The Confidential Agent: An Entertainment

Here is what the author says about his novel: "`The Confidential Agent' was written in six weeks in 1938 after my return from Mexico. The Spanish Civil War furnished the background...I was struggling then through `The Power and the Glory', but there was no money in the book as far as I could foresee. Certainly my wife and two children would not be able to live on one unsaleable book...so I determined to write another "entertainment" as quickly as possible in the mornings, while I ground on slowly with `The Power and the Glory' in the afternoons. The opening scene between two rival agents on the cross-channel steamer--I called them D. and L. because I did not wish to localize their conflict--was all I had in mind, and a certain vague ambition to create something legendary out of a contemporary thriller: the hunted man who becomes in turn the hunter, the peaceful man who turns at bay, the man who has learned to love justice by suffering injustice. But what the legend was to be about in modern terms I had no idea. I fell back for the first and last time in my life on Benzedrine. For six weeks I started each day with a tablet, and renewed the dose at midday. Each day I sat down to work with no idea of what turn the plot might take and each morning I wrote, with the automatism of a planchette, two thousand words instead of my usual stint of five hundred words. In the afternoons `The Power and the Glory' proceeded towards its end at the same leaden pace, unaffected by the sprightly young thing who was so quickly overtaking it. `The Confidential Agent' is one of the few books of mine which I have cared to reread--perhaps because it is not really one of mine. It was as though I were ghosting for another man. D., the chivalrous agent and professor of Romance literature, is not really one of my characters, nor is Forbes, born Furtstein, the equally chivalrous lover. The book moved rapidly because I was not struggling with my own technical problems: I was to all intents ghosting a novel by an old writer who was to die a little before the studio in which I had worked was blown out of existence. All I can say as excuse, and in gratitude to an honoured shade, is that `The Confidential Agent' is a better than Ford Madox Ford wrote himself when he attempted the genre in `Vive Le Roy'". From `Ways of Escape', pp.69-71

A foreign government has sent agent D. to England on a confidential mission, alone. D. is to buy coal at a fair price now with a bonus promised later. But the other side has sent their agent to foil D. in accomplishing his mission. The story tells about D.'s adventures on his trip to London. Greene's "subtle characterization and accomplished craftsmanship" result in a slow-paced story. It is the dialogue that moves the story along. D.'s mistake allows his enemy to search his coat and take his notebook of schedules. When he arrives at his hotel he learns of an appointment at a language school. The language teacher is his contact. D. seemed to be surrounded by enemies, or people he could not trust. D. learns of a new danger from a beggar in the street. D. sleeps that night, then leaves to meet Lord Benditch and negotiate a sale. He meets someone on his walk there. At the meeting he found he could not complete the sale. Then things get worse: a dead body was found. The police come for D. but he manages to escape. D. changes his appearance. D. has failed at his mission; the other side made a better offer. [Greene creates a comedy from the travel of D. and K. This highlights the tragedy of this story.] K. tells what happened. D. continues to hide from the authorities. D. travels to the coal mining town. If his side can't get the coal he will try to prevent the other side from getting it. His appeal falls short, and he must escape again. D. gets unexpected help. But D. is finally arrested and jailed. The police can't make the charges stick due to a lack of identification by eyewitnesses. D. finds he has some friends, and is released on bail. But he must be smuggled out of the country that night. The publicity over this has accomplished D.'s mission: the coal contract was canceled. There is a surprise at the ending. [Is it believable to you?]

When D., an agent from an unnamed country, presumably Spain, arrives in England on a mission to buy coal for his side in a civil war, he discovers that L., an agent for the other side, is also there for the same reason. Coal is now as valuable in his country as gold, and whoever obtains it is likely to win the war. With ambassadors, government officials, and agents constantly changing sides and selling each other out, D. is unable to trust anyone. Formerly a professor of medieval French and an expert in the Song of Roland, D.'s world has been shattered. In the past two years, his wife has been killed, and he's been buried alive, tortured, and jailed. Soon he meets an attractive, young Englishwoman, is implicated in the deaths of two people, has his credentials stolen, and ends up on the run from both the police and his own compatriots. Published in 1939, this is one of Greene's most exciting "entertainments." A thriller of the first order, this novel also deals with big themes, not religious conflicts of his major novels, but the idea of justice, as a good man finds himself hunted for his political allegiances and learns that his own survival and that of his country depend upon his willingness to kill his enemies. A formal, courtly scholar, D. has discovered war is not glamorous, as it is in the Song of Roland, that innocent people are killed, and that survival is not a matter of divine intervention as much as it is a result of forethought and cleverness. Told entirely from D.'s perspective, presumably the "right" perspective in Greene's mind, the reader sees D. as less heroic than he might be and the villains as less villainous. D. is well developed and realistic, however, and he wrestles with issues as his readers might. Set just before World War II, Greene here foreshadows some of the themes with which he struggles in his more contemplative novels--the nature of good and evil, man's constant struggle with guilt, the trauma of betrayal, and the fear of failure. Though there is a female love interest, Rose Cullen, the daughter of Lord Benditch, who owns the coal mines, she is neither plausible nor sufficiently thoughtful to add to the themes here. Ironies abound, and while the novel lacks the light touch and humor which make a novel like Our Man in Havana so successful, this is an exciting story which casts light on important ideas. Mary Whipple

I liked the book a lot because it is a very interesting story. At the beginning it is a little bit hard to understand the plot because there are so many characters, which you do not know. I did not really understand either what D was supposed to do. I realized it after a while and there it became really fascinating. You can feel for D and you do understand his fears and thoughts. I only did not like the ending. I guess it is too simple. Not everything should come out this perfectly. That makes the story less dramatic and somehow untrustworthy. But I would recommend the book to anybody who likes agent stories with a romantic happy ending.