Baron Samedi faces off stick twitching Tontons Macoute. Photo by Charles Carrié

Read by Tim Piggot Smith

Description: Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt “Papa Doc” and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American, and Jones the confidence man—these are the “comedians” of Greene’s title. Hiding behind their actors’ masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. They are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself...

Three men walk onto a ship - a Mr Brown, a Mr Smith, and a Mr Jones - this could be mistaken for a maritime Reservoir Dogs, yet a don't think Tarantino's gangsters could match up to the Tontons Macoute and rats as big as terriers. According to wiki, the Hotel Trianon setting in the book is based on Hotel Olaffson in Central Port au Prince:





In his Ways of Escape, Greene wrote that the book "touched him [Duvalier] on the raw." Duvalier attacked The Comedians in the press. His Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a brochure entitled, "Graham Greene Demasqué" (Finally Exposed). It described Greene as "A liar, a cretin, a stool-pigeon... unbalanced, sadistic, perverted... a perfect ignoramus... lying to his heart's content... the shame of proud and noble England... a spy... a drug addict... a torturer." ("The last epithet has always a little puzzled me," Greene confessed.) Source

There is a film I need to track down: Greene himself wrote the screenplay of his novel, and it stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Alec Guiness and Peter Usinov.



2* The Man Within (1929)
3* A Gun for Sale (1936)
4* Brighton Rock (1938)
TR The Confidential Agent (1939)
3* The Power and the Glory (1940)
4* The Ministry of Fear (1943)
2* The Heart of the Matter (1948)
3* The Third Man (1948)
4* The End of the Affair (1951)
TR Complete Short Stories (1954)
3* The Quiet American (1955)
3* Our Man in Havana (1958)
4* A Burnt Out Case (1960)
5* The Comedians (1965)
4* Travels With My Aunt (1969)
3* The Honorary Consul (1973)
4* The Human Factor (1978)
4* Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980)
4* Monsignor Quixote (1982)
3* The Captain and the Enemy (1988)

3,5⭐️

I guess I'm just not a huge fan of Graham Greene. I wasn't terribly impressed with The Quiet American (which was ubiquitous where I read it, in Vietnam, some years ago) and I felt the same way about The Comedians. I was piqued by Greene's setting of Port-au-Prince, as I've traveled in Haiti and know a bit about her history. The description of life in Papa Doc's world was definitely titillating; he paints a vivid picture of life under this dictatorship that is bolstered by American meddling and/or international indifference. Much of the environment he sets (crushing poverty, nightly blackouts, tropical downpours, nightly rum) I witnessed almost 60 years later. However this was my favorite element of the book. My favorite characters were some of the supporting players, most notably Dr. Magiot and Petit Pierre, with one of the main characters, Jones, growing on me surprisingly throughout the novel. But I found myself somewhat ambivalent toward the narrator, not for want of trying to like him, just the way I was with the other Greene work that I've read. Again, I guess that's just how it goes for me with Greene.

I have a hard time finding fault with anything written by Greene. This one deals with the Papa Doc regime in Haïti and is brutal but intimately human. I traveled in a church group as a kid in a few of the areas mentioned here and so the book talked to me even more.

Not my favorite Greene book, but his writing is always a pleasure to read.

I will post more about this shortly, but for now, this is really, really good.

more soon -- it's been a crazy busy week..

I've just finished this and am basking in some kind of awestruck state. The more I read of Greene, the more I'm slain. The main character, Brown, must be a sort of surrogate for the author: jaded, cynical, fatalistic; a realist who nonetheless has just enough of that kernel of optimism that allows him to hope against hope, to sometimes do the right thing even as the cowardly part of him offers token resistance.

The book takes place in Haiti in the early 1960s during the early days of the terroristic reign of the brutal dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, and in the framework of a fictional story Greene somehow conveys an illuminating, vividly rendered portrait of an historical time and place without ever resorting to historical explanations. Additionally, there's a wry critique of the Cold War (and presciently, the "war on terror"); a lament of the ongoing tendency of superpowers to support surrogate wars in Third World countries, even when they seem to contradict the supposed idealism of the enabling superpower. In this case, Papa Doc is seen as a "bulwark against communism" and the rebels, merely trying to rescue their country from a monster, are labeled as communists. As in Greene's "The Quiet American," there are westerners---Americans and Europeans---in country, operating at cross purposes or otherwise, yet virtually all ineffectual.

The book is both wry and sad, often in the same sentence, and conveys always a powerful and overwhelming sense of mood, place, tension, yearning, hopelessness and expectation. If there's anything here that leaves nagging doubts, it might be the occasional racism of Greene's omniscient narrator (though we suspect this is how the characters see things), the sense of stiltedness in some of the overly crafted dialogue and his deficiency in rounding out his female characters (Martha seems merely a defeated mirror image of her lover Brown). Still, many of Greene's black characters are rendered sympathetically and show depth, Dr. Magiot and Phillipot for instance.

The enigmatic, chameleon nature of the gypsy-like conman Jones provides Brown and the reader an evolving conundrum that eventually morphs into an absurdist, pathetic comedy. In fact, the one constant about Jones repeatedly alluded to is his talent for making anyone laugh, a skill as good as any in a world where diversion is as important as useless actions. He is, in a sense, the central "comedian" of the story. His can-do bullshitting seems infectious, and in fact, it turns out to really be the only skill he has, despite his elaborate personal backstory. The notion that we're all unwitting comedians in a tragic world seems a too obvious conceit on Greene's part, too cheap of one for an author of his skill and stature. Yet, the true nature of Jones, revealed at the book's end, makes the conceit more valid. Brown's dispassionate observations of the madness around him belie the pull of a morality that still radiates a magnetism inside him, and allows him to admire the certainty of purpose possessed by the naive American couple, the Smiths, who are on a daffy campaign to bring vegetarianism to places where people don't tend to have any food at all.

It's a darkly funny conceit in a book drenched in black comedy and tropical heat. The moral force that moves Brown finally also moves Jones to become the man he has always claimed to be, a hero stitched from the wholecloth of his own fictions. He becomes an unlikely hero, to Brown and to us. This is a splendid, memorable short novel that just may haunt you as much as it likely will me. -EG

[The 1967 film version with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor is a strange and wonderful oddity but is no substitute for the book (even though Greene himself wrote the screenplay). The movie jettisons the many pages of personal backstory about Brown's youth and his mother and all the activities aboard the ship prior to his return to Haiti that make up a large part of the book's first portion. We see Jones thrown into the stockade for interrogation just a few minutes into the film, whereas in the book this takes place much later (in fact, Jones' apparent disappearance remains a mystery to other characters for quite a long time in the book). Jones is thus too demystified early in the film. There are all kinds of other changes, and I'd think someone approaching the film would wonder why certain things have any significance; it throws a lot of things at you in short dialogue bursts that take up many pages in the book. I like the film, but it lacks the book's great richness :]. -EG

“In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.”

The Comedians is a 1966 novel set in Haiti; well, it begins with a slow boat voyage across the Atlantic with a bunch of people that joke (comedy!) and drink their way into some interconnections.

Ship of fools:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of...

(Ship of Fools is a 1962 novel by Katherine Ann Porter, a story of a group of disparate characters sailing from Mexico to Europe aboard a German passenger ship).

One guy on this slow boat, the Medea, is an American, Smith, a minor challenger to Truman in the 1952 election, on a vegetarian (yes, you read that right) ticket. He and his wife, initially seen as kind of ridiculous, are trying to establish a Vegetarian Center in Haiti. That fact has comic potential, but one problem (and there are a few) with this scheme is that they arrive in Port-au-Prince naively ignorant of the extent of the murderous reign of Papa Doc Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute. They don’t really realize the extent of the dangers there.

Major Jones, a Brit, also travels to Haiti to find some way to capitalize on the chaos and get rich. Like the Smiths, he is ambitious and likable, but unlike them, he is unprincipled, though they all like each other.

Our main character, an anti-hero, Brown returns to Haiti to see his mother and Martha Pineda, his lover and the wife of the Uruguayan ambassador. Brown’s mother dies, and he inherits her hotel. He’s a typically morose and politically insightful/disdainful/apolitical Greene character, a failed Catholic, having a miserable affair with Martha, who mostly loves her son. I just read Greene’s The Quiet American, set in Vietnam, and the similarities between the two main guys are striking, and maybe a little tiresome, since in both books these guys suffer from depression/ennui/despair. Greene, who suffered much of his life from depression (and maybe bipolar disorder), and also infamously had affairs, possibly could identify with Brown just a bit. Can Brown love? Would he die for a set of principles? No, on both accounts.

As Brown (and maybe Greene) sees it, Smith and his wife are better off than he is, because they love each other and are at least earnest and committed to a set of ideals. They are in his estimation possibly admirable people, while he and the almost comical pathological liar Jones just don’t care, are essentially “comedians,” which might be another word for people living in absurdity, devoid of meaning.

So: A few people have purpose in life. They are dedicated to a cause, they love, they have the courage to act and integrity. They might be Catholics or Communists or vegetarians. But they believe in something. The rest are comedians, jokers:

“You have a sense of humour. I am in favor of jokes. They have political value. Jokes are a release for the cowardly and the impotent.”

There’s a kind of companion book for this book, Junot Diaz’s wonderful The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, set in the Dominican Republic with a kind of matching brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo who rules with despotic power over his country from 1930 to 1961. Papa Doc ruled Haiti just as tyrannically (Yes? No? Pick your poison) from 1957 to 1971. The U.S. largely supported both brutal dictators, as they often seemed to do, in spite of their massacring their own people, as long as they were anti-communist, unlike Cuba’s Castro. Greene was increasingly opposed to American imperialism around the world, and he finally came down on the side of action against injustice, maybe even including violence, but at least the willingness to die for one’s beliefs. You can see that in his critique of the bleak Brown.

The Quiet American is a better book than The Comedians, but the political commentary in both books on two forever abused and neglected little countries is sadly interesting. The boat trip is a little slow in The Comedians in the way ocean trips can be, I suppose, but in the last third of the book the action and reflections on love and ideology—twin passions explored in a lot of Greene--really pick up and everything becomes suddenly and violently interesting. It Is Graham Greene. It has some great writing in it.

First of all, The Comedians is not a comedy, and the humor is dark. It is about the regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti. It graphically portrays the terrorism of the Tontons Macoute, Duvalier’s secret police. The exact year is not given but it appears to be early 1960s. It opens on a ship with the three men, Smith, Jones, and Brown, traveling to Port-au-Prince. We hear parts of their back stories during the voyage and more details upon arriving in Haiti.

Mr. Brown operates a hotel in Port-au-Prince, but his hotel is now almost out of business due to the policies of the current dictatorship. Mr. Smith is an American politician, traveling with his wife. The couple is idealistic, and they want to bring vegetarianism to Haiti. They stay at Brown’s hotel. Major Smith is the mystery man of the novel. He tells many tales of his past exploits but has not convinced everyone. His mission to Haiti is initially unclear but we find out more as the story progresses. The title refers to people that do not take a stand in life. They are “the comedians,” and protagonist Mr. Brown admits to being among them. He admits to going through life without realizing what is important, and at the end, we see the ramifications of his indecisiveness.

Greene’s writing is wonderfully expressive. His characters are flawed and well-formed. He takes on the US and other countries’ policies of the period in support of dictators, providing they were anti-communist. Published in 1966, it is a novel of its time but still absorbing these many years later.

Non avrei mai pensato di abbandonare un libro di Graham Greene, non è un abbandono definitivo perchè è Greene, ma evidentemente per me non è il suo momento.

Heartache in Haiti.


A glorious, compassionate tale set on the Island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean in the 1960s during the infamous rule of the despotic 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, aka 'Baron Samedi', who with his henchmen, the 'Tonton Macoutes', or 'Bogeymen', incarcerated tortured and killed all opposition, if they were unable to flee.
The ruling regime was aided by US support as they were not Communist, like Cuba, but capitalists, albeit totally corrupt. Haiti today languishes in the lower echelons of all 3rd world countries, for health, literacy and its economy. Yet this was the 1st republic in the world created 2 centuries ago by slaves and has a rich & fascinating cosmopolitan history.

It's also a most unlucky country-in 2010, I experienced the Greendale earthquake measuring 7.1 in close proximity to the epicentre without any fatalities here. A similar shake in Port-au-Prince in Haiti caused upwards of 150,000 fatalities and cost $2-3 billion, aggravated by a cholera epidemic perhaps imported by UN peacekeeping troops?

But, this novel impresses because it has so much heart. It is a tragic comedy with a failing adulterous love affair at its centre, which mirrors what is happening between the protagonist and his adopted country.
Then there's the Gothic themes of the voodoo rituals which permeate the spiritual beliefs of the population, and the author draws comparisons to Catholic rituals.

Yet throughout the story, levity is achieved without compromise of the plot, or the emotional heft. It's not as outrageously funny as 'Our Man in Havana' IMHO, although there's plenty of droll caricatures to fill one's imagination, despite the desperation. The prose is lucid and evocative although the English dialogue involves some French & Latin phrases but does not realise the local patois cf. 'Wide Sargasso Sea.'

If a book is 'an orphan at birth', then this was a powerful one as it was banned in Haiti until some time after the Duvalier regime was overturned, much to the author's delight. At the end of the Introduction he writes "..a pen, as well as a silver bullet, can draw blood."

Yes, a pen should be mightier than a sword!

Loved it. Easily 5*.

به نام او

مقلدهای گرین به مانند بیشتر آثارش در کشوری به غیر از زادگاه نویسنده می‌گذرد، در یکی از کشورهای کوچک آمریکای مرکزی: هائیتی
مقلدها سرگذشت مردمان تحت سلطه دیکتاتوری هائیتی به نام پاپادودوک است
رمان تمام مولفه‌های سایر آثار گرین را دارد: سیاست، عشق، ماجراهای جنایی و طنز خاص گرین

ولی به نظر من مقلدها جزو آثار متوسط این نویسنده بریتانیایی‌ست، رمان شروع خوبی داردو با ضرباهنگ معقولی پیش می‌رود ولی در اواسط کار از ریتم می‌افتد و به جایی که نویسنده به توصیف بیشتر این دیکتاتوری مخوف بپردازد (نمونه متعالیش سور بز یوسا) به بحثهای مذهبی عقیدتی بین شخصیتهایش مشغول می‌شود.

در کل اگر می‌خواهید تنها یکی دو رمان از گرین بخوانید مقلدها گزینه خوبی نیست ولی اگر گرین نویسنده محبوبتان است مقلدها رمانی‌ست که می‌تواند اوقاتتان را خوش کند