Volume 36, Number 4 · March 16, 1989
God's Greene
By John Bayley
The Captain and the Enemy
by Graham Greene
Viking, 189 pp., $17.95
Graham Greene
by Neil McEwan
St. Martin's Press, 146 pp., $24.95
A Reader's Guide to Graham Greene
by Paul O'Prey
Thames and Hudson, 160 pp., $10.95 (paper)
The genre of thrillers and detective stories has strong appeal to deconstructural critics, to whose gimlet eyes its repetitive rituals and devices are wide open. But its more common readers generally make a more downright Johnsonian distinction between those they enjoy and the ones they don't go for. It is the simple distinction between what is convincing and what is not, what seems 'real' and what seems false or made-up. No use the literary lads telling us that it's all made-up, that the whole thing is composed not of life but of 'literariness.' We know what we like, and cling sturdily to the old distinction.
Review, 2436 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. |