A Sort of Life [Hardcover]

Graham Greene (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1971 | ISBN-10: 0671210106 | ISBN-13: 978-0671210106

Graham Green was born into a veritable tribe of Greenes - six children, eventually, and sic cousins - based in Berkhamstead at the public school where his father was headmaster. In A SORT OF LIFE Greene recalls schooldays and Oxford, adolescent encounters with psychoanalysis and Russian roulette, his marriage and conversion to Catholicism, and how he rashly resigned from The Times when his first novel, THE MAN WITHIN was published in 1929. A SORT OF LIFE, like its companion volume, WAYS OF ESCAPE, combines reticence with candour and reveals, brilliantly and compellingly, the genesis of a life lived and an art obsessed by 'the dangerous edge of things. . the narrow boundary between lovalty and disloyalty, between fidelity and infidelity, the mind's contradictions, the paradox one carries within oneself'.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster (1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671210106
• ISBN-13: 978-0671210106
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Understated and highly readable!, March 1, 2003

By 

Uncle Borges (Via Lungomare 6) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SORT OF LIFE (Paperback)

Greene is a master of understatment and restraint. This book is a lovely if self-effacing coming-of-literary-age memoir that is fun and reader friendly. It's invaluable for its precious glimpses into the vanished world of the 10's and 20's England. Full of curious detail too: I didn't know that Greene was related to R.L. Stevenson for example. The book ends just around the time of his first literary success. I don't know if there are any further memoirs but I wouldn't mind reading them.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Litotes, September 22, 2003

By 

James Hercules Sutton (Des Moines, IA (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Sort of Life (Hardcover)

is for the empowered; the powerless use hyperbole. Aristocratic Greene understates. He promises, in his introduction, to relate the events of his life with emotions he felt at the time without irony, but his detatchment to events in his own life makes it impossible for him to keep his pledge. Irony is his lens on the world, and he must see through it, darkly, or grope blindly. Pain comes through--the pain of childhood, pain of attending school where his father was headmaster, pain of academic boredom long after he'd outgrown it, pain of rootlessness, many failures--as if he were betrayed by experience itself. His writing, in his two autobiographies, shows the craftsmanship that made him famous, but fails to sparkle like the prose in his fiction, as if he were off-duty. He seems to have embraced Catholicism for the same reason Wordsworth wrote sonnets, for form; it doesn't seem to have been a passion, but perhaps it would have been bad form to say so. Worth reading for insights into his friendships and characters.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars psychological non-thriller, December 22, 2003

By 

J. head (littlteton, nh USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Sort of Life (Hardcover)

My main complaint with this book is that a depressed author does not write a stimulating biography. When all instances in the time period covered by the book are downplayed, the reader loses a sense of what is important. Graham Greene's experimentation with Russian roulette, and a flirtation with foreign espionage are told in an attitude that makes it difficult to sense its importance. Was his spy work unimportant, or was it Greene's ho-hum attitude toward spying coming through. The tint of boredom and failure extends over every aspect of his very fortunate and privileged life. An Oxford education, career editor on the London times, courtship, marriage and a religious convert to Catholicism all seem to be performed robotically without any passion. It definitely is an apt title. The book really does stop short in his career as a successful author. I am unfamiliar with his later writings, but this book mentions the fact that he feels alive when traveling throughout the world's danger spots. In this autobiography, Greene mentioned in later years he would cover a local insurrection in Mexico, and viewed first hand the troubled years in Vietnam, Liberia and the Mau-Mau insurrection. I would rather have skipped this book and read his later works about his experiences. I would recommend this book only to someone interested in the psychological background of Graham Greene.