Graham Greene: The Enemy Within

The negative reviews preceding mine certainly do not mince words in castigating Shelden's biography of Graham Greene. However, they offer nothing to refute Shelden's well documented research; they are simply expressions of displeasure (and possibly embarrassment--how do you reconcile your world-class super-sophisticated British novelist toting around a teddy-bear like Radar O'Reilly?) Although I have been fascinated by much of Greene's fiction, and will continue to read and re-read his best works, I think Shelden makes quite a good case that Greene was an extremely manipulative, bisexual, anti-Semitic, hypocrite who stood for nothing in his personal life. Indeed, Greene belongs with Rousseau, Hemingway, Brecht, et al., in Paul Johnson's famous book of misfits, Intellectuals. Greene's sham Catholicism is particularly galling, since he converted as a young man only as a means to win Vivien's hand, yet he used it for the rest of his life as a bogus defense against those who might question the sincerity and depth of his religious sentiments. As Shelden says, if one did not know that Greene was (allegedly) Catholic, it would be very difficult to read works like Brighton Rock or The Comedians as some kind of theological statement about grace and transcendence. Let's face it: Greene was only looking out for number one. There is nothing wrong with that, except if you are passing yourself off as a humanist.

I read the other reviews and I think people don't like a biography that doesn't polish a popular authors life. i found this biography to be very good. It piqued my interest in Graham Greene. I shall read another biography and compare the two. I will also read Graham Greene's Memoirs. No biography or autobiography should considered 100% fact because a biographer may interview someone with bad memory and miss certain cluw along his or her investigation. And autobiographers also tend to embellish things. So it's better to read more than one account of a persons life before making conclusions.