It was sadly hilarious, hilariously sad, meaningfully meaningless and in the end only sorrow remains...

Κεντάει ο συγγραφέας. Δεν ξέρω αν τα κατασκοπικά – ευρείας κατανάλωσης έργα του είναι εξίσου καλά, δεν με ενδιαφέρει κιόλας, αφού δεν πρόκειται να τα διαβάσω, αλλά αν κρίνω από τους “Θεατρίνους” 'εχει εξαιρετική πένα. Πρώτα από όλα, το έργο αυτό διαθέτει εξαιρετικές δόσεις χιούμορ κι έναν απίστευτο τρόπο να αποκαλύπτει την ωμή αλήθεια, ενώ είναι συνάμα ατμοσφαιρικό και έχει ολοζώντανους, αξιαγάπητους και ενδιαφέροντες χαρακτήρες. Ισορροπεί άψογα ανάμεσα στην δράση και στον στοχασμό και κρατάει αμείωτο το ενδιαφέρον ως την τελευταία σελίδα.

Η κεντρική ιδέα είναι πως όλοι οι άνθρωποι λίγο ως πολύ υποδυόμαστε ρόλους για μπορέσουμε να σταθούμε και να υπάρξουμε μέσα σε μια κοινωνία. Όσα ψέματα όμως κι αν πούμε, μοιραία θα έρθει η στιγμή να αντιμέτωπίσουμε την αμείλικτη πραγματικότητα, να αναμετρηθούμε με τον ίδιο μας τον εαυτό. Επίσης ο κόσμος που ζούμε είναι σκληρός και βρώμικος και δεν αρκούν ούτε οι καλύτερες προθέσεις προκειμένου να αλλάξει. Ο κόσμος αυτός μπορεί να μοιάζει με σκηνή θεάτρου στην οποία παίζεται το πιο παράλογο έργο που θα μπορούσε να συλλάβει η πιο διεστραμμένη διάνοια. Κι όταν πέσει η αυλαία, ανάμεσα στους πρωταγωνιστές θα υπάρχουν αναπόφευκτα σημαντικές απώλειες.

Η υπόθεση εκτυλίσσεται στην Αιτή, λίγο πριν και στις αρχές της δικτατορίας του Πάπα Ντοκ, δηλαδή στα 1957. Ο κεντρικός ήρωας ο κύριος Μπράουν έχει κληρονομήσει από την αλλόκοτη μητέρα του ένα ξενοδοχείο, το οποίο λόγω των πολιτικών γεγονότων παραμένει σχεδόν άδειο, καθώς ο τουρισμός μαραζώνει. Επικρατεί τρομοκρατία, καθώς η μυστική αστυνομία του δικτάτορα , οι Τοντόν Μακούτ σκοτώνουν και εκφοβίζουν ασύστολα. Ωστόσο οι κομπίνες, οι ρεμούλες με την αμερικάνικη βοήθεια συνεχίζονται απρόσκοπτα. Οι ντόπιοι μην έχοντας άλλη εναλλακτική πεθαίνουν από την πείνα επαιτώντας και βρίσκουν παρηγοριά στις δύο κυρίαρχες θρησκείες, το Βουντού και τον Καθολικισμό. Κι όπως αναφέρει ένας από τους ήρωες του έργου:

"Οι υποστηρικτές του Πάπα Ντοκ στην Ουάσινγκτον υποκινούνται από κάποιες αμερικάνικες εταιρίες κυλινδρόμυλων που αλέθουν το εισαγόμενο σιτάρι για την τροφοδοσία του πληθυσμού. Κι είναι στ' αλήθεια αξιοπερίεργο πόσα χρήματα μπορεί να βγάλει κανείς από μια φτωχιά χώρα, έτσι και δείξει λίγη εξυπνάδα. Επιπλέον υπάρχει η πολύ μεγάλη κομπίνα με τα μοσχαρίσια κρέατα. Οι άνθρωποι εδώ είναι τόσο φτωχοί που τρώνε κρέας τόσο συχνά όσο και γλυκίσματα. Έτσι δεν τους νοιάζει και πάρα πολύ που όλα τα κρέατα φεύγουν για την αμερικάνικη αγορά. Από την άλλη, ούτε οι εισαγωγείς νοιάζονται αν τα κρέατα αυτά συγκεντρώνουν τις σωστές προδιαγραφές μια και όλα τους γίνονται κονσέρβες για τις υπανάπτυκτες χώρες, οι οποίες και τις πληρώνουν με τα χρήματα της αμερικάνικης βοήθειας που παίρνουν. Αν το εμπόριο αυτό σταματήσει ο μέσος Αμερικάνος δεν πρόκειται να χάσει τίποτα. Οι πολιτικοί όμως της Ουάσινγκτον θα χάσουντο 1% που εισπράττουν για κάθε κιλό που εξάγεται”.

Όσα όνειρα κι αν έχει κάποιος, όσα ταλέντα κι όση πονηριά, δεν αρκούν για να αλλάξουν την ροή των προαποφασισμένων γεγονότων. Ο 20ος αιώνα δεν είναι υπήρξε επουδενί (σε αντιθεση με τον 19ο) μια εποχή αισιοδοξίας, αλλά μια εποχή ατέρμονης ανησυχίας. Η έννοια της δικαιοσύνης θυσιάστηκε στην αναγκαιότητας της διατήρησης μια ισορροπίας του τρόμου (Ψυχρός Πόλεμος) και φαίνεται πως αυτό θα συνεχιστεί και κατά τον 21ο αιώνα. Μοιραία όλοι καλούνται να παίξουν τους ρόλους τους σε μια μαύρη κωμωδία που είναι καταδικασμένη να έχει πικρό τέλος.

Ωραίο βιβλίο. Παρόλο που καταπιάνεται με σκοτεινά θέματα, χάρη στην χιουμοριστική και συχνά σαρκαστική διάθεση του συγγραφέα, δεν είναι καθόλου βαρύ. Θα διαβάσω οπωσδήποτε κάποια στιγμή κι ένα άλλο βιβλίο του, που μου το έχουν συστήσει θερμά το “The Power and the Glory”.

Not a terribly funny book, despite the title. Not that I expected it to be, given other stuff I've read by him. I was mostly intrigued by the fact that it takes place in Haiti during Papa Doc Duvalier's regime: a supremely messed-up time and place. And Greene does Haiti well; it seems like they were made for each other, though I've got the feeling Greene can evoke any place pretty well. This is marginally lighter fare than either The Power and the Glory or The Heart of the Matter, and considerably more readable. I do feel compelled to quote one of the funnier moments as representative of the novel, even though it's really not representative of the novel...

Major (maybe) Jones is a scam artist (maybe) who needs to be smuggled out of Haiti, so naturally he dresses as a woman -- but in a costume rather than a legitimate outfit. He looks sort of like a gypsy, I think. When he arrives at the embassy in question, of course everyone is surprised. "Mr. Jones!" they all say. He corrects them thus: "MAJOR Jones . . . in the women's army, of course." Maybe you had to be there. Also this:

"He turned his back and left the officer's hand floating in mid-air like a catfish in an aquarium."

SO GOOD.

Edit: for some reason, when I look back at all the Graham Greene I('ve) read, this is my favorite. So, changing it from three to four stars.

This novel (pub: 1966) follows a hotelier in Haiti which is why I was drawn to it—even more so because the fictional hotel Trianon is based off of the actual Hotel Oloffson which has a long and storied reputation in Port-au-Prince (think: gothic tropical gingerbread mansion, Mick Jagger & Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were guests once, long standing live entertainment, Anthony Bourdain featured it etc). So once again it is a dated representation of a Caribbean hotel and hoteliers (we need some modern takes please) but I found it informative with regards to Haiti under Duvalier and the Macoute. Plus...the intro by Paul Theroux gives a pretty gritty look at Greene and his love/hate relationship with Haiti.

My stepbrother, Erik Badger, went to Haiti after graduating from Shimer College at its old campus in Waukegan, Illinois. His thesis advisor, Steve Werlin, had been working there off and on for years on aid projects. Erik's job was to teach teachers to teach adults to read and write in the native creole. First, however, he had to learn the language himself and this was accomplished by depositing him in a rural village where no one spoke English. It worked.

I bought this book with Mr. Badger in mind. His years in Haiti were so important to him that I was reading everything I could find about the country. Greene, of course, was a famous novelist and I had actually once seen on television the Burton/Taylor movie based on this book.

Unfortunately, it wasn't what I had hoped for. The story works well enough, but its really about characters, who aren't at all like the Haitians Erik dealt with, in settings more appropriate to foreigners and elites than to the kinds of people he dealt with.

After several years in Haiti, Badger went on to work for Shimer College. Just recently he got another job with an agency, Haiti Partners, dealing with the island nation, but this time he works mostly State-side. Werlin, while still connected to Shimer, spends most of his time in Haiti as an employee of a microcredit institution.

Smith, Jones and Brown. They are familiar to us, aren't they? We have met them across so many jokes. They are the faceless comedians in the world of levity.

In this novel, Mr. Smith a is failed American presidential candidate, who ran on the platform of vegetarianism against Harry Truman; "Major" Jones is a war-veteran from Burma (at least, as per his claim); and Brown, the narrator, is the owner of the Hotel Trianon in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. They are comedians because they keep on drifting through life in imaginary worlds of their own, refusing to see the reality around them.

The drama is played out in the Haiti of the sixties, when it was ruled by François Duvalier, or "Papa Doc" as he preferred to be called - a tinpot dictator and a cruel tyrant. He rules with an iron hand, with the help of his own secret police called the Tonton Macoute (which translates roughly to "bogeymen") who can arrest, torture, maim and kill anyone with impunity. In this banana republic, all three comedians have their own agenda.

Smith (along with his wife, who is his constant companion) wants to introduce vegetarianism to the country by starting a vegetarian centre. Being an American and a "presidential candidate", he gets better treatment than most people within the country. However, the canny Haitian administration is not interested in any business which would not generate "revenue" for the individuals involved in it - so they are not interested in Smith's offer, made in the best of faith. But even this disappointment, and the distressing events the Smith couple are witness to, do not shake their childlike faith in the essential goodness of the black man.

If Smith becomes a comedian because of his hopeless idealism, Jones becomes one through his reckless adventurism. He has made himself into a caricature of the British empire-maker; the pukka sahib whose English itself is dated as though it came out of a book of phrases. Jones has widely varying fortunes within the country, swinging from mistreated prisoner to favoured entrepreneur to wanted criminal to revolutionary, all the while keeping his facade intact.

Brown, the narrator, is neither a crook nor a saint. His life is centred around turning his failing hotel around (who will vacation in a police state?), and committing adultery with Martha Pineda, the wife of the ambassador from a South American country. Towards the end of the novel, this affair becomes an obsession and it is his jealousy which precipitates the final crisis.

Graham Greene has done a masterful job of keeping an emotionless and mildly cynical tone throughout the novel - Brown is the best candidate to do that, which is why the author uses his POV in my opinion. From the first meeting of the comedians on board the Haiti-bound Medea, to their final departure from the country through various means, Brown's voice refuses to get involved. He is only a spectator (an automaton, almost) to unfolding human tragedy on all sides; except when he talks about his clandestine meetings with Martha, where he shows himself as an extreme example of male possessiveness.

This novel was published in 1966, when Papa Doc's despotic rule was a political reality - so it was pretty contemporary. Reading it five-and-a-half decades down the line, one could call it historical fiction. What the story does beautifully is to capture the essence of a time and place through the lives of various individuals; it makes it fixed in history yet relevant for all times.

I read it a long, long time ago, but since I knew nothing of Haiti or Papa Doc or the Tonton Macoutes, the story made little sense. Thought they were birds for a while.
Reread an old paperback edition, the cover noting "Coming soon" a major motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Alec Guinness and Peter Ustinov. All dead. All gone.
Not a bad context for reading Comedians, because "Brown" the protagonist, like many Greene protagonists, can't quite make out what is going on. The others, good, bad, indifferent are off to the side, out of the corner of his eye, and they pretty much know where they are going. Brown just gropes, cynical, frightened, selfish and at sea. His final job, having survived getting out of Haiti practically by accident, is that of standing to the side--assistant to a funeral director, providing French and Anglo translation for affected families.
Initially, I wondered if his book would be published today. But I got suckered into the Greene voice, that unhooked, lost man, and I was just glad I could read it.

Several years back, after reading Robert Stone’s (underappreciated) Bay of Souls, I saw someone somewhere say that Stone had departed from his Conradian foundation, and had pulled a Delillo on readers. I puzzled over that, because even though Bay of Souls is a change in approach, I didn’t see any of the incomprehensible Falling Man in Stone’s hallucinogenic tropical nightmare book. With Graham Greene’s The Comedians, however, I believe I have found the source for Stone’s trippy foray. And it makes sense, since a jump from Conrad to Greene to Stone, is as logical as 1-2-3. One probably shouldn’t start out a review with a digression, but reading Green’s book has made me want to return to Stone’s book for more of the same.

Published in 1966, The Comedians is unlike any book I’ve yet read by Greene (I’ve not read them all, but I’ve read a lot of them). It’s funnier, raunchier, and looser than his other books. I don’t know whether it’s considered one of his “Catholic” novels or not, but you will get plenty of meditations on sin, evil, love, suicide, and death. The novel opens with a ship a ship headed to Haiti. On board are three men, with the improbable gathering of Everyman names: Smith, Jones, and Brown. Brown owns a hotel in Haiti, which is now ruled by Papa Doc Duvalier. (As it turns out, while in New York, Brown has been trying to sell his Hotel.) Smith, is a former Presidential Candidate for the Vegetarian Party (is that so far fetched anymore?); and Jones, who is always described as “ambigious,” is a confidence man – who everyone (oddly) seems to like. Given where this bunch is headed, a real Hell, it’s not hard to see Greene as setting this up as a Ship of Fools.

Brown is the main character. Educated in Jesuit schools, he has lived a lonely life, virtually parentless. Like Greene (also a color) himself, he’s pushing 60. He currently is having a pretty hot relationship with Martha, the wife of the German ambassador. And by hot, I mean they’re doing it in the car, the lawn, and wherever else they can fit some action in. However, Brown’s own self loathing cannot seem to let it move beyond more than sex. He thinks himself incapable of love, and yet he desires it. When Brown gets nasty, he faults Martha for being German (and she in fact the daughter of a Nazi war criminal – though she carries none of that evil baggage). But longing for Martha is unrealistic anyway, since she’s a devoted mother to her son, Angel (see Hawthorne’s also eagle eyed “Pearl”). Martha would never leave her husband (who is not a bad man) if it means losing her son.

Once ashore, Brown finds his hotel empty, and the body of a government official in the empty pool. He has cut his own throat out of fear of Duvalier’s thugs, the Tonton Macoutes. What follows is a series of episodes, often comic (as in the Coen Brothers sense of “comic”), as Brown tries to deal with disposing of the body, keeping the Smiths (Holy Fools) out of trouble, having more sex with Martha, and keeping track of the trajectory (Up then Down) of Major Jones – who is brewing up some scheme with the Tonton Macoutes. At times this can get a bit wearying, especially when it comes to ridiculous conversations with the Smiths about vegetarianism and good works. Brown, from the start of the novel, likes to see all the characters he meets as actors – comedians, working through their silly human roles on their silly human stage. Tragedy is a thing for young men who believe in something. Brown is at that late point in life where he doesn’t believe in much of anything anymore. But as the novel unfolds, Brown continually sells himself short. He intervenes repeatedly, and bravely, into situations that put him at great risk. Beneath the cynicism there is a lingering sense of hope. And Brown responds best when he senses the goodness of others (the Smiths in particular), and will rise to defend it. As a reader, you never really buy into the We-Are-All Comedians world view. Sure, the grin painted on the skull in a place like Haiti is brightly colored, but it’s still a skull. In one late Conradian passage, Brown, while meditating on a picture hanging in his hotel, drops his novel long pretence of life as a comedy filled with comedians. Brown does (as he always has) see the horror, the corruption of the place. Life – and Death are at the heart of this novel:

On the first landing there was a picture by Phillipe Auguste of a carnival procession, men, women, and children wearing bright masks. Of a morning, when the sunlight shone through the first-floor windows, the harsh colours gave an impression of gaiety, the drummers and the trumpeters seemed about to play a lively air. Only when you came closer you saw how ugly the masks were and how the masquers surrounded a cadaver in grave-clothes; then the primitive colours went flat as though the clouds had come down from Kenscoff and the thunder would soon follow. Wherever that picture hung, I would feel Haiti close to me.

So the tone may be different, but with Greene the moral concerns remain the same.

At one point in this elegantly cynical and even elegiac novel, the narrator of the tale, the disillusioned Brown, muses that all of them, including him as well, are 'comedians', people pretending to put up a farce on the tumultous stage of war, infidelity and betrayal of hopes.

That is so true, so resonant with our everyday life that our own public charades of comedy, of putting on masks of sincerity and happiness even when our hearts are throbbing with pain and the desire to deceive, are just farcical in nature, insufficient to conceal the pathos inside us and yet hilarious to the people who can see through us, through our deception.

More than any other novel by Graham Greene, 'The Comedians' is his bleakest, most downbeat work yet and it is this lingering sense of failure, despair and loneliness that marks each page and each conversation; like how he would explore the inner torment of being a cloak and dagger in an increasingly hostile world in the equally brilliant 'The Human Factor', it is here that Greene bares a heart full of anguish and regret, of dashed hopes and failed dreams, all set against the sweltering heat and violence of Haiti during the evil days of Papa Doc Duvalier.

Brown, Smith and Jones. These three men, with their non-descript names, are the three pivotal dramatis personae of this deeply poignant and hard-hitting tragedy. Their anonymity is confined to their names only; these are flawed, archetype Greene creations, men with faililings less obvious and more complex such as sexual jealousy and sardonic indifference, misguided idealism and delusions of grandeur.

Brown is also the archetype Greene narrator, lending a voice of heartbreak and self-loathing to the prose, as the author makes us see the battered Haiti of the era with a wistful sense of detachment; yet this character too yearns for the lost exotic lalaland that the country was before everything went downhill. He craves for the days when his trusted servant Joseph served his guests rum cocktails and when American tourists made love in his swimming pool. But it is already too late and everything is falling apart, including a torrid love affair with Martha Pineda, the beautiful but tormented wife of a South American ambassador, which has already lost all its allure and sensuality.

On the other hand, is Mr. Smith, accompanied by his obstinately brave and righteous wife Mrs. Smith. Being American, these two characters give Greene yet another opportunity to make a wry and pointed comment on the quintessential American naivete in comprehending a situation far grimmer than it seems. However, while the Smiths, with their plans to educate Haitians about vegetarianism as a solution to the violence and anarchy, might remind someone of the equally well-intentioned yet fanatically obsessed Pyle of 'The Quiet American', Greene lends this couple a sense of unmistakable dignity, their intentions noble and their sincerity and courage admirable in a place where everyone is afraid and hesitant of taking risks.

It is through the practised cynicism of Brown and the guileless, innocent idealism of the Smiths that Greene creates two polar opposites; yet he does not pit them against each other but rather against a totalitarianism that is inexplicable to reason or logic. More than any of his other novels, 'The Comedians' reveals the incapacity of the West to understand or even sympathize with the political upheavals in the developing and under-developed world. It also portrays, with typically incisive and astute sharpness, the apathy of the West to the real disaster that plagues these countries.

Greene's politics have always been lauded for their prescience and again this time, his portrayal of both the senseless brutality that reigns in Port-Au-Prince and the political compromises that do little to bring it to an end, is visceral and utterly objective. His description of what was once an exotic country reeling under a complete abuse of law and order is not etched in broad strokes but in telling details, from the way the devilish Tontons raid a peaceful funeral procession to how a much-touted highway project has been left incomplete because American aid ran out eventually. He places his sympathies firmly with the hapless insurgents, denied assistance from the West because of their purported leanings but the archetype villain of the novel, the gloating Captain Concasseur, is less of a monster and more of a sycophant trying to find favour with his rulers.

Then, there is Jones. The third and the most intriguingly enigmatic protagonist of the novel, a cocky charmer and an incorrigible liar, a British major who claims a history of dashing exploits but finds his elaborate stories trip on their own falsity. In any other novel, this man would have been an untrustworthy character, someone to stay away from.

In Greene's understanding and empathetic handling, Jones is a cocksure survivor, the finest 'comedian' of them all, as evidenced by just how he hoodwinks everyone into his little schemes. He is also the closest that we have to a hero in the novel and the wonder is that we root more for him than Brown, whose increasing self-doubt turns into a hideous envy for the idealistic Smiths and the foolhardy Jones, for how they indicate their real sincerity against his skepticism.

Few other writers have been as intrigued and affected by grief, solitude, guilt and the relentless yearning for escape and redemption as Greene. In 'The Comedians', we see him in peak-form, writing a story of macabre humour, unrelenting dread and painful betrayal, not just of hopes and dreams, but also of love and faith. Ultimately, it is about the failure of mankind to unravel the ruthless workings of the heart and to understand what compels men to be committed to a cause, either calculatingly evil, noble and distinguished or just foolish and farcical.

Many great reviews have been written on this book, and if you are looking for some piece of info that will help you pick your next fav book, this isn't the right one for you to read.
Once again, this book was one that fed my theme-addict lust for dark, gloomy noir sort of scenery. Loved the stuff, got super depressed through the whole thing, and felt for all the characters. My favorites are the Smiths, they were so perfectly real. I will read more from John Greene later on.

There are a great many links in Graham Greene's The Comedians to other books by the author & even certain turns of phrase are reminiscent of his other works. And yet, much of the novel serves as an antidote to the regime of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier & the country of Haiti, causing the book to seem quite singular. Early on, the narrator states that he "was returning without much hope to a country of fear & frustration and yet as the ship drew nearer to the port, every familiar feature gave me a kind of happiness."


This seems an almost standard beginning for a British author who seemed to challenge himself & to feel most at home by creating great distance between himself & Great Britain, whether in Haiti, Panama, Vietnam, Mexico, Argentina, the Congo, Liberia & Sierra Leone in West Africa or some other exotic landscape.

Greene seems to revel in presenting "burnt out cases", including an architect in the Congo who is an atheist but who builds cathedrals, or those who demonstrate "moral ambiguity", as with a Mexican "whiskey priest" who has a mistress & a child but still aspires to do good. In The Comedians the main character/narrator "Brown" meets a most ambiguous fellow with a very checkered past, a man called "Major Jones", a fellow passenger on the ship en route to Haiti & they become conjoined in a way that reminded me often of the relationship between the Orson Welles character, Harry Lyme & the one portrayed by Joseph Cotton (Holly Martins) in the film adaptation of Greene's The Third Man, complete with many "old man" references by Jones, aimed at Brown in The Comedians.


Brown has "come home" in part because his mother, who owns a colorful, historic but fading hotel in Port-au-Prince is ailing & while he never really knew his mother who had sent him off to a Jesuit boarding school early on, Haiti has as good a claim to being "home" as any other port he has spent time at, declaring that being from Monte Carlo, where he'd lived for a time, is rather like being without a country. With the death of his mother, Brown inherits the hotel, called the "Trianon", at a point when there are few guests but with two of them, former shipmates, an elderly American couple named Smith oddly enough hoping to begin a vegetarian community in Haiti.

The not very secret police, the "Tonton Macoute" represent an ever-present, menacing force in support of Duvalier but Brown is courted by the remaining intelligentsia, a residue of the artistic community and a few whose mission is to somehow replace the dictator with a more benevolent administration. Greene's point of view is distinctly anti-American in this novel & in others, because in its zeal to foil communism in the Caribbean in the Age of Castro's Cuba, the U.S. supports Duvalier by default.


In the midst of many entanglements, Brown as hotelier continues a passionate relationship with Martha, the wife of the ambassador of a small unnamed South American country, apparently begun during his previous stay in Haiti. This relationship reminds one quite distinctly of that between Sarah & Maurice in The End of the Affair but is a compelling one with a somewhat different angle, at least for those in the thrall of Graham Greene. Almost everyone in the novel seems to be playing a role & some even find the game a pleasant distraction from the heat, humidity & omnipresent terror of life in Haiti, with the ambassador declaring:

Come on, cheer up, let's all be comedians together. Take one of my cigars. Help yourself at the bar. My scotch is good. Perhaps even Papa Doc is a comedian. We mustn't complain too much about being comedians--its an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones, the world might gain a sense of style. We have failed--that's all. We are bad comedians but we aren't bad men.

Jones is shown to be a bluff & a fraud, someone whose life has been a series of pipe-dreams, just drifting from one failed scenario to the next but in time, near the novel's end via a confessional moment, a brotherhood seems to be established. Jones is enlisted in a plot to lead a small band of Haitians attempting to overthrow Duvalier, operating from a point near the border within the Dominican Republic, the adjacent 2/3 of the island of Hispaniola.

It seems a poor hand to be dealt for someone like Jones with no background in revolution or even in the military but there is a need to achieve something memorable, even if by losing one's life, causing Brown to say as they sit together in a cemetery awaiting fellow renegades to meet them, "I like you Jones!". The pair are comedians to the end it seems. As always for those who admire Graham Greene the prose is often poignantly expressive, a sample of which being the following dialogue:

I remember now. I used to think you were--nothing. I am nothing. Yes, but a Protestant nothing, not a Catholic nothing (said Jones to Brown). I had a sense of colored balls flying in the air, a different color for every faith--or even every lack of faith. There was an existentialist ball, a logical-positivist ball. I even thought that you might be a Communist nothing. It was fun just as long as with great agility one patted balls around: it was only when a ball fell to the ground one had the sense of an impersonal wound, like a dead dog on an arterial road.

The Haitian characters are memorable as well, including "Petit Pierre" a dapper journalist who somehow treads the unstable ground between appraising & reporting on visitors to Haiti and the Tonton Macoute, Dr. Magiot, a surgeon who is described as "very big & very black but possessed of great gentleness", Joseph who works as a factotum & last employee at Brown's hotel, being primarily in charge of mixing Rum Punches for the owner of the Trianon, even when there are no guests to tend to.

There is also a man named Philipot, a wizened Haitian longing to depose Papa Doc & kin to someone who commits suicide early on, having been driven to despair by the despotism of Duvalier. That said, this novel is largely driven by the actions of the European expatriates within Haiti but with considerable sensitivity for the Haitian inhabitants of a desperate country under a most repressive, dictatorial regime.


There is a kind of statement at novel's end that is provided by Dr. Magiot, a Communist, via a letter to Brown that is pure Graham Greene:

Communism my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism--remember that I was born a Catholic too--is more than the Roman Curia. There is a "mystique" as well as a "politique". We are humanists, you & I. Catholics & Communists have committed great crimes but at least they have not stood idly aside, like an established society & been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.

I implore you, the last request of a dying man for a knock on the door may come at any moment--if you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?

And at the conclusion, Brown says to Jones, "Why are you dying, Jones?" The response is: "It's my part old man; it's my part. But I've got this comic line--you should hear the whole theater laugh when I say it. The ladies in particular." Brown asks, "What is it?" Jones responds: "That's the trouble. I've forgotten it."

There are various biographies of Graham Greene, including a two volume one by Norman Sherry but the best commentary may be one from a 1996 New Yorker article by Michael Korda calling Graham Greene a "complicated, acerbic & contradictory man with a wry sense of humor and a schoolboy's taste for pranks & practical jokes, someone who loved making a mystery of his life and who kept the three different aspects of his identity--the writer, the public figure & the private man--separate & distinct." Korda declares that the Graham Greene he knew best was the author as "Third Man".


In 1978, following a conference in San Juan, I opted to take a flight to Haiti during the rule of "Baby Doc" Duvalier, staying at the Grand Hotel Oloffson (called the "Trianon" in the novel) in Port-au-Prince when it was run by a colorful figure named Alex Seitz and even encountering Aubelin Joli Coeur, the model for "Petit Pierre" in Greene's novel. At that point, I was aware of the lore of the Oloffson Hotel & Greene's novel but hadn't yet gotten around to reading it.

Thus, it was a rather memorable opportunity not just to experience a place in the Caribbean that reminded me of my time in Africa but also involved an intersection with the world of Graham Greene. Rereading The Comedians surprised me in many ways, recreating a specific time & place in Haiti as well as in my own life but also bringing to bear many of the author's familiar themes, some of which I'd not really been conscious of when I first read the novel many years ago.

*Within my review are the images of the author Graham Greene; The Grand Hotel Oloffson; the "Tonton Macoute", Haitian secret police; former president Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, whose mantra was, "It is the destiny of the Haitian people to suffer"; & lastly, an example of the distinctive art of Haiti.

This was ok -- some interesting reflections on the comedians in the middle -- but frankly, imo, and given Greene's stature, it should have been better. Hence, a book that's just a notch below 4 gets rounded down to 3.

First of all, it has none of the aching beauty of the Quiet American -- perhaps because Haiti is not as romantic in my eyes as is Vietnam. Secondly, for a book that pretends to be a political thriller (of sorts), the plot is simply much, much too loose. It really feels as though he is thinking with the pen. After reading a book as meticulously constructed as Feast of the Goat (Vargas Ilosa), or the best of John LeCarré (for instance), such slovenliness in construction simply doesn't make the grade.

Moreover -- some of the characters (the Smiths, notably) -- and make no mistake -- this book lives or dies on its characters, even more than on its plot -- rarely rise about the caricatural; and even Jones (who has great promise as a character) ends up appearing more ridiculous than full-bodied.

Such things are probably subjective. But this book left me colder than it should have.