5
In the preface to his tale Incognita (1691), William Congreve made a distinction between novels, which were relatively realistic, and prose romances, which were relatively far-fetched. When A Gun for Sale appeared in 1936, the list of works which appeared in the preliminary matter showed that Graham Greene was now dividing his longer narrative works into the categories of ‘Novels’ (The Man Within, It’s a Battlefield, England Made Me) and ‘Entertainments’ (Stamboul Train and A Gun for Sale itself ). The two works he disowned, The Name of Action and Rumour at Nightfall, were excluded from the list. Greene explained that the ‘entertainments’ are melodramatic and ‘are distinct from the novels because as the name implies they do not carry a message (horrible world)’ (CCE, p. 160); he also hoped that by draining and absorbing the ‘poison’ of melodrama they would let the novels become more realistic.
The distinction was rather arbitrary: though the ‘entertainments’ may have been conceived as thrillers which might eventually be filmed, there is no marked generic distinction between, say, A Gun for Sale and It’s a Battlefield, for both have ingredients of the popular thriller mixed with topical political content. (In the event, texts from both categories of his work were seized eagerly by film-makers.) Furthermore, Brighton Rock would be subtitled both ‘A Novel’ (in its first British edition) and ‘An Entertainment’ (in its first American edition). Certainly, there is a clear contrast between The Heart of the Matter, with its sombre realism and theological subtleties, and The Ministry of Fear, a relatively superficial thriller. In the span extending from The Power and the Glory at one extreme to The Ministry of Fear at the other, there remains a large and commodious middle area containing works which overlap in their modes. Eventually, Greene rescinded that division between ‘novels’ and ‘entertainments’. By the time of the Collected Edition of the 1970s, all his long prose narratives were subsumed under the heading ‘Novels’.
From the 1950s onwards, his literary works became more diversified, and comedy played an increasing role. One is reminded of the gentleman who told Dr Johnson, ‘I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in’. There are happy endings for the heroes of Loser Takes All, The Potting Shed and Our Man in Havana. Some of the stage plays are replete with comedy, even farce at times: examples include The Complaisant Lover, The Return of A. J. Raffles and For Whom the Bell Chimes. In the predominantly serious political novels The Comedians, The Honorary Consul and The Captain and the Enemy, there are ludicrous or farcical events, and there is some lightening of the atmosphere compared with his early serious novels: the sense of grim Greeneland dwindles; the descriptive style becomes lighter and less intense; a more secular atmosphere prevails. Some of the later works are largely light-hearted: notably Travels with My Aunt and Monsignor Quixote, with their atmosphere of picaresque adventure. In both, central figures are elderly people with qualities of blithe innocence or innocuous irresponsibility.
Travels with My Aunt is characterised by benevolently transformative recollection. Old locations are revisited, but now they belong not to Greeneland but to a relatively benign territory of picaresque comedy: Brighton is now beguiling, and this Stamboul Train conveys passengers to no lethal ambush. The Pooterish innocent and his mischievous old mother travel with apparent invulnerability through a modern terrain in which they seem to be anachronisms; but they adapt. Augusta enjoys an autumnal love affair, while Henry Pulling, experiencing Paraguay as a lotos-land, can conclude his narrative by quoting (with only the mildest of irony) Browning’s lines, ‘God’s in his heaven – / All’s right with the world!’ Again, in Monsignor Quixote, the conflict between communist and cleric, which, in The Power and the Glory, culminated in the priest’s execution, has been transformed into an affectionate, good-humoured running debate between two old friends as they advance from escapade to escapade in a land of sunshine, wine and hospitality. The ageing Greene called himself a ‘Catholic agnostic’ and acknowledged his disbelief in Hell; and this may be one reason for the diminution of anguish and of dark brooding in the later works. Another reason (recalling Conrad’s late career) may be the inevitable reduction, in Greene’s prosperous old age, of the intensity of his inner divisions and drives; a relative peace of mind seems to have arrived. Death strikes even in Arcadia, of course: Monsignor Quixote dies, as does Wordsworth in Travels with My Aunt, as did the Captain in The Captain and the Enemy. In The Honorary Consul, Stroessner’s Paraguay will be no lotos-land to Plarr and his comrades. The later Greene has nevertheless opened some benignly Arcadian vistas as compensation for the infernal or purgatorial landscapes of the earlier, more intense, novels of Greeneland.
‘A reputation is like a death mask. I wanted to smash the mask’, he said (WE, p. 216). Greene resisted the stereotypes (‘Catholic novelist’, ‘Grim Grin’) that commentators imposed on him; he enjoyed literary explorations which were a recasting of his public identity; and in his old age he took his readers and himself on numerous holidays of the imagination.