Volume 42, Number 11 · June 22, 1995
The Lives of Graham Greene
By David Lodge
Graham Greene: The Man Within
by Michael Shelden
Heinemann, 537 pp., £20.00
Graham Greene: The Enemy Within
by Michael Shelden
Random House, 454 pp., $27.50
The Life of Graham Greene Volume II, 1939–1955
by Norman Sherry
Viking, 562 pp., $34.95
Graham Greene: Three Lives
by Anthony Mockler
Hunter Mackay, 237 pp., £14.95
Graham Greene: Friend and Brother
by Leopoldo Duran, translated by Euan Cameron
HarperCollins, 352 pp., £20.00
The Graham Greene Film Reader: Reviews, Essays, Interviews & Film Stories
edited by David Parkinson
Applause Books, 738 pp., $35.00
For obvious reasons, literary biography tends to focus on the parallels between its subject's life and work, but sometimes the discrepancies can be just as interesting and revealing. In The Quiet American, for instance, Greene shackled his hero, Fowler, with an estranged wife who, because she is a devout Anglican, refuses to divorce him, thus preventing him from marrying his Vietnamese mistress; but in real life Greene declined the offers of the devout Catholic Vivien to divorce after his affair with Catherine Walston had effectively ended their marriage of twenty-one years, and he never even legalized their separation. Why was this? Perhaps in spite of his fervent pleas to Catherine to leave her husband, he subconsciously feared another permanently binding relationship, and perpetuated his dead but valid marriage to Vivien as a defense.
Review, 4658 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |