Drawing on his private world of dreams, the author of The Power and the Glory provides readers with an inner glimpse at the fantasy life that he considered integral to his creative expression. 10,000 first printing. National ad/promo.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Greene (1904-1991) had extraordinarily vivid, fertile, inventive dreams, judging from these excerpts from the dream diaries he kept between 1965 and 1989. The novelist/essayist's dreams of espionage included a mission to Nazi Germany, where he rammed a poison cigarette up Joseph Goebbels's nose, and a secret assignation with Kim Philby. In other dreams he met three popes; took a disagreeable boat ride to Bogota with Henry James; conversed with Castro, Khrushchev, Oliver Cromwell, Jean Cocteau and Solzhenitsyn; witnessed a massacre of children in Syria; produced a blank-verse play with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. He dreamed of his mother's death, of a talking kitten, of committing murder and robbery. This curious, entertaining diary lets us glimpse the feverish inner life of an intensely private man, providing an uncanny mirror-image of Greene's novelistic obsessions, insecurities and moral preoccupations. In the introduction he divulges that a number of his short stories evolved directly from dreams.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
For 25 years novelist Greene recorded his dreams. His interior dream work played a substantial role in his writing, helping him to overcome writing blocks and even inspiring a few of his short stories. The dreams in this slim, posthumous volume were carefully chosen by Graham during the last months of his life. The world they represent is Greene's alone, because, as he says in the introduction, there are no witnesses. There are, of course, some impressive personalities, equally impressive locales, and scenes of despair and danger, delight and happiness. The reader should be prepared to meet, fleetingly, such notables as Sartre, Henry James, Solzhenitsyn, King Leopold, and Pope John Paul II. The locale may be the Vatican garden, a house party, a river trip, or a room with Goebbels sitting in a gilt armchair. The dreams are told simply, without adornment, yet they are brimming with effort and energy; this is a creative firmament not entirely at rest. For all those who dream.
Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The Subconscious in Graham Greene's Novel Writing,
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This review is from: A World of My Own: A Dream Diary (Hardcover)
"A World of My Own" was apparently Graham Greene's last major work. The book was copyrighted in 1992 and published by Viking Pegasus in 1994, but Graham Greene (GG) had died in 1991. The contents stem from a diary of over 800 pages, kept between 1965-1989. The Foreword by Yvonne Cloetta, GG's last mistress, and GG's own Introduction provide good starts on a Review. The book consists of XIX rather brief chapters, but before looking at some of these, we must try to learn something about the personality of this complex man. GG often used the words "conscious" and "subconscious." We can begin with GG's father's subjecting GG to psychoanalysis, but we never learn why. GG liked his analyst, but when transference did occur, it was directed to the analyst's lovely wife! Dream analysis, of course, has been of interest since Antiquity and was a major concern of analysts like Freud, Jung, and Adler. Dreams are not easy to remember In preparing for this Review, I remembered this fragment. I met a beautiful brunette imbued with "Mozartian qualities," but there was no mention of terms like symphony, movement, or compositional key, or names like Don Giovanni and Jupiter Symphony. Later I was sadly sitting on a seat in an A/C awaiting takeoff when my Mozartian friend was seated beside me. Apparently, we flew off into eternal happiness. GG always had pencil and paper on a bedside table. For years he recorded his dreams and then transcribed them into an ever more voluminous diary. GG's subconscious played a big role in his writing. GG reread his daily writing just before bed, thus overcoming blockage and giving new ideas for writing. Examples include "It's a Battlefield," "The Honorary Consul," and "A Burnt Out Case." The last in particular showed GG's personal influence on the character Querry. GG regarded "The Power and the Glory" to be his best book. Many of GG's dreams were of a warning nature, leaving him depressed for hours afterwards. At age 7, GG dreamed of a shipwreck the night the "Titanic" sank. In "A Sort of Life," GG describes mixed feelings toward his father (v.s.). Indeed, GG had a strenuous inner life! However, his dreams contained little erotic material. His dreams could show fear but never terror or nightmare. Many of his dreams seem to have a biblical flavor. Would I recommend this book? He refers too often to Robert Louis Stevenson. Many of the chapters are rather boring. Perhaps, the term "His Last Bow" that Conan-Doyle applied to the end of Sherlock Holmes's cases might fit in well here. Finally, here are a few examples of chapters and the dream characters inhabiting them. IV, in "Statesmen and Politicians," GG meets Mr Wilson, General de Gaulle, Khrushchev, Omar Torrijos (see "Getting to Know the General"), Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Edward Heath, Yuri Andropov, Francois Mitterrand, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Oliver Cromwell (!). VIII, in "Brief Contacts with Royalty,' GG meets King Leopold, Queen Elizabeth, King Ibn Saud, and An Unknown Princess. XI, in Travels GG goes to West Africa, Arabia, China, Syria, Australia, Liberia, The U.S.S.R., and Cuba. XVIII, in "Animals Who Talk." GG writes favorably of cats and dogs (in some of my other reviews, I have expressed amazement that in this animal-rich world of ours, GG seems oblivious to their existence). If you're a real GG fan and not a dilettante, go ahead and buy GG's Dream Diary. The more of GG we read, the better we understand one of the greatest English-language writers of the 20th Century.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some Worlds More Interesting Than Others,
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This review is from: A World of My Own: A Dream Diary (Hardcover)
This book is a good example as to why most people care so little to listen to friends talking about their dreams: dreams are so specific in time and place to the dreamer that they only come alive in the dreamer's mind. Greene's accounts usually consist mostly of the raw details about the dream (the who, what, and where), but provide few vivid details that might bring the characters or events alive to the reader. This very short book, only about 120 pages of total text in somewhat large print, was published in 1992, the year after Greene died in 1991. His friend and publisher Max Reinhardt was starting a new imprint and Greene offered this minor work up for his friend. Greene states the book is extracted from more than 800 pages of dream diaries he kept from 1965 through 1989. Unfortunately this work covers the second half of Greene's lengthy writing career, from the period after his earlier great works. Most of the dreams discussed are in very short paragraphs and few run more than a page. While some dreams have short introductions, most don't. The book suffers greatly since we don't know the date of each dream. Greene choose to organize them by subject (e.g., War, Religion, Travel) rather than chronologically. If only he would have had a date with each dream and a brief introduction giving some idea as to why he choose the specific dream out of all the material. While Greene claimed to use dream material in his writings, so few of these dreams have direct relevance to anything he wrote in his later years. Only a few are directly mentioned or specifically shown as having been used in his writings. Few reveal much about the inner Greene. The best thing about the book is his six-page introduction which discusses the real world in relation to the dream world and vice versa. Greene's imagination and his life are far better on display in his novels and short stories.
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