Ways of Escape. [Import] [Hardcover]

Graham. Greene (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 266 pages
• Publisher: Lester & Orpen Dennys; First Edition edition (1980)
• ISBN-10: 0919630138
• ISBN-13: 978-0919630130
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,496,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Odd,, September 22, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: Ways of Escape (Hardcover)

because this book leaves me feeling that he felt his life was unreal and his fiction was real.

He lived in boredom punctuated by terror--manic/depressive, opium smoking, Russian roulette playing, suicidal.

Was he a spy, even after he left the Foreign Office? Was writing his cover for travel? Does boredom fully explain his uncanny knack for being in troubled places in troubled times?

No matter. He was a great stylist and craftsman. This autobiography (along with "A Sort of Life") is worth reading for his methods as a novelist and for portraits of friends, such as Waugh and Herbert Reed.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Meandering but interesting, April 13, 2009

By 

Timothy P. Scott (Southern California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ways of Escape (Hardcover)

I'd have to agree with another reviewer who characterized this as "odd." Greene was apparently writing this in his 70s, and the prose isn't always as pellucid as one would wish. His writing career spanned roughly 1930 to 1980, and in spite of my cavil on the datedness of his style he is unarguably a major 20th century literary figure. (Apparently there's a huge 3-volume biography on him available.)
The essays really meander between the struggles he underwent in writing, his travels, his impressions of the political problems on the ground in Malaysia, Haiti, Vietnam and Cube between WWII and the 1970s.
It's full of juicy anecdotes, including his mixed experiences with Hollywood trying to bring some of his work to film. If you've enjoyed some of his novels (which, sadly, are dated as to style now, inevitably), you should pick this up from the library or a used book store and get some background on Greene's demons and motivations...