VERSO LA FINE C’È IL PRINCIPIO


L’omonima versione cinematografica è del 1953, cinque anni dopo l’uscita del romanzo, diretta da George More O’Ferrall, con Trevor Howard nel ruolo del protagonista Scobie.

Ogni tanto bisogna sgranchirsi, fare due passi, fare un po’ di moto, e respirare una boccata d’aria fresca…
Così come ogni tanto bisogna leggere Graham Greene.

O, come nel mio caso, rileggere, visto che Greene l’ho sempre frequentato molto. In entrambe le lingue.


Il film partecipò al Festival di Cannes. Parte degli esterni furono effettivamente girati in Sierra Leone, proprio dove è ambientato il romanzo di Greene, che conosceva bene quel paese.

Nel secolo di Joyce, un grande narratore che mette sempre al centro dei suoi romanzi una storia da raccontare, rivestita nel genere giallo, thriller, suspense, spy-story, a me fa gola.
[Come mi fa gola Joyce, nessun giudizio di merito]

Greene, e il narratore nei romanzi di Greene, non giudica. Mai.
E, scende sempre all’altezza dei suoi personaggi.
In questo brano, narratore e protagonista arrivano a confondersi:
Che stoltezza aspettarsi la felicità in un mondo così pieno di miserie! Aveva ridotto al minimo i suoi bisogni, nascosto le fotografie nei cassetti, cercato di cancellare i morti dalla memoria…. ma rimangono pur sempre gli occhi per vedere, le orecchie per udire. Che mi si mostri un uomo felice, e io vi mostrerò il suo egoismo, o la sua cattiveria, o perlomeno la sua ignoranza assoluta.


Invece di una classica colonna sonora musicale, si optò per musica tribale registrata durante le riprese.

The Heart of the Matter, il nocciolo della questione è da molti considerato il miglior romanzo di Greene: sembra contendersi la palma con Il potere e la gloria.
Personalmente però, credo che la darei a I commedianti.

Se uno sapesse le cose fino in fondo, dovrebbe sentir pietà anche per le stelle? Se uno raggiungesse quello che chiamano il nocciolo della questione.

E, nonostante il fastidio che sempre mi generano le questioni di fede religiosa, specie se cattolica - perché il pensiero corre subito al vaticano, e a quel referendum per rispedirlo ad Avignone che non si è mai fatto, e a tutti gli ipocriti bigotti altezza senso di colpa e family day - nonostante questo, io amo i romanzi di Greene, li godo proprio.
E amo anche questo che fa parte del ciclo cattolico.
E, di cattolicesimo è intriso, come quei cuori grondanti sangue in certe statue del cristo.


Oltre il protagonista interpretato da Trevor Howard, nel cast c’erano Elizabeth Allan, Maria Schell, Denholm Elliott, Peter Finch.

Così come è intriso di senso di colpa fino alla costa e alla cucitura, perché le cose che fanno davvero male sono quelle che è così terribilmente facile superare, perché gli esseri umani sono condannati alle conseguenze.

È ambientato in un posto che Greene non mette voglia di visitare, pur trasmettendone sia il fascino esotico che ferale:
Perché mai amo tanto questo posto? È forse perché qui la natura umana non ha ancora avuto tempo di mascherarsi? Qui nessuno avrebbe mai potuto parlare di un paradiso in terra: il cielo rimaneva rigidamente al proprio posto al di là della morte, e al di qua prosperavano le ingiustizie, le crudeltà, le grettezze che altrove la gente riusciva abilmente a mascherare. Qui si potevano amare le creature umane quasi come le ama Dio stesso, conoscendo il peggio di loro.



In un clima che limita gesti e parole, Dio può aspettare, perché:
come si può amare Dio a spese di una delle sue creature?

In mezzo a uomini e donne qualsiasi (mediocri) nel modo più assoluto, riuscire a mostrare Scobie come eroe, pur nella sua ordinarietà e banalità, richiede un’arte che Greene possiede pienamente.
Non è forse un eroe chi sa comprendere e perdonare gli altri ma non se stesso? Chi non si reputa più importante della sofferenza inflitta alle persone che ha intorno?
Il suicidio di Scobie, protagonista che all’inizio vediamo attraverso gli occhi di un altro personaggio, Wilson, come si farebbe in un film (e quanta frequentazione cinematografica dell’opera di Greene!), è gesto catartico e insieme atto di generosità, di giustizia, di amore (compassione) verso l’umanità.



Eppure, Greene sembra incurante del plot: in fondo si capisce dal principio chi è Wilson, il mistero sembra avere le gambe corte come le bugie [che invece le hanno lunghissime].
È Scobie che riempie la scena, che ci interessa seguire, di cui vogliamo sapere: Scobie ancora un novizio nel mondo dell’inganno, un uomo buono onesto integro nella sua ordinarietà.
Circondato da figure che sono veri personaggi e che Greene descrive con tocchi concisi ed esperti aggiungendo elementi alla trama, arricchendo lo scenario: serve davvero poco a Greene per calarci dentro, to put us in the picture.


Il nocciolo della questione diventò nella traduzione nostrana “L’incubo dei Mau Mau”.

E condurci in una costante caduta: dallo stato di grazia, caduta nell’amore, caduta nella disperazione, caduta in una terra di menzogne dalla quale non c’è ritorno:
Ma pare che, alla fin fine, non ci debba mai essere risparmiato niente. Per essere veramente umano, tu devi bere il tuo calice fino in fondo. Se una volta sei fortunato, o un’altra volta codardo, il calice ti viene presentato una terza.

Nonostante ciò, Scobie conserva tutta la sua umanità, e brilla in una luce che dura nel tempo:
Non gli era mai venuto in mente che la sua vita avesse una vera importanza. Non beveva, non fornicava, non mentiva, ma non aveva mai reputato virtù l’assenza di questi peccati dalla sua vita.

n  Beware the pity-partyn

This is a terribly British, terribly colonial novel, set in West Africa during WWII. You know what I mean by colonial, you can see it, right? Men with manly jobs, say, like a potential police commissioner, are called "Tickie" by their wives and have a "boy" who has worked for them for thirteen years.

You'll have to look past all that, in all likelihood. (I had to. Dear god, why "Tickie"??)

Once you get past the things that might annoy, or that may not have aged particularly well, congratulations, you are reading a gorgeous novel by the inimitable Graham Greene. A man who was tortured by his Catholic beliefs (so he inflicted them on his characters, poor things). A man who had deep compassion for those stuck in the crevasses between belief and LIFE with all its not-quite-measuring-ups and messiness.

Henry Scobie (sorry, but I refuse to call him "Tickie") is one of Greene's suffering Catholics - by which I mean he really believes, and thus is basically tortured by his need to be 'good'. He's also got this overpowering sense of pity for others - for his wife, who isn't happy, for his mistress, who wants more from him, for even God Himself, who is getting a raw deal from Scobie, this flawed, imperfect human. Greene shows brilliantly how dangerous and self-destructive, how misplaced pity can be, how doomed one is if one lives by it.

He also shows the complexity of life juxtaposed with the flatness of "rules". He does this by featuring a man who is corrupted, unfaithful, untrusting and compromised, but who is also the most moral, caring and God-fearing person in any given room. Willing to give it all up, like a tortured saint for an undeserving rabble, old Tickie will break your heart. He did mine.

Damn perfection. Damn those confining "rules".

"The Church says..."
"I know the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."

La legge interiore

E' un po' che giro intorno a Graham Greene, scrittore cattolico, di cui ho letto Fine di una storia, Il potere e la gloria e poi questo Il nocciolo della questione.

Che ci fa uno scrittore cattolico negli scaffali di un lettore non cattolico? La risposta è semplice: se lo scrittore è bravo: incuriosisce, fa riflettere, costringe a ripensare alle proprie convinzioni.

Il nocciolo della questione è un romanzo cupo, angosciante, introspettivo, senza ironia. Ma anche sincero, lucido, chirurgico, doloroso.

La trama è ben poca cosa. Potremmo dire che c'è un triangolo amoroso, ma questo potrebbe far pensare a ben altre cose, che qui non ci sono. Non c'è morbosità, non c'è sessualità, non c'è ardore. C'è solo molta solitudine.

Il protagonista è un poliziotto, un uomo giusto, tormentato, che si interroga e si giudica in continuazione. Un cattolico, che però interpreta la figura di Dio in un modo diverso, un uomo che si chiede la ragione per cui valga davvero la pena di vivere. Un peccatore, anche, come inevitabilmente lo siamo tutti.

Un peccatore che vive tragicamente questo dissidio tra moralità e azioni. Una persona di buona volontà ha dentro di sé un dio che guida, che fa fare le cose seguendo delle regole di moralità, che guarda costantemente, che costringe a pensare a ciò che si fa e che giudica. Soprattutto un dio da cui non ci si può nascondere.
Questo dio siamo noi, che siamo i più spietati giudici di noi stessi.

"Sapeva per propria esperienza come la passione morisse e l'amore se n'andasse, ma la pietà rimaneva sempre. Nulla mai diminuiva la pietà: la condizione umana la alimentava di continuo. C'era solo una persona al mondo per cui egli non poteva aver pietà: se stesso."

Ma non tutti sentono veramente la presenza di questo dio. Alcuni seguono semplicemente dogmi, sembrano magari osservanti le regole, ma dentro di sé si lasciano andare a pensieri tutt'altro che lodevoli. In altre parole, le persone migliori non necessariamente sono quelle che appaiono tali; o, detto in altro modo, non è il rispetto dei dogmi che ci rende migliori, quanto il cuore pulito con cui facciamo le cose.

Ma se il nostro giudice siamo noi stessi, con che diritto possiamo permetterci di giudicare gli altri?

Il nocciolo della questione per Greene è che viviamo inseguendo delle emozioni, che ci portano a fare azioni che devono poi essere giudicate dal nostro dio interiore. Non possiamo evitare di peccare. Non possiamo evitare di seguire le nostre emozioni. Non possiamo evitare di guardarci dentro, ma nel contempo dobbiamo evitare di giudicare gli altri, perché non sappiamo le intenzioni che hanno guidato le azioni altrui.

"La disperazione è il prezzo che si paga per essersi proposti una meta che non si può umanamente raggiungere. È il peccato irremissibile; ma è un peccato che il corrotto e il malvagio non perpetra mai. Costui spera sempre, non raggiunge mai il gelo della consapevolezza di essere totalmente fallito. Solo l'uomo di buona volontà si porta sempre in cuore questa capacità di dannazione."

Bravissimo Greene; mi ha fatto pensare molto, moltissimo e porto a casa tanto da questa lettura. Cinque stelle luminosissime, piene di angoscia ma anche di speranza.

E nella confusione di quella notte dimenticò per un momento quello che l’esperienza gli aveva insegnato: che nessun essere umano può veramente comprendere un altro essere umano, che nessuno può provvedere alla felicità d’un altro
Pare sia il capolavoro di Graham Greene, anche se a mio parere di tutta la sua produzione è un titolo meno noto di altri, in inglese recita The heart of the matter, e lì esattamente mi ha portato: nel cuore della questione. Sì, credo che sarà IL romanzo del 2016, del mio 2016, sicuramente quello che più ha sfiorato le corde della mia anima. Fatico a trovare le parole per spiegare il perché del mio ardore e credo pure che per cogliere questo romanzo nella sua verticale e abissale profondità, ci voglia un percorso di vita in qualche modo tangente alla storia che Greene racconta. Un nocciolo della questione ineffabile, che non si fa banalmente né dire, né commentare perché le cose belle o quelle smisuratamente grevi e difficili si dicono con travaglio, perché dicendole le si trasfigura, le si sporca con l’inadeguatezza di parole che altro non sono che i simulacri troppo larghi o troppo stretti della vita stessa. Poiché Annobi non rende giustizia a Greene e non riporta uno straccio di sinossi nella scheda libro, di seguito propongo, ad uso e consumo del viandante lettore che leggerà, un minimo elenco, in ordine sparso e non prioritario, dei temi del libro a fornire una sia pur vaga indicazione di cosa Il nocciolo della questione è: Ambiente coloniale Rapporto con il Divino Triangolo amoroso Natura inospitale Bene fatto di nascosto e ad insaputa del beneficato Corruzione Integrità morale Senso di responsabilità Sacrificio Scelte estreme Etc etc etc etc ...

Ίσως το μεγαλύτερο χαρακτηριστικό του Γκρήν είναι η ενσυναίσθηση: τα βιβλία του όπως και όλοι οι χαρακτήρες που εμφανίζονται εκεί είναι βαθύτατα ανθρώπινα και γκρίζα. Δεν εκβιάζει το συναίσθημα από τον αναγνώστη, αντίθετα το κερδίζει καθώς καταφέρνει να τον κάνει τον να ταυτιστεί με κάθε μία φιγούρα που εμφανίζεται μέσα στις σελίδες του. Είτε είναι δράμα, είτε αστυνομικό, είτε κατασκοπικό ο Γκρήν γράφει με επίκεντρο τον άνθρωπο, τις επιλογές του, τις ενοχές, τα ηθικά διλήμματα και τις επιπτώσεις των πράξεων. Και ίσως αυτό είναι που τον κάνει να ξεχωρίζει από τους άλλους συγγραφείς.

In Martin Scorsese' crime classic 'Mean Streets', there is a line spoken by the protagonist Charlie that sums up the reality and the difficulty of finding real redemption by the mere act of repentance or contrition.

'You don't make up for your sins in church'....

Major Henry Scobie, a diligent and disillusioned police officer in a West African colony in the tumultous 1940s, hits upon that hard fact of life in the most devastating way ever. The titular 'heart of the matter' that plunges honest Scobie into a vortex of guilt, self-deception and even petty lies and subsequent self-loathing is no ordinary problem or convolution; rather, it is the wrangle between his relentless love and loyalty to his equally jaded wife Louise and his newfound attraction and affection for the ill-fated Helen Rolt, a young widowed bride who is alone and vulnerable in this desolate outpost.

Graham Greene has that uncanny gift of a rare storyteller, the gift of fathoming the boundless complexity of love, infidelity and envy and the guilt and treachery that these things entail. 'The Quiet American' was a dazzling love triangle of sexual jealousy interwoven deftly with the equally challenging arguments of to whom does Indo-China belong to. This book, so far his finest work in my opinion (and I am still to discover the rest of his extensive and eclectic work), is less political and more painfully, poignantly personal.

The relentless sense of pity, for suffering and disappointment in those who should be otherwise smiling and hopeful, is what drives Scobie on his doomed path to damnation. His marriage with Louise has already run out of colour and excitement and yet, while he himself is passed over for promotion, his first concern is her happiness, to do anything that would bring back her warmth and happiness and to also make the burden of responsibility lighter on his own aging shoulders.

It is this first flash of despair that sets in motion the heart-rending narrative as Greene introduces us to a cast of compellingly flawed characters, all less than heroic and all plagued with the same anguish and suicidal despair as Scobie himself. There are no heroes and villains in Greene's prose, only men and women whose hearts and their impulsive yearning for romance, peace and even respect or success defeats their reason and conscience.

There is Scobie's potential replacement Wilson, a fresh-faced entrant to this murky, sweltering, mosquito-infested colony who is here hiding his true poetic self in a bid for anonymity but is compelled to reveal his edges in the gambit for love. There is Yusef, the unscrupulous Syrian trader to whom Scobie sells both his weaknesses and his own soul and while most novelists might have sketched him out as an arch, stereotypical villain, Greene paints him as real and believable in his own way, a shrewd businessman and an outward manipulator who is tormented inside with his struggle to be accepted, to be an equal to the race of whites that do despises him.

The novel follows both these unforgettable side-players with compassionate, almost sympathetic perspective and yet Greene's main sympathies always lie with Scobie and with good reason. After he is forced to betray his own honesty and diligence in duty by being bound for favours to Yusef, favours that can bring joy to Louise, he is again led on the path of inevitable self-destruction when he loses his heart to Helen Rolt, a survivor of a storm at sea and a victim of loneliness and leering advances by men who only think of her as wanton game for sexual favours. Falling in love with both these women, Scobie is plunged into a dilemma more confounding than just a simple case of lies and infidelity; this is about his struggle to bring relief, not just to the woes of the women in his life but also to himself.

In both Louise and Rolt, Greene crafts stirringly captivating characters, shorn of allure or even explicit sensuality and rather endowed with pathos and strength that makes them so compelling in their own right. The author balances each character and his or her narrative arc with majestic subtlety, while his skill at fleshing the milieu with nuance and authenticity is simply peerless. The background itself becomes a pivotal character in the plot, facilitating the entry of Rolt at one time and the side-plot of diamond smuggling and blackmail fills up the latter chapters with such welcome grit that one really realizes just how incredible the stakes feel.

At the end of this magnificent, melancholy novel, one is left shattered and stunned to silence by the quietly devastating power of the climax to which Greene hurtles Scobie, the women in his life and even Wilson, as they hit upon truths and realizations that can never be easily digestible. But by then, we know that we are already on Scobie's side, as we understand in that final, heartbreaking moment of clarity, portrayed in the most simplest and telling of the many unforgettable conversations, that what he does in the end is not a fatal flaw but rather the sign of his own uniqueness among fellow mortals.

As a tale of a man grappling with his own religion and discovering, bitterly, the true nature of redemption, 'The Heart Of The Matter' is simply a masterpiece. Greene has always brought up the Catholic canon up for debate and argument in his novels but it is in the suitably emotionally agonizing climax that he just proves that Scobie, for all his cynicism about his own faith and its debatable powers in healing his and others' pain, was instead the truest believer of them all.

To quote George Harrison, here is what Greene's sincere yet torn-apart protagonist must have felt..

'I really want to see you
I really want to feel you
I really want to see you, lord
But it takes so long, my lord
My sweet lord...'

تاريخ القراءة الأصلية : ٢٠٠١

Second Review: December 2016

After this second time through The Heart of the Matter, I will continue my praise for this book. Greene provides sharp poignant insights into the soul of an individual who desires above all else to make the pain of living that much less for those that surround him. But in doing so, Greene’s insights become disturbing. Time after time, they bounced off the page and struck very close to the truth about who I am, or at least how I see life. The result is a book that seems to live inside of me.

Another aspect of this second reading was an ability to be more critical of the main character. His self-sacrificing nature could easily be understood to be self-serving. After all, within every martyr is a sense of satisfaction. Additionally, the hardships suffered because of his sacrifices may have indeed been proper punishment. The pity that I felt for Henry Scobie in my first encounter with him was a bit more staid this time around, and this more in-depth analysis of Greene’s world made this second reading worthwhile.

---

First Review: February 2010

Greene creates a protagonist that acts on the best of his heartfelt intentions but fails to think about the ultimate results his actions. For a multitude of reasons, the protagonist simply gives into the expediency of his emotions and is then forced to experience the tragic consequences. The novel serves as a reminder that we are ultimately judged by the results of our actions and very little quarter is given for our reasons, be they selfless or self-serving.

In parallel to this main theme, the book provides more of Greene's forceful writing as experienced in The End of the Affair. He tells the story in a way that places the reader in a position of full, hard-truth understanding of the actions of the main character. The final pages left me feeling the loss that was intended by Greene, as well as feeling the full force of the reactions of everyone involved.

I may be alone, or nearly so, in thinking that this is significantly better than The Power and the Glory. I'm pretty sure Greene himself regarded the latter as better. But here's my case. First of all, and this is huge, the characters of The Heart of the Matter are way more complete -- instead of the one-off resentful schoolmaster or the treacherous mestizo (referred to as "the half-caste" over 90 percent of the time, for some reason), we have the enigmatic servant "boy" Ali; the continually surprising wife of Major Scobie, Louise; and Yusef the diamond smuggler (maybe?), one of my favorite supporting characters of all time. And I don't say that sort of thing lightly. And of course Scobie himself, a man of integrity and honor living in a place where those things are liabilities.

The book also has some amazing writing in it, which I've come to expect from Greene, though he keeps exceeding those expectations. A couple of demonstrative lines:

"He put out his hand and covered hers: the knuckles lay under his palm like a small backbone that had been broken." A little sappy, but an image I've not seen before.

". . . and he felt his whole personality crumble with the slow disintegration of lies." That's more about rhythm than image, but it also encompasses the most fascinating and perfect aspect of the novel: how Scobie's honor and integrity are incrementally dismantled in such a believable way. At the beginning, he frowns on the corruption of the other police officers. But as the book goes on, he -- with inevitably good intentions -- descends into the same corruption, mostly thanks to Yusef. I won't get into it more than that, but the point is that each scene, each choice that Scobie has to make, is a perfectly impossible dilemma between what is right (as in legal, usually) and what is kind.

As for the ending, I usually don't like endings of this type -- and it is definitely of a type -- but this one is so well-written that it comes off as both original and profound. And the conversation on the last page between Louise and the hitherto unremarkable Father Rank . . . what an incredibly apt ending, even though I don't quite believe the last few lines, none of which I'll spoil here.

It's easy to tell that this novel was carefully crafted. Obvious polish is usually a bad thing, like, I would say, in some of Salinger's stories. But in this case, because it was so good, it was more like the thrill of seeing "paint pots and scaffolding being carried in and out of the Sistine Chapel." That's actually a Douglas Adams quote about an unfinished novel of Wodehouse's, but it perfectly describes what I felt here and is such a good line that it deserves to be recycled.

In short, if you're at all interested in Catholicism (or faith in general), love, Africa, corruption, intrigue, or Greek tragedy, you should read this book.

Perhaps after devouring "The Quiet American" and "The End of the Affair," I was due for a letdown. After loving the first 2/3 of "The Heart of the Matter," it took a darker turn that I didn't care for. But hey, how can I not still be enthralled with a writer when the first three books that I read by him take place on three different continents? Like "The Quiet American," the setting is a colonial outpost, this time an unnamed West African country rather than Vietnam.

As in "The End of the Affair," "The Heart of the Matter" deals with an affair, but this time the Catholic adulterer is beset by much greater pangs of guilt for breaking one of the Ten Commandments. I doubt this is what Greene intended, but I come away from both books feeling even better about my agnosticism.

Ah, what Greene to read next? A close friend's favorite is "The Comedians," but I am also considering "Our Man in Havana" and "The Human Condition." I welcome suggestions!

This is not a review. I finished this book a week ago and have been trying to write a review for it several times but words just fail to describe the detachment I was left with on finishing.
So, instead of a review, here is a rant spurned by having wasted time on this book.

Yes, Greene's writing is wonderful - the wordsmithing, that is: the descriptions of the West African mid-war setting, the descriptions of pink gins, the descriptions of Scobie's thoughts.

However, none of this helped to warm to any of the characters, all of which seemed more than a little conceited most of all Major Scobie, the central character.

Scobie is described acting as man driven by Catholic morality, until he begins an affair with Helen, supposedly out of pity. Then his wife returns to him, he is torn between making a few decisions, and he returns to his wife - also out of pity.

Take away the element of Catholicism and Scobie is a pathetic character that can't make a decision and deludes himself into thinking that he does his best not to cause pain.

Leave in the Catholic element and Scobie is still pathetic and deluded.

I don't get this one.
Rant over.

(For a proper review of this book I'd recommend Kelly's review http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... )

I know exactly why I love Graham Greene novels; and this, The Heart of the Matter, is a shining example of Greene at his best. It is vintage Greene, containing all his themes and strengths. No, it's not my favorite from him; but from I've read thus far, it is the best example of all he's capable of -- it is the novel I recommend you try if you want to find out if he's for you.

For one, this has the classic Greene love struggles: men and women caught up in that irresistible, uncontrollable force. Greene's depiction of love is not a glorified one; rather, it is an accurate one. He displays the struggles involved with it; he shows that it makes no fucking sense; that it is something that can be manipulated, and that it can easily slip through one's fingers. Love is the epicenter of his character's lives, at times giving them uplifting hopes of glorious heights; but mostly it tears them apart as they try to control, cope with, and intellectually understand something that can't be understood.

"At the word ‘books’ Wilson saw her mouth tighten just as a moment ago he had seen Scobie flinch at the name of Ticki, and for the first time he realized the pain inevitable in any human relationship -- pain suffered and pain inflicted. How foolish one was to be afraid of loneliness."

"If I could just arrange for her happiness first, he thought, and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him -- that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness."

The characters that one grows to care about in a Greene novel -- those that are the centerpiece of his stories -- are always complex. They have a multitude of opposite natures in their head and heart stuggling, competing, pushing to break through. His "heros" and "villians" are never easy to decipher and are not reliable, and his likable characters are never perfect men and women -- rather, they are real and human.

These epic battles of the mind and heart are not only with love, but often with faith, as well. This provides a deeper element to the internal musings of his characters, and -- as providence (or lack thereof) is always a factor -- brings weight to their actions. Along with this, death is always a thought, always a possibility; always somewhere in the back of the mind. Life is always questioned, always taken seriously, in a Graham Greene novel.

Lastly, his novels are awesomely quotable. Often with a line or two he manages to sum up life’s most important issues, offering nuggets of wisdom that can make one gasp for air. My favorite from The Heart of the Matter :

"Innocence must die young if it isn't to kill the souls of men."

Fuckin' gravy.