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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
In September 1971 Graham Greene published his autobiography, A Sort of Life. The Times Literary Supplement took the opportunity to feature a leading article on his work in which it stated that the autobiography ‘reinforces Greene’s theories about the relations between art and life’, and at once added, ‘that is to say, between his art and his life’. The debate about the relationship between an author’s work and his life recurs constantly, but in Greene’s case the questions which are raised are particularly acute, his view of the matter being in marked contrast to that expressed by most of his critics.
The critics frequently affirm that his books are principally about himself. Marie-Béatrice Mesnet, for example, hints at this when she compares his travel book, The Lawless Roads, with his novel, The Power and the Glory, both of which are set in Mexico. ‘His only addition to reality in the novel’, she writes, ‘lies in the characterization of his human material, in his power to conjure up life and the interior history of a man. The entire background is as close to actual fact as possible.’ Still more explicitly, Victor de Pange has claimed: ‘L’oeuvre de Greene peut se lire comme une autobiographic à peine transposee’.
No doubt it is this trend in the criticism of Greene’s work that explains the reaction of the critics to his autobiography, for while they admire the quality of his writing, they confess to a sense of disappointment. They had hoped to learn his secret. Peter Lewis complained outright in the Daily Mail that ‘Many of Graham Greene’s admirers will be disappointed by A Sort of Life, the autobiography which might have thrown light on his secret’.
page 29 note 1 Greene, Grahame, A Sort of Life (London, Bodley Head, 1971)Google Scholar. All the references to the autobiography are in the text.
page 29 note 2 The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3, 629, 17th September, 1971, p. 1,102.
page 29 note 3 Mesnet, Marie‐Beatrice, Graham Greene and the Heart of the Matter (London, 1954), p. 21Google Scholar.
page 29 note 4 Pange, Victor de, Graham Greene (Paris, 1953), p. 13Google Scholar.
page 30 note 1 Greene, Graham, The Comedians (Penguins), p. 5Google Scholar. All references to Greene's work, unless otherwise stated, are from the Penguin edition currently available.
page 31 note 1 Graham Greene, ‘The Basement Room’ in Twenty‐One Stories, p. 24, 23.
page 31 note 2 Graham Greene, ‘The End of the Party’ in ibid., pp. 34‐43.
page 31 note 3 Cf. Greene, Graham, England Made Me (London, Heinemann, Collected Works, 1970), pp. ix‐xGoogle Scholar.
page 31 note 4 Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads, p. 23.
page 31 note 5 Graham Greene, ‘Across the Bridge’ in Twenty‐One Stories, p. 67.
page 32 note 1 Graham Greene, England Made Me, in the Collected Edition, p. x.
page 33 note 1 Graham Greene, The Man Within, p. 65.
page 33 note 2 Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads, p. 106.
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