Doctor Fischer of Geneva, Or, the Bomb Party

A man falls in love with the daughter of a cynical millionaire who hosts humiliating dinners for a select group of wealthy diners with the aim of finding out whether there is any limit to their greed. As always, Graham Greene's prose is elegant and insightful. Although the gluttonous rich characters are stereotypical figures, the primary character is a richly nuanced creation. Through him, Greene writes movingly of happiness, the joy of an unexpected romance, and the tragedy of loss. The author must have been in a rather dark period of his life when he wrote this bleak allegory. Those who are looking for an uplifting read should not choose this book, but if you can be moved by the plight of a decent man trying to make sense of the sad lives around him, you will find much of value here.

In my estimation, reviews that pan a book (or steal some of its stars) on the grounds that it turned out not to be the meal that particular reader needed on a given day do the author a dreadful disservice. One ought not to read Graham Greene expecting a fairyland meringue. My own criterion here would be to ask whether the author had done what he/she wanted/meant to, and how well or badly. I believe Graham Greene did what he meant to, here, and I certainly would not call this novel "minor," except in the sense that the Old Testament prophets are called "minor" because their books are shorter. Another reader, Scottish Lawyer in Edinburgh, proposed the term "allegorical" for this novel, with a question mark. I prefer to see this novel as a "morality play," also medieval (while managing to be simultaneously modernist) but connoting less of a one-to-one correspondence of individual characters with abstractions or qualities and allowing more scope for characterization. Greene's chilling prose is oddly capable of rousing the warmest and most diverse sentiments in his readers, at least THIS reader. His range and degree of nuance are rare: I found his characters-- all of them-- incredibly human and moving. I believe this novel will stay with me a long time. Greene's theological underpinnings and acerbic certitude are refreshing in a day when most believe nothing at all, or try to. I concede that earlier in my life I might have found Dr. Fischer to be something other than a believable character... but then I was intractably naive for longer than most. Human cruelty is all around us, and individual humans can be crueler than we care to acknowledge. Greene does this element of human character-- the active, freely-willed choice of evil in the context of the quotidian-- better than almost anyone. The Karsh photo of the author on the 1980 hardback edition I own is just haunting. The fictitious narrator of "Dr. Fischer, or The Bomb Party" has lost a hand and wears a glove to cover his prosthetic replacement; the fishy-eyed photo of Greene (with great pouches of flesh beneath those eyes) foregrounds his hands, in front of his face, and they look frankly as if are leather gloves two sizes too large. This certainly added to the Kafkaesque quality of my reading experience. I read as a writer reads, taking delight in word and syntax, and this book frankly made me apoplectic with writerly delight every page or two (even if "delight" is not precisely the word we want here, and certainly not twice!) Alfred Jones, who tells us the tale, remarks on the second page of the story that "it was not for his money that I detested Dr. Fischer. I hated him for his pride, his contempt of all the world, and his cruelty." I would disagree with the reader who thought this was a satire of : I see it instead as an astute head-on critique of very real human choices (pride, contempt, cruelty) that is so realistic it appears surreal. Money is the least of it, except insof

Alfred Jones works as a translator and letter-writer in a chocolate factory in Vevey. He gets acquainted with Anna-Luise, daughter of Dr Fischer of Geneva. The latter became a millionaire by selling toothpaste and lives in a mansion in Versoix. A strange marriage it is because Jones is in his fifties and Anna-Luise could almost be his daughter - she is 21. But this is perhaps what she seeks, a father more sympathetic than Dr Fischer whom Jones detests because of his pride, his contempt of all the world and his cruelty. He doesn't even oppose to his marrying Anna-Luise. Dr Fischer is famous for the parties he gives at his house. The parties are always attended by the same people: General Kruger (a divisionnaire in the Swiss army), Richard Deane (a film star), Mr Kips (the bent lawyer) and Mrs Montgomery who acts as a hostess. Though wealthy, all these characters are in one way or other dependant on Dr Fischer which allows him to humiliate, despise and belittle them during those parties. Only Jones doesn't allow himself to be mocked which greatly displeases Dr Fischer. With his last party - The Bomb Party - Graham Greene shows the limitless greed of the rich and the party becomes a farce, a black comedy and a painful satire, and it allows the author to show that cynicism is actually only a façade behind which weak characters like to hide.

Reading Greene is like ecounting the color green on a traffic light; you go on. What collided with me mostly is how this book is an utter antonym to its own being. It is ever so sweetly acerb! A "Giullare" that teases and pleads the reader at the same time.

This is an astonishingly addictive book. What amazed me even more was the manner in which Greene managed to pack a whole library of ideas about greed, pride and selfishness into a mere hundred and fifty pages. This is a true masterpiece of both fiction, and reality.