The Life of Graham Greene: 1955-1991

Graham Greene died in 1991. His writing career dated back to 1925. The introduction is about finding Greene: wars, politics, geography. He was adventurous and curious. His nature had variety. He was plagued by depressions. Greene moved from his father's school to Oxford. He was fastidious, sensitive, observant. Shortly after graduation Graham Greene acquired a job as subeditor of THE TIMES. His third novel was published and became a literary success. He got married, having converted to Catholicism for his wife's sake. Another novel, STAMBOUL TRAIN, was successful. He traveled to Liberia and wrote, JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS. While conceiving BRIGHTON ROCK, Greene went to Mexico to write about religious persecution. Back in England he arranged to rent a studio in which to write and turned out THE CONFIDENTIAL AGENT and THE POWER AND THE GLORY. Next came THE MINISTRY OF FEAR. In 1942 Greene went to Sierra Leone for the SIS and wrote THE HEART OF THE MATTER. After the war Catherine Walston became Greene's lover for thirteen years. The complex and beautiful love was best described in THE END OF THE AFFAIR. Greene was a compulsive writer, producing five hundred words a day. In 1955 Greene was fifty-one, the year of THE QUIET AMERICAN. He had a feeling for victims. Greene had an outcast of a brother and his mother had always put his father first. In the fifties Greene spent three weeks in China. At that time Greene was trying to hold onto at least two women and was failing with one, Catherine. OUR MAN IN HAVANA came out in 1958. Greene served as a watchdog for the Bodley Head publishing firm. He assisted in bringing out a favorite of his, Ford Maddox Ford. After OUR MAN IN HAVANA, book and movie, Greene sought material for A BURNT-OUT CASE. That book is an introspective study of crisis. Greene was a man of five different personalities. His frantic busyness began after Catherine Walston refused marriage. His contact with her became more and more tenuous. The journey to the Congo took place in 1959. In visiting a leper colony Greene was seeking spiritual hope. The doctor in charge opined that Greene was the opposite of a journalist. He did not look at people like cockroaches. Revising BURNT-OUT CASE without Catherine Walston was difficult. THE COMPLAISANT LOVER, a play, was a success, but the next play wasn't. THE COMEDIANS was set in Duvalier's Haiti. By focusing on Duvalier, Greene escaped himself. Greene is more revelatory in his fiction than he is in his memoirs. (He was a shy man.) The biographer believes his last masterpiece was THE HONORARY CONSUL. Greene wanted to tell the truth. He possessed a sharply sceptical mind. Work on THE HUMAN FACTOR was interrupted in 1963 by the Kim Philby affair. The book came out in 1978. For the sake of his work, Greene gave up being a comrade to men and a lover to women. In 1980 Greene received death threats. Faith and doubt were the topics of MONSIGN

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