Writers of my generation are decidedly more sedentaryandless connectedthanwas GrahamGreene.HereisamanwhoknewPopePaulVI,Panama's dictator General Omar Torrijos and Truman Capote. Greene also served as an intelligence officer in Sierra Leone, visited leper colonies in the Congo and attended a voodoo ceremonyinHaiti.Heisamanwho loathed boredom, disliked nature and saidonce thattheflatplainsof Alberta,Canada,madehimwantto "run screaming".
Greene wrote up to 2000 letters a year. The letters, arranged chronologically by Canadian academic Richard Greene(norelation),tracealife driven by a lust for variety. Since there are no replies to any of the letters, the collection reads like a running speech in Greene's steady, intimate voice.
It is the naked quality of his letters that gives the reader the opportunity to study "the man within". Patterns emerge that reveal Greene's personality. When in an uncomfortableplace,hewoulddescribe what was occurring around him rather than admit fear. In 1942, in a letter to his mother from Sierra Leone, Greene wrote: "And I never get quite used to seeing a vulture sitting complacently on my roof as I come home Puttinguptheirwingslikean umbrella they make a quick tottering reel forward."
To the women in his life, Greene behaved like a gentleman infidel. In his courtship letters to his wife Viviennehesoundschildishly devoted, promising her at one point the monastic marriage she desired. In his affair with fellow married Catholic Catherine Walston, or Cafryn, as he called her, he often wrote to her with a list of options that would allow their relationship to endure.
To his fellow writers, Greene was most encouraging. As editor for Eyre & Spottiswoode, he gave his criticisms to such clients as Mervyn Peake, but offered to smooth things over with a glass of whisky. Especially kind to new writers, he promoted the talents of Indian novelist RK Narayan and had a soft spot for Muriel Spark. When Spark was young and impoverished, he would send her a monthly £20 plus a few bottles of red wine "to take the edge off cold charity".
A left-wing Catholic, Greene was described by fellow author Malcolm Muggeridge as a saint trying unsuccessfully to be a sinner whereas he (Muggeridge)wasasinnertrying unsuccessfully to be a saint. It was acommentthatGreenedidnot appreciate, but the evidence of these letters is that Muggeridge had him pegged.ConcerningMuggeridge's reception into the Roman Catholic Church, Greene wrote in 1982: "I don't know whether to congratulate you or to commiserate with you, but I can sincerely wish you good luck and I can also hope you willmakeabetter Catholic than I have done."
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