman Sherry did an excellent job of chronicling some of the most facinating phases of Graham Greene's personal and professional life. While I found vol. 1 to be a bit slow and often uninteresting at times, vol. 2 really gives great insight into the period of Greene's most productive and important years.

I'm eagerly awaiting vol. 3 to see how well Sherry tells the life of one of the more important authors of the Twentieth Century.

Sherry's "biography" is saved only by its topic: Graham Greene, a man whose life was so interesting that even Sherry's ineptitude can't quite get in the way.

The flaws in this work abound but of import are the consistent failures by Sherry to dive into anything that would or could possibly reveal "too much" about a man that even Sherry admits, was notorious for not revealing much of anyhting to anyone.

Dreams that beg to be discussed are described and then abandoned as topics, health concerns (Green's hemorage surely deserves some comment, doesn't it? - or have I missed it amid the insesent repetions by Sherry that The Power and the Glory was Grenne's "best work" - understood that the first three times Sherry said it)and refrences to one of Green's acknowledged "masters" (Conrad) are offered up, and then, dropped like hot rocks.

To make matters worse, one is treated to such sparkling gems of "thought" as (to paraphrase) that the insurgents in malaya were fighting against the "benificent" British and their colonial puppets - surely, greene, a man on the side of the "underdog" (regardless of said dog's politics)had something else in mind? Or is this more of the ex-spys double-talk? Using Sherry as a source, one will never know.

Given Greene's penchent for opacity, it should come as no suprise to anyone who knows anything about the man, that having chosen his own "man in biography" that Greene should have played Sherry for his own purposes.

As a source-work for Greene's own material, and as an illsutration of what can happen to an author upon achieving "success" the book is useful.

Beyond that, stick to Greene's own work. You'll be far better served.

Sincerely,

A Reader