The Life of Graham Greene, Volume III: 1955-1991

Dry. Like so many biographies, and this author's previous volumes on Greene, this is an extremely well-researched and thoroughly cited work of interest to anyone who wants to get into Greene's mind and speculate how those grand works came to be. Bottom line, he was a most unhappy man and that is tragic given his extraordinary abilities.

Purported to have been a great author, for me, the vulgarities of his personal life overshadow all.

With this volume Sherry, a professor of literature at Trinity University in San Antonio, completes his biography of prolific British writer Graham Greene (The Quiet American, The Third Man, and The End of the Affair, and more than 30 other novels). Sherry relied on all of Greene's papers, drew on their personal friendship, and even travelled in his footsteps__and his perseverance in uncovering all facets of Greene's life shows. Sherry's especially adept at placing Greene within the larger politico-historical context. But critics fault the biography for its breadth, length, and factual inconsistencies. Despite these drawbacks, Graham Greene is sure to be the definitive biography__if you can get through a few thousand pages.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

Finally, at long last, I am done with this book. If this isn't the longest English-language biography of a novelist, I don't want to read the longest one...
On the whole, this is probably about as close to get to perfect as you will get of an actual biography of someone - just about every important moment of Greene's life and work is contained in these pages and one imagines that, if 1700 pages (or whatever it is) can't capture a novelist than nothing can. But I'm not sure that we need 1700+ page biographies of anyone. What did I learn from this?
Sherry's biography functions in three different ways: as a straight-up biography, as a (positively) critical analysis of Greene's work and as an annotated version of his letters. It works well in the former senses, but when it comes to dissecting his letters it is extremely tedious. Fortunately, there is less of that in this volume than in Volume 2 (and less of the Catherine Walston obsession). I would have better appreciated a biography or a critical analysis of Greene's work, or both, and entire chapters of this work could have been omitted, as far as I'm concerned. (Maybe that would have left Greene obsessives wanting more, but it would have been more enjoyable and way easier to get through).
I spent months of my life reading these three books, and all I learned is that, though I loved Greene's novels when I was younger (it's been a few years since I've read one) and would count him among my favourite English language novelists (and one of the best of the 20th century), I'm pretty glad I never met him: not only was he sex- and love-obsessed, as if he was a teenager his whole life, but he was also shockingly politically naive (for someone so politically astute in his novels and in some of his knowledge of the world) and also incredibly self-righteous (again, something that does not come across in his fiction). So much of what I learned exposed him as a flawed human, and that is biography's job, in a way, but there are a fair number of flaws here that were...not necessarily disappointing, but frustrating. I feel for all the people he wrote to (and about, in terms of his letters to editors). Bipolarity might help create great art, but it doesn't make you the best person to read about.
Anyway, this book is, needless to say, for Greene obsessives only. I cannot quite decide whether I found it worth reading. The good parts do out-number the bad parts, but I think this will teach me a lesson about reading multi-volume biographies in the future.

The first two volumes of Sherry's biography of Greene skirted hero worship by dint of sheer volume of reportage-- Greene's life was filled with momentous happenings, and simply relating them kept Sherry's over-ripe familiarity mostly at bay. Here, unfortunately, as the subject's life begins to wind down, there are no such brakes-- what has been, until now, a mildly cringing sycophancy devolves into full blown toadying. Anyone who is apposite to Greene is portrayed as deluded, jealous, or outright wrong. Greene himself is a warrior for truth, a noble of unsurpassable grandeur, Sherry's personal hero. The author even begins to insert himself into the narrative in an effort to tie himself to his famous subject. This is the weakest, and most tedious, volume in the series, deeply flawed and worthwhile only for a sense of completism, because Sherry has committed the cardinal sin of the biographer: he has fallen in love with his subject.

Absolutely magnificent - I was as enthralled be each of these three mammoth volumes by Sherry as I have been by Greene's novels. He makes you curious to read his entire oeuvre - he makes you inhabit Greene's mind and world completely. Though none of us can possibly hope to have so exciting a life as he did. What a life, and what a wonderful service Sherry has done Greene here, and how astute a choice of biographer he indeed proved to be.

Not a review; just a note. I'm very sad to have reached the end of this (BIG!) trilogy. It was like spending a whole day with Greene, from breakfast to vodka martinis in the late hours of the night, just discussing his life & ideas.

I fell into a burning ring of fire
I fell down, down, down
And the flames came up higher -
And it burns, burns, burns
That ring of fire, that Ring of Fire.
Johnny Cash

Psychological illnesses are, for those of us afflicted with them, burning rings of fire. Such is our necessary purgation at the moment of our resisting the evil of the world - for at that moment the world lunges for our throats.

Its intent is to disable our strident recitations of its follies. And in doing so it disables us.

But as Paul says, in our weakness is our strength - and if we are eventually able to grope downwards through the flames, to the healing care of the at-one-and-the-same-time intensely human and transcendentally divine Spirit of Love that is always indwelling in us, we’ll be OK in time.

And Graham Greene knew that.

Oh, our illness of course will return, as it always will be under the threat of scrutiny of malicious intentions. But we can survive with the Spirit.

This is Greene’s authorized biography and, as Professor Sherry too seems - according to some reports - to share Greene’s burden of bipolar disorder, he often tends to mute the more embarrassing examples of Greene’s erratic episodes.

And that’s as it should be.

Keep tabloid headlines to the tabloids, and maintain a respectful distance from us sufferers.

Those of us who share this affliction and have found themselves safe on the healing ground of a firm faith find it often lets us share in people’s laughs at our expense.

Oddly, healing can do that.

But to get there we must learn our weaknesses, and know that in themselves they are insurmountable. The very devil himself initiates them.

But he stays silent in the face of our healed humility.

That which shackles us, can also rescue us too: yes - rescue us from all those darker imbroglios which lead our more worldly friends to a much grimmer future in deep despair.

So faith and humility, as always, heal. And, in fact, save us from Calamity. If they are combined with assiduous home care.

Unfortunately, Greene’s Faith was never firm enough for that, though like us he constantly tried. Or so they say!

Additionally, the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals was still unavailable during most of his life. And the devils’ damage, unchecked, is largely irreparable.

Bipolar sufferers tend to be impulsive. Only faith and constant contrition can check that.

In Greene’s case, alas, they didn’t, due to the unchecked progress of his illness. So in later life, as we see here, he had become a mere shadow.

There but for the Grace of God Go I.

In Greene’s case, as for so many, it all started in homophobia. Myself, likewise. But a well-meaning and robust Edwardian counsellor at his English boarding school saw the early depressive symptoms in Greene and proffered the then-common cure of Robust Masculinity.

But, big mistake. Greene could never be robust. But he pursued a rather wantonly heterosexual life, as a result, for the rest of his earthly existence. My state of the art meds have spared me that...

His impulsiveness exploded embarrassingly on occasion. So the grim raiment of depression became for him the new cure, through his writing. The grey tristesse that follows coitus was its fertile seedbed. Or was it all an ACT?

Greene’s irony was notorious.

The more enthusiastic bipolar characters in his novels, therefore - like the Quiet American, Pyle - are portrayed by him as risible recipes for disaster. Are they only artful and humble pastiches of himself - and US?

And a little faith - and whiskey - became his new anodynes. The thirties Tough Guy image, which always fails for us poor souls. Or so says Greene,,,

And because he couldn’t be altogether responsible publicly, he concentrated on his writing. For me it’s the same. And Greene escaped to anonymity by travelling. And what towering masterpieces were the result!

But slow and steady work and faith is nowadays the best therapy for so many of us modern readers who resemble him. Along with punctual and more effective meds than existed for him - the lack of which cursed Greene’s life.

And not burning the candle at both ends, as evince Greene’s fellow sufferer Carrie Fisher’s zanily impulsive habits in that New biography, which is high on my TBR’s.

And I think that’s right - works for me.

But Greene was doomed to eternally cringe at his own impulsive gaffes. And at the end of his life, where we find him here, they were on the rise as his Faith started to sputter.

Magazines at that time feature interviews with Greene... Yikes, like me, he became a real Loose Cannon. Positively Fey!

But who knows What Dreams May Come?

Because he has served God’s purpose, after all, by being the famous fool that exalted God like the Mexican christero whiskey priest in The Power and the Glory!

And - much less intentionally - in so many other f his timeless Christian masterpieces.

For he always kept the Door of Hope ajar...

And, after all, “we are (all) Saved by Hope.”