Introduction

--Stamboul Train

Il primo romanzo di Greene che leggo, e mi è piaciuto. Suggestiva l’idea dei destini che si intrecciano durante un viaggio sull’Orient Express (scritto alcuni anni prima di quello di Agatha Christie, che forse da qui prese l’idea) fin quasi a sovvertire le vite dei protagonisti. Tutt’altro che leggero, scritto con inaspettata raffinatezza, molto cinematografico e molto avvincente, soprattutto nell’episodio clou che si svolge nella stazione ferroviaria innevata di Subotica, città che non avevo mai sentito nominare e che ora vorrei visitare. Ah, com’è bello farsi suggestionare dai romanzi!

A good listen. The Orient Express is steaming towards Istanbul. Onboard a businessman is forming a relationship with a chorus girl while a news reporter has spotted a communist agitator who fled Belgrade some years before and appears to be going home. Meanwhile, a notorious thief is trying to escape a murder charge. All this intrigue is formed into a good story by Graham Greene's excellent prose that has the listener/reader in the carriage watching the snow settle outside.

Well read by the narrator Michael Maloney. 3 stars.

So a thief, a Jew, a communist, a lesbian and a dancing girl get onto a train. It sounds like the beginning of an off-colour joke, but it is actually the beginning of a Graham Greene novel. Still, is Stamboul Train off-colour in its sentiments?

The book was written in the 1930s when it was still permissible to have negative views about all five of these people. Indeed it is still permissible to say negative things about thieves and communists, but it is less acceptable to make jokes about gay or Jewish people, and rightly so. Dancing girls? They’ve always been treated more indulgently than the other four groups.

I am not sure how far these five characters were stock figures in the 1930s, or whether Greene was being daring in choosing people who lay outside the accepted social norms of the day. We must ask whether Greene’s views are enlightened for their day or not.

Let us start with the easy one, the dancing girl. Dancing girls have always had an easier ride in fiction, the tart with the heart. Coral Musker is no tart, but some passengers disapprove of her. She is willing to accept the help of a rich man, and contemplate a relationship with him, in which there is a degree of calculation. However she is the book’s most sympathetic character, and will eventually lose her chance when she stays behind to help a dying man.

The thief is a more reprehensible character. Josef Grünlich is not just a thief, but a murderer. He has killed a man during a botched robbery, and is unusually proud of it. He exploits the other characters, and somehow manages to come out on top.

Now for the more interesting ones. Dr Richard Czinner is a communist who hopes to return to Belgrade to help in an uprising that has already been quashed. A man who had his career ruined when he tried to stand up against a child abuser, Czinner is the book’s most noble character, even if his manner is cold and off-putting.

It may seem strange to see a communist presented so sympathetically, but Greene always had a sneaking sympathy for communism, and once said that if he had not become a Catholic he would have become a communist. Hence Czinner almost becomes Christ-like in his suffering and final sacrifice.

What are we to make of Carleton Myatt, a Jewish businessman whose trade is in currants? Anti-semitism was widespread and acceptable as late as the 1930s, and Greene later re-released his novel Brighton Rock after removing references to the Semitic nature of the gangs. Was Greene an anti-Semite, and does that show up here?

Of course negative portrayals of Jewish characters do not make one an anti-Semite. Dickens did not intend Fagan, the villain of Oliver Twist, to be seen as representative of the Jewish people, and he later included a sympathetic Jewish man in Our Mutual Friend. So Greene’s use of Jews in Brighton Rock proves nothing. Perhaps like Dickens he chose a figure that he thought was representative of that group at the time, and later regretted it.

So let us have a look at Myatt. There are some grounds for despising him. His kindness towards Coral soon turns into a sexual encounter, and after he loses Coral he very quickly transfers his attentions to the half-Jewish Janet Pardoe. His profession as a currant salesman also risks making him look small and comical.

Nonetheless Myatt, for all his flaws, is a decent man. He is the story’s Good Samaritan, and he reaches out for Coral when she needs help. Their relationship only becomes sexual later on, and he is entitled to move on when he loses her, given the briefness of their relationship. He does at least make a determined effort to come back for Coral, even if he is sadly unable to find her. Consider this speech:

“He determined to be princely on an Oriental scale, granting costly gifts and not requiring, not wanting, any return. Parsimony was the traditional reproach against his race, and he would show one Christian how undeserved it was. Forty years in the wilderness, away from the flesh pots of Egypt, had entailed harsh habits, the counted date and the hoarded water; nor had a thousand years in the wilderness of a Christian world, where only the secret treasure was safe, encouraged display; but the world was altering, the desert was flowering; in stray corners here and there, in western Europe, the Jew could show that other quality he shared with the Arab, the quality of the princely host, who would wash the feet of beggars and feed them from his own dish; sometimes he could cease to be the enemy of the rich to become the friend of any poor man who sought a roof in the name of God.”

It risks reducing Myatt to the role of a benevolent and bounteous prince, a phoney representation in itself, but it is certainly not the writing of an anti-Semite. Indeed it is sadly ironic, as those pockets of western Europe were soon about to close to Jewish people.

I cannot speak as well about Greene’s treatment of the journalist, Mabel Warren. Mabel meets all the negative stereotypes of a lesbian. She talks like a man, and has short hair. She hates men. She is predatory and insecure. It seems that gay people would have to wait longer to receive kinder or more empathic representations in literature.

I have not mentioned the story yet, and that is the weaker part of Stamboul Train. The action takes place on the Orient Express, the location of a more famous thriller. Trains had an appeal for writers of fiction, and they were used in thrillers, comedies, war stories, westerns and even horror. The Orient Express was particularly well-suited, because it was luxurious and had better facilities, and it travelled long distances between stations.

Nowadays train stories are less fashionable, because urbanisation has led to more towns and cities, and therefore more stations. This removes the appeal of the train story – the heroes pursuing or being pursued by an enemy, but trapped in a confined space. The train can only follow the tracks, making it vulnerable to external threats. The train travels through the wilderness for long spaces, making it unsafe to leave the train, and leaving our heroes and villains together in a place with no escape.

Greene exploits this limited space, but the story is disappointing. Myatt helps an ailing Coral, and they become lovers, but other affairs get in the way. The English doctor is the communist Czinner. His identity is blown when he is recognised by the journalist, Mabel Warren, and he is arrested. He hands over documents to Coral, so she is arrested. They break out, thanks to the amoral crook Grünlich, who wishes to escape justice, but Czinner is killed, and Coral is separated from Myatt, who begins an affair with Janet Pardoe, formerly Mabel’s companion.

Stamboul Train was one of the few Graham Greene stories that never translated into a good movie, and it is easy to see why. While Greene wrote it as an entertainment, it is rather gloomy. Actually many of Greene’s entertainments contain unappealing elements that were ironed out when they were given the cinematic treatment. Greene may have disliked this, but I think the studios were probably right in their decisions.

In the case of Stamboul Train, it would have taken a lot to make the book more commercial, because the various elements never cohere, and the book does not lead to a satisfying conclusion. It feels fragmented, and the conclusion is dour. The self-sacrificing characters, Coral and Czinner (significantly he is a doctor) lose out. The characters who are amoral (Grünlich) or settle for comfort over sacrifice (Myatt, Janet Pardoe) come out of it happily.

Greene may be writing an entertainment, but even at this early stage of his career he cannot help aspiring to write something artistic. While the writing is good, I do not think Stamboul Train successfully combines those elements.

New kid on theblock. Graham Green‘s first big hit novel. This has a bit of everything. Crime, romance, espionage, revolution, prison breaks. And it’s set on the orient express. The best thing about this though is the style. Claustrophobic, tense, but at the same time laconic. Greene is in command of style, a brilliant bit of writing, and totally Greene.

I've read a couple Graham Greene novels now and this is likely my last. Written nearly 100 years ago, I could not understand any of the characters' motives or behaviors. Maybe a result of being from a different time, or maybe bad writing. Probably a little of both. To be clear: Not understanding the motives is not exactly accurate, it's more that I didn't care or didn't think a sensible character would behave the way these ones do. It is a very early book of Greene's, and I know Our Man in Havana (a later work) didn't frustrate me this much, but it will take some convincing for me to try his stuff again.

(2024) I should have looked it up before I read it for a second time. I didn't like it any better the second time than I did the first. Was he really that bigoted? Or was it just all making fun? If he was serious, he seriously disliked Jews. The characters were all stereotypes, but he outdid himself with the Jew. That age-old antisemitism is becoming a modern trend once again.
(From 2016)
I didn't like this book. I didn't like any of the characters (not characters, really, but stereotypes that fell flat), I didn't care for the plot, and I didn't like all the digressions which is what the book really was about. I did enjoy some of the descriptions, especially Coral's assessment of Czinner, "She thought of him now as one of the untidy men who paraded on Saturday afternoons in Trafalgar Square bearing hideous banners: 'Workers of the World, Unite,'... They were the killjoys, who would hang the rich and close the theaters and drive her into dismal free love at a summer camp ... " In fact, Czinner turns out to be less of a revolutionary and more of a lost soul, trying to make the world better for the underdog, hoping at least for a hero's death, and yet someone who couldn't care less about helping the innocent young working-class woman whom he dragged into his mess. I didn't like the antisemitism, which is discussed and excused in Christopher Hitchens' introduction. Hitchens says that everyone did it in the 20s and 30s. He also says that in the second edition of Brighton Rock Greene edits "to make the racetrack gangs seem somewhat less palpably Semitic, and he presumably would not have done this unless prompted by some sort of uneasy conscience" never considering that maybe he did it because of public or editorial pressure. Greene conceived this work as an "entertainment" and hoped it would become a film. It did. I won't be seeing it.

I'll go a long way for Greene. But I draw the line at unapologetic anti-Semitism, homophobia and totally outdated gender stereotypes. PS: no spies in this book anyway !

I found Stamboul Train to be a wonderfully atmospheric read, a well written adventure peopled with a variety of complex characters, several of them quite deliciously sinister. I do so like to be transported with a novel, and Stamboul Train was able to do just that wonderfully- and not just because it is set aboard the famous Orient Express. It has always been a bit of a fantasy of mine – to travel across Europe aboard the Orient Express, I’d require a first class ticket and a set of matching 1930′s luggage, oh well it’s a pretty dream.

The novel concerns a group of people travelling between Ostend and Istanbul. Myatt is a wealthy Jewish businessman who meets dancer Coral Musker aboard the train, Coral is unwell and Myatt buys her an expensive sleeper ticket so she can rest. In her naivety Coral believes her gratitude should lead to something more, and dutifully falls for Myatt and spends the night with him. Poor Coral is an innocent, and put me rather in mind of poor Rose in Brighton Rock – I feared for Coral .she believed in her love for Myatt, and while Myatt was shown to care something for Coral I knew it was only up to a point.

Myatt and Coral are drawn into the lives of other passengers, particularly that of Dr Czinner an exiled communist leader returning to Belgrade for a socialist uprising. Czinner is travelling under a new identity but is recognised by man hating journalist Mabel Warren, the slightly predatory Warren is obsessed with her beautiful companion Janet Pardoe, and sees her story about Czinner as a way of securing a better salary in the hope of keeping Janet – although she too has noticed Coral and would be quite happy to swap Janet for her.

A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement. The station lamps sailed by them into darkness, and the doctor turned to leave her. _’If you want me again, I’m three coaches further up. My name is John, Dr John.’ She said with intimated politeness, ‘mine’s Coral Musker.’ He gave her a little formal foreign bow and walked away. She saw in his eyes other thoughts falling like rain. Never before had she the sensation of being so instantly forgotten. ‘A girl that men forget.’ She hummed to keep up her courage.

At Vienna Josef Grunlich joins the train, a long time thief, Grunlich has just killed a man during a failed robbery. When Mabel Warren leaves the train to make a phone call to dictate her exclusive, Grunlich seizes his opportunity to take her bag, and buys a ticket with her money. As the train travels on and the snow settles in, the scene is set for high drama.

I am so glad I have been prompted to finally read some more Graham Greene, I have actually gone and bought another of his novels too, whether I get around to reading The Ministry of Fear before the end of August while this reading tribute is still underway remains to be seen.

3.5
Slow first half but great second half. It's my first of Greene's but won't be my last.

Siamo agli inizi degli anni Trenta. Un gruppo di personaggi viaggia sull'Orient-Express da Oostenda a Istanbul (che nel romanzo spesso è indicata come Costantinopoli).
Si tratta per la maggior parte dei casi di personaggi che combattono contro la loro inadeguatezza: la ballerina con un bel fisico ma non abbastanza carina, l'ebreo ricco e competente, ma che subisce il disprezzo per la sua razza, la giornalista di talento ma alcolizzata.
E' un viaggio costellato di fallimenti più o meno tragici, alcuni dei quali spezzano il cuore.
Per tutto il tempo Greene non dimentica mai che il tutto si svolge su un treno e il lettore diventa viaggiatore, si sente sballottato dalla velocità, finisce contro un finestrino ad una curva improvvisa, perde un pezzo di dialogo a causa di un ingresso in galleria.
La scrittura è straordinaria.
Un'avvertenza. Non fatevi fuorviare dal sottotitolo "Un divertimento". Non è "divertente". Non è nemmeno di puro intrattenimento.

Read to page 160. Lost interest. Unusual not to finish a Greene novel, but there you go. Headspace and timing probably.