Comedy Thriller Daiquiri, With a Dash of Shakespeare?

“I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations. . . I don't think even my country means all that much. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?”—Beatrice, to Wormold

Okay, this may not be one of the very best of Graham Greene novels, but in re-reading it after all these years I appreciated so much what a great writer can do with a lesser/lighter story. Greene made distinctions between his books that some of us might contend with; he divides his fiction writing between novels (serious stuff) and “entertainments,” and this book he puts in the latter category, but I’d say it was better written than most novels anywhere. Why be a snob about your own spy thrillers and mysteries?! This is really good!

Our Man in Havana takes place during the Batista regime, 1958, one year before the Castro Revolution, some years before the Cuban Missile Crisis, but presaging all this in some ways. Greene had been a journalist in Havana. What did he know?! Well, what we know he knows is Catholicism and guilt and anguish, in masterpieces such as The Power and the Glory and The End of the Affair, but in Havana (and some other books) Greene here also reveals he knows his thrillers, opening surprisingly with clever humor, turning (deadly) serious in the end. Is this Greene’s ode to Hitchcock?

Wormold is a British ex-pat selling vacuum cleaners—and not very well—in Havana, with his daughter Millie who may want to be a nun but seems like an unlikely candidate, spending most of Dad’s money and hanging around with admiring males. So when the British Secret Service comes to conscript him to play a role in the anti-Commie cause, he reluctantly agrees, though as with selling vacuum cleaners, he doesn’t know how to do it, really. Desperate to get paid, he fabricates “reports” he conveys to MI6 in code using Charles Lamb’s Tale of Shakespeare. He takes photographs of vacuum cleaner parts and sends them with the cryptic Lamb/Shakespeare quotes back to London. This seems to work out pretty well, until it doesn’t, and some serious things happen to put the stop to the laughs, veering the tale in the direction of dark farce.

And then, there's this kind of prophetic aspect to the farce that emerges: Just a couple of years after the publication of this seemingly silly book Greene would appear to have known something, in that the Russians may have actually been building missile sites aimed at the US. Goofy Wormold "made-up" stories that ended up becoming actually true, in the end!

So: Wormold is a bad vacuum-cleaner salesman as spy. But he’s not quite a spy. And Lamb’s Tales of Shakespeare is not really quite Shakespeare. The lust that Chief of Police Segura has for Millie is not quite love. The truths in Havana emerge out of shadows. We or they can’t always tell the real from the artificial. These twists and turns make their way into turns of phrase, told in the form of oxymoronic ironies and contradictions:

“As long as nothing happens anything is possible. . . ”

“You should dream more. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.”

“As long as you lie, you do no harm.”

“Don’t learn from experience, Millie.”

“Isn’t it wonderful that you always get what you pray for?”

“I believe you exist, so you do.”

That’s the real pleasure in Greene here: The language and logic play, with moral implications under all the cleverness. Oh! Right! Besides giving a nod to Hitchcock, I see it’s an ode to Shakespeare as master of language as well! And then, there are layers of that send-up of the politics of the situation that led to the ridiculous and dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. I really liked this and have ordered the movie with Alec Guinness as Wormold.

Our Man in Havana was a delightful and satirical novel about the Cold War as only Graham Greene could do. James Wormold, an Englishman in Havana is recruited into espionage as a spy for MI6. Wormold, is a struggling vacuum cleaner salesman for Phastkleaners in Havana, Cuba, and left by his wife years ago. But he loves his delightful sixteen year-old daughter Millie who is torn between the rigors and rituals of her Catholic faith and spending frivolously, the latest expenditure a horse necessitating a stable and a country club for riding lessons. Alas, Wormold, a respected member of the European Traders' Association, succumbs to the temptation. And our accidental spy becomes "our man in Havana."

His British contact Hawthorn sets him up with the code books needed for espionage, two identical copies of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.

"The secret of successfully using an agent is to understand him. Our man in Havana belongs--you might say--to the Kipling age. Walking with kings--how does it go?--and keeping your virtue, crowds and the common touch."

Our man in Havana with little taste for espionage but in need of funds, decides to fabricate spies working for him and questionable drawings obtained, those bearing remarkable similarities to parts of vacuum cleaners. To justify his payments, he needed to supply regular reports. But at some point fantasy becomes some sort of frightening reality. This was a classic that looks at the Cold War unflinchingly.

"It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes."

Humorous spy story, with a typical Greene undertone. Especially enticing is the characterization of Wormold as a man who, against his will and skill, finds himself in an impossible situation and still manages to get out of it. It's great how Greene succeeds in combining irony with the heavy themes of responsibility and conscience. Not his best one, but greatly entertaining!

Think, the espionage version of Yes Minister, with a dash of Dad’s Army thrown in, and you’ll be somewhere near Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene. This is a satirical farce about the British Secret Service (MI6), and it’s very funny.

Our hapless protagonist is a vacuum cleaner salesman called Wormald. He was living in Havana during the terrible days of the oppressive Batista regime in the 1950s. This was just before the revolution led by Fidel Castro. Fertile ground for secret service agents of many nationalities.

I went into this one blind, and after a recent read of Greene’s (The Power and the Glory), which was way too Catholicky for me, this one surprised me. Immediately, one could detect this was going to be funny. Wormald was a quiet, unassuming sort – obsessed about his product and trying to sell the new model - The Atomic Pile. However, due to a turn of unexpected events, he was recruited by MI6 as an operative, and was expected to recruit a team of local agents to provide intelligence to London on the dangerous situation in Cuba.



A Miele 1950s Vacuum Cleaner, looks a bit racy I reckon. Vacuum Cleaners make an appearance more than once in the plot of this story

Wormald (what a name hey?) was hopeless and easily pushed around, and his way of ‘doing things’ will surprise you. So surprising, in fact, his own situation, and the mess he created just seemed to get worse and worse. His handler, an upper-class twit called Hawthorne thought Wormald was an excellent operative, due to the reports he was sending back and the team he had assembled, this view was shared by the stuffy Chief of MI6.

There’s not only laughs here, there’s also suspense, menace, thrills, and a touch of romance.

There’s one particularly nasty actor here – Havana Police Captain Segura. He possesses a legendary wallet made of human skin – you know the sort. After explaining to our hero that there is a class distinction between who one can torture or not, Segura said:

”Dear Mr Wormald, surely you realise there are some people who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged at the idea. One never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement”.

If you chose this book, you won't regret it. It is fast-paced, easy to read and funny. Highly recommended.

4 Stars

Many thanks to my buddy reader Davey (Boy) Marsland – he was good fun throughout, provided one or two perspectives that passed me by, and was the ideal companion for this one.

Dave's excellent review can be found here: www.goodreads.com/review/show/4358596051

If you have ever watched a Charles Bronson film you will understand that he only holds one expression. Happy - same look, sad - same look, end of the world - same look.
What has this got to do with Graham Greene? Well, very little to be honest. But it's very difficult to fathom that Our Man in Havana was written by the same guy who wrote the claustrophobic, theologically fatalistic The Heart of the Matter.
Our Man in Havana is a satire, and it's very funny. It's a piss take of the British secret service, who Graham Greene had worked for after WW2. He clearly dropped his trousers and cracked open a big smile when writing this.
It was an absolute joy to read, probably a 4 star book but I'm elevating it to 5 because I did it as a buddy read with Our Man in Australia, the wonderful Mark Porton. Mark could make reading a phone directory fun, so thank you my friend. And thank you Graham Greene for being so..... erm, Graham Greene

Graham Greene is one of the most highly regarded British authors of the 20th century. The American novelist John Irving has paid tribute to him, calling him,

"the most accomplished living novelist in the English language."

Very popular as a thriller-writer, writing "entertainments", as he called them, Graham Greene also wrote deeply serious Catholic novels, which received much literary acclaim, although he never actually won the Nobel prize for Literature. In these he examined contemporary moral and political issues through a Catholic perspective. Many of them are powerful Christian portrayals, concerning the struggles within the individual's soul. He argued vehemently against being characterised as a "Catholic novelist" however, saying that he was a novelist who happened to be a Catholic. Graham Greene had been an unhappy child, attempting suicide several times according to his autobiography, and as an adult he suffered from bi-polar disorder. Of this, he said,

"Unfortunately, the disease is also one's material."

Our Man in Havana though is a product of the other side of Greene's imagination. It is a humorous suspense novel; a spoof spy story, incorporating two of his favourite themes - espionage and politics. Greene had actually been recruited by MI6 during World War II, and had worked in counter-espionage. Earlier, in 1922, he had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His experience from such times provided much of the inspiration for the characters in Our Man in Havana. In it he pokes fun at the intelligence services, especially the British MI6. Yet the novel also has a darkly philosophic edge, and its conclusion is very bleak.

Our Man in Havana was written in 1958, and set in Cuba before the missile crisis of 1962. In some ways the book feels very reminiscent of spy stories dating from World War II, and in others, such as the parts of the plot about missile installations, it seems to anticipate coming events.

The tone of the novel is light and droll, occasionally lapsing into outright farce. There is little description; the language is simple and direct to the point of being spare. Graham Greene's realism and lean writing - his readability - is considered to be one of his greatest strengths. One critic has said,

"nothing deflects Greene from the main business of holding the reader's attention."

The main character in the story is James Wormold, a mild-mannered vacuum salesman who seems oddly isolated in Cuba. He is surrounded by other characters described in high relief, his manipulative Catholic daughter Millie, a political gangster Segura, and his closest friend who is also an isolated enigma, the World War I veteran, Dr. Hasselbache. When the bumbling Wormold, desperate for money to indulge his spendthrift daughter, is approached by Hawthorne, he is at first disbelieving. Hawthorne offers him a job working for the British secret service, which Wormold has misgivings about. However he slips into the job, conjuring up whatever seems to be demanded of him, drawing complicated diagram of bits of his vacuum cleaners to represent various missile components, and inventing fictitious contacts.

"It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of consciousness - he had only to turn a light on and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action."

As the events unfold, Wormold's descriptions become increasingly elaborate and, to a reader's eye, the scenarios unlikely and farcical, with Wormold himself ruminating on the way his life is proceeding.

"People similar to himself had done this, men who allowed themselves to be recruited while sitting in lavatories, who opened hotel doors with other men's keys and received instructions in secret ink and in novel uses for Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim."

The willingness of MI6 to believe reports from their local informants becomes more and more astonishing - and more and more deadly.

"He had no accomplice except the credulity of other men."

Yet in the middle of his humdrum life, real people were becoming the victims, people he knew, people who had been his friends. Life for Wormold was beginning to take on a surreal aspect,

"Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of tragedy."

Wormold becomes entangled in a web of his own making, inadvertent as it is. The abstract idea has become the individual - his individual - responsibility.

"I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organisations ... I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?"

At times like this we can see Greene's underlying message,

"If I love or if I hate, let me love or hate as an individual," says Wormold, and the author himself has said,

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

The book is a bitter black farce, with an ending as much of a "banana-skin" as any I have ever read, with Wormold partly a puppet, partly a numb automaton, and partly ridiculously incompetent. Depending on your sense of humour, you may find the climax hysterically funny.

"There's not much difference between the two machines any more than there is between two human beings, one Russian - or German - and one British. There would be no competition and no war if it wasn't for the ambition of a few men in both firms; just a few men dictate competition and invent needs and set Mr Carter and myself at each other's throats."

Our Man In Havana was famously filmed by Carol Reed, with Alec Guinness playing the part of Wormold. Many of Graham Greene's novels, plays and short stories have been adapted for film or television. He is perhaps one of the most cinematic of twentieth-century writers; he tells a good yarn, an exciting adventure story. However this one perhaps had more resonance at the time. The themes of an individual against an organised society, of conscience and responsibility; these are timeless, yes. But it could be said that the specific setting now feels rather dated.

A quite obscure small -time businessman, Mr. Wormold (nobody calls him James) an Englishman living in Havana before the revolution in the late 1950's, who sells vacuum cleaners in Cuba... however not many and his beautiful teenage daughter Milly needs a horse...why ? A silly question ... because she wants one. His wife is long gone... still alive but not with the dull husband, this tediousness will change soon to his dismay, a store without customers is a dismal place. Mr. Hawthorne a British spy (keep that a secret folks) recruits the very willing Wormold to be likewise, money cures problems and information isn't cheap. Dr. Hasselbacher an old friend, the only one he has, does a lot of drinking together in bars, philosophizing about the world they don't know. A former German WW1 soldier, without a country cautions Mr. Wormold, ( after more than a decade of being pals )... still calls him this, about getting involved in Cold War shenanigans. Nevertheless receiving a charming, attractive secretary Beatrice for free is nice for the lonely gentleman. You can guess what will happen between them. And quickly inventing a fictional group to help in his endeavors against the equally phony enemies, maybe not honest still the pay is great and London wants to know their evil opponents . He does give them what they want, excellent imaginative drawings, though sham reports of lethal weapons hidden in the mountains, a nation full of foreign spies roaming the land and secretly planning trouble for the West and everyone is happy, until real troubles occur.. The adversary agents take seriously their jobs. Still the sleazy Captain Segura of the local police shows too much interest in Milly, and the not good but fearful father has to protect his beloved daughter, at any cost? It has surprisingly dark atmospheric and unhappy passages but mostly the narrative is rather a pleasant read for all, which transports us there. This black comedy always entertains the reader, making fun of the hysterics in the era. Graham Greene is a master in depositing the audience in the plot , you will breathe the same air as the characters. The 1959 film version with Alec Guinness will bring a smile and delight its many admirers. As the news reveals , the book is not dated, which people today wrongly think ...Both should not be missed.

A wonderful post World War II black comedy from Greene. 'Our Man in Havana' is vacuum cleaner salesman Jim Wormold, who has a 16 year old daughter at a convent school, that always seems to find ways to spend his money, when she's not being driven around town by the Chief of Police, Segura.

Wormold is approached by British Secret Service agent, Henry Hawthorne to become a spy; Wormold says no, but then Hawthorne mentions he will be paid and get all expenses covered, and that's when this wonderful farce really kicks on! Yet, amidst all the hilarity, Greene still manages to confront and surprise me with many serious issues! 8 out of 12.

2011 read

An entertaining, comic, spy novel about James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner retailer living in Havana, Cuba. He is approached by Hawthorne who tries to recruit Wormold for the Secret Intelligence Service. Wormold is in Cuba during Batist’s regime, with his pretty seventeen year old daughter, Milly. Milly is materialistic and manipulative.

Wormold accepts the spy job to pay for Milly’s extravagances, fabricating reports and inventing a fictional network of agents. London Secret Intelligence Service sends Wormold a secretary, Beatrice Severn. She has orders to take over his contacts.

A delightful read. Highly recommended. Graham Greene fans should find this book a very satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 1958.

"Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it."

Our Man in Havana is a satirical espionage parody set in Cuba. The novel was published just few months prior to Fidel Castro toppling the Batista’s regime. James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman is recruited by MI6 to spy and to set up spy network without any clear instructions on as to what he is to spy on. There begins the fabrication of concocted operatives, fictional intelligence reports, sketches of vacuum parts that pass as architectural drawings of rebel buildings.

"It couldn’t be a vacuum cleaner, sir. Not a vacuum cleaner.’
‘Fiendish, isn’t it?’ the chief said… I believe we may be on to something so big that the H-bomb will become a conventional weapon."

There is a conglomeration of Russian, American, British spy emissaries and Cuban secret police spying on each other, intercepting intelligence and trying to outdo each other. Hidden among the folds of the absurdity is logic, authenticity, intuition and an endearing story of friendship and love.

"At least if I could kill him, I would kill for a reason. I would kill to show that you can't kill without being killed in your turn. I wouldn't kill for my country. I wouldn't kill for capitalism or Communism or social democracy or the welfare state - whose welfare? I would kill Carter because he killed Hasselbacher. A family-feud had been a better reason for murder than patriotism or the preference for one economic system over another. If I love or if I hate, let me love or hate as an individual."

Graham Greene - O nosso agente em Havana

O Autor – De Graham Greene li em tempos O Terceiro Homem, uma novela escrita igualmente em torno de ambientes de “espionagem” e alguma intriga. Ambas as histórias são repletas de humor, um humor em que nas entrelinhas se pressente uma mesma origem, i.e., o autor. Graham Greene espelha assim, pelo menos nos dois livros que lhe conheço, nos personagens e diálogos muito de si e da forma como vê o mundo.

Não é um autor com múltiplas personalidades, complexo e resistente às mais intrusivas intromissões de análise psicológica (ainda que lhe tenha sido diagnosticada uma doença bipolar o que não se consegue pressentir nos livros que lhe conheço). Vejo-o antes como um autor simpático, honesto, claro e escorreito que apresenta em todos os personagens um lado divertido e bem humorado, umas vezes inocente, outras com malícia, mas raramente com humor ácido. Ao longo do enredo GG assume-se como um escritor que mistura uma visão do mundo exterior com o seu próprio mundo interior, mas com um claro predomínio do primeiro. Não incorpora múltiplas personalidades, nem descreve nenhuma viagem a um mundo interior. É um escritor do mundo, um mundano inteligente: “onde as cidades são feitas da estáticas das ruas, locais e pessoas. Mas para uma pessoa esse número é muito reduzido. São algumas pessoas, locais e ruas, que quando apenas perduram na nossa memória deixam de fazer sentido”.


A Escrita. É um escritor que escreve para si e seguramente divertiu-se muito ao fazê-lo. Passagens como: a forma genial como intercala a conversa de Beatrice e Milly com os pensamentos de Wormold; a persistente intromissão da la Dueña quando se tornava necessário moderar a adolescência e impetuosidade de Milly; a forma como se relaciona com as bebidas, chegando ao ponto de interromper uma cena para descrever mais as qualidades das bebidas ingeridas que as características de quem as bebe; a descrição de um jogo de damas com miniaturas de garrafas de whisky em que mais pedras do adversário come (bebe), mais se lhe solta a língua - genial; o humor … vou falar porque sou o sócio mais antigo, disse Wormold. Fico feliz que tenha sobrevivido- retorquiu-lhe o amigo; ou “a minha morte teria sido mais discreta, disse Wormold após ver a morte do cão por envenenamento”; a alegoria entre a guerra fria e a competição de dois comerciantes de duas marcas de eletrodomésticos - a Phastkleaners e a Nuclenars; um romântico quase sempre tem medo que a realidade não corresponda às suas expectativas; “não deve acumular muitas coisas. Rapidamente estas se amontoam e não deixam espaço para se viver”; “e do que o poderiam acusar? Tinha inventado segredos mas não os tinha contado a ninguém! Eram segredos!”, etc, são exemplos da impossibilidade de GG não se ter divertido enquanto escrevia e descrevia os seus personagens.
Estas passagens são pequenos exemplos, pequenas pérolas com que GG nos brinda. Um escritor que na sua escrita reflete uma relação com o álcool de respeito e veneração, bem como os sentimentos que tem com o mundo da espionagem, um mundo que bem conheceu tanto pela sua breve passagem por ele, como pelas amizades que fez com alguns dos elementos dos “quatro de Cambridge”, e por isso conseguiu descrever com argúcia e ironia a dupla vida do mundo da espionagem.


A História – escrita em 1954 é no mínimo premonitória. E mais não digo para não fazer spoiler.

אוי הספר הזה פשוט מענג, כתיבה משעשעת וסטירה במיטבה על עולם הריגול אותו גרהם גרין הכיר היטב. לדעתי זהו מסוג הספרים שלא יתיישנו כל עוד מדינות תרגלנה זו אחר זו.