The Comedians (Twentieth Century Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Graham Greene (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 1, 1995 | Series: Twentieth Century Classics

Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt "Papa Doc" and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American and Jones the confidence man are the "Comedians" of Graham Greene's title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of Graham Greene's most chilling and prophetic novels, The Comedians is set in a Haiti ruled by Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Just as The Quiet American offered a preview of the coming horrors of American involvement in Vietnam, this novel presages the chaos in Haiti. Classic Graham Greene.

Review

Laughter is possible even in the dark night of Haiti...a vision that is at once comic and intensely serious...a major novel. -- Roger Sharrock

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140184945
• ISBN-13: 978-0140184945
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars High drama and human comedy in Haiti June 12, 2002

By IRA Ross

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Graham Greene's forte lay in writing novels (and "entertainments") of political intrigue. I do not know if this master British novelist visited any or all of the countries about which he wrote. Mr. Greene seemed to have considerable knowledge of both the current and near recent political and societal conditions of the countries that formed the backdrop of his books. For example, in _The Comedians_ Mr. Greene shows an unusual grasp of the extreme poverty and deprivation suffered by Haitian people living under Papa Doc Duvalier's corrupt, dictatorial, and totalitarian regime as well as the extreme human rights violations and abuses of Papa Doc's sadistic secret police, the Tontons Macoute. Several characters in the book note with some irony vis-a-vis American foreign policy, that as bad as Papa Doc seems, he is at least a strong anti-Communist.

Graham Greene does something very unusual with his major caucasian characters: he gives them very common, non-descript surnames. The reader never learns their first names. The narrator of the novel, an Englishman, is merely called "Mr. Brown." He runs a financially deteriorating hotel in Haiti that he inherits from his mother. Like the author, Mr. Brown is a fallen-away Catholic. A British soldier of fortune and con artist who comes to Haiti is simply called Major Jones or just "Mr. Jones." His talents consist mainly in charming women and in telling funny jokes. An American couple, named Mr. and Mrs. Smith, come to Haiti hopefully to set up a vegetarian center. Mr. Smith ran in the 1948 U.S. presidential election on the Vegetarian Line. He is derisively referred to as "the Presidential Candidate" throughout the novel and utilizes this sobriquet as a method of influencing the Duvalier government to approve of his scheme. Graham Greene refers to all of these individuals as "comedians" because they symbolically wear actors' masks to hide their true natures and to invent persona to deceive people. Alternately, Marcel, Mr. Brown's late mother's black lover who avers that he would have died for her "...was no comedian after all. Death is a proof of sincerity."

Greene chooses to present these "comedians" as realistic, flawed human beings. They live on the fringes of life, never participating in the human adventure. But even comedians often have untapped hidden strengths that may be revealed in a crisis. Jones, the Smiths, and Brown eventually prove to be more heroic than they appear on the surface.

_The Comedians_ is one of the very best and one of the most heroic novels in Graham Greene's repertoire, and is most highly recommended.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Place and strange laughter December 29, 1999

By Doug Vaughn HALL OF FAME

Format:Mass Market Paperback

To call a novel about the most horribly repressive and violent period in Hatian history The Comedians is typical Graham Greene irony. The main characters, Jones (a Brit expatriate on the run from a never disclosed shady past), Smith (a vegetarian crusader who was once a splinter candidate for U.S. president), and Brown (a man of no real country who has inherited a run down hotel in Haiti from his absent mother) are all rootless failures playing at life who are brought together in Haiti during a time of terror and political chaos when the country was descending into a kind of primitive madness. Against their will and in ways they don't anticipate, they are each sucked into the vortex. How they respond highlights the questions that Greene is forever posing about faith, redemption, commitment and responsibility.

The dreams of each character, flimsy as they are, are doomed to fail in a land where utilities and civil order have broken down, where beggers predominate and order is maintained by the Tontons Macoute, the zombie figures in dark glasses who dispense Papa Doc's brutal 'justice' and leave the evidence of it lying beside the road. Smith, who with his wife, wants to start a vegetarian center in the Haitian capitol, flees the country when he realizes that he must resort to bribes for the simplest permissions and even then the promises are a sham. Jones, who tries to con the Hatian government into buying arms that he doesn't possess, is uncovered as a fraud and flees to a South American embassy for protection (the British don't want him - or want him too much). Brown, who wants only to be left alone to run his hotel and pursue a pointless affair, nevertheless finds himself acting time and again to help one or another of the other characters (including a number of Haitians), all the while trying to remain emotionally neutral and uninvolved. He fails, and his failure brings on the book's one clear success, a good end for Jones who escapes the embassy, with Brown's assistance, to join and train a small band of Haitian guerrillas in the hills. At the end, having found 'a good place', he dies a comic but heroic death. He did not, it seems, actually know anything about warfare, having served in the army only in the entertainment division. His lies finally catching up. But as one of the Haitian survivors says - he was good for the men - he made them laugh.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging drama set in Papa Doc's Haiti January 7, 2003

By R. J. Marsella

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The novel opens on a cruise ship steaming toward Haiti. We meet a diverse group of characters who are revealed through the device of setting them in a game of cards on board ship.
Brown, the primary character and narrator is returning to Haiti to reclaim a hotel he inherited and through his eyes we see the political changes occurring in the country and are made aware of the ominous threat of the Tonton Macoute secret police that hangs over the entire story adding dramatic tension.
Jones , his fellow passenger is revealed to be a con-man who gets by on his ability to make others laugh (one of the comedians) . Smith a failed presidential candidate from the US is naively seeking to establish a vegetarian center in Haiti seemingly oblivious to the turmoil all around him.
Brown's romance with the wife of a diplomat provides a subplot that mirrors the theme that everyone is deceiving someone. The comedians all prove to be actors playing on a stage filled with political violence and the everpresent threat of more to come.
This was a very engaging novel and if not Greene's most well known book it may be one of his best. I enjoyed it and highly recommend it for it's memorable characters and stunning evocation of a country approaching chaos.