The Honorary Consul

Hip tip of the week for literary cats:

Go for the trifecta! Read Under The Volcano, The Vice-Consul, and this for complete Consulate Literature Snobbery (CLS). Collect all three now and you’ll have Lowery’s Consul battling the booze; Duras’ Vice-Consul as your enigmatic shadow-self of existentialist liberation-via-fucking; and Greene’s Honorary variant. This guy’s so pathetic he doesn’t even have any official authority. What an asshole! What he does have is a deeply Catholic novel that attempts to separate God’s existence from God’s own chances at redemption, the difference between the receiving of the Eucharist and true communion, and a bunch of other book-type things—like Greene jabbing playfully ‘meta’ via his own worse in-universe author—that stand no chance against booze and fucking.

Popularly, I mean. Us book people know where the real substance is. (Hint: rhymes with ‘clues’ and ‘clucking.’)

another fine novel by Greene -- more to come about this one.

This was an exemplary read. Comedic indictments of the Latin ideal of machismo, kidnappers who are absolutely no good at kidnapping, the consistently volatile political situation of Latin American countries, the lonely emptiness of the ex-pat, and the utter worthlessness of one man's life when viewed through a Utilitarian framework: all of these themes find expression in Greene's Honorary Consul.

This had been floating around in my to-be-read queue for a while and I have no regrets about bumping it to the top of my list. Greene was a master wordsmith and his characters are always, at the least, interesting constructions. The ability he has of writing characters that pursue two goals that are completely at odds with one another is flawless and with it he captures the often maddening complexity of even the most dull person. Humans are beautifully flawed and fascinating creatures and too often the challenge of expressing that is above the skills of most writers. Greene rightfully earned his place among the pantheon of literary giants.

_شاید بهش حسادت میکنی؟ چون اون میتونه لااقل یکی رو دوست داشته باشه.
_دوست داشتن؟ این کلمه هیچ معنا و مفهومی برای من نداره.

Indicazioni editoriali
Uno dei più bei romanzi di Graham Greene, tra i massimi scrittori del ’900. «Una letteratura ideale per quell’indolenza dell’anima che a volte prende» (Alessandro Baricco).
Graham Greene si è espresso nei generi narrativi più diversi – dal thriller, alla storia d’amore, allo spionaggio –, mostrando sempre «che un romanzo serio può essere un romanzo travolgente, che un romanzo di avventura può essere anche un romanzo di idee» (Ian McEwan).
Per un errore, Charley Fortnum, console onorario britannico in una lontana località dell’Argentina, è stato rapito dai ribelli paraguayani invece dell’ambasciatore americano. A questo punto i guerriglieri non possono più tirarsi indietro. E Fortnum è così poco rilevante che nemmeno i governi e gli apparati hanno voglia di fare un passo per salvarlo. Nessuno è interessato a prenderlo per quello che è: una persona. Tranne l’individuo dal cui punto di vista, non sempre imparziale, è ricostruita tutta la storia: il giovane medico, mezzo inglese mezzo paraguayano, Eduardo Plarr. Attorno si agita una piccola comunità di persone che hanno conosciuto il console onorario e tutti, anche gli autoctoni, sembrano relitti di un naufragio abbandonati per caso in una terra «troppo vasta per gli esseri umani».
Un movimento narrativo che intreccia tanti temi, dialoghi, situazioni, personaggi, in modo tale da aver attratto il cinema, ma la vicenda serve anche all’autore per analizzare, con straziante profondità, l’ambiguità umana, come sia illusoria la possibilità di distinguere con sicurezza e di prendere posizione. Greene, diceva Mario Soldati, «ha un dono per scoprire la bellezza, una bellezza davvero esistente e non immaginaria, di ciò che tutti, per convenzione, credono e chiamano brutto, storto, sgradevole».

E' una storia magistrale, con ritmi da film e dialoghi sopraffini. Tutti i personaggi, siano essi principali o comprimari, sono pensati per essere indimenticabili. Un affresco corale degno di un grande narratore.
La battuta più bella, rivolta al prete guerrigliero, è del console onorario, quando rinuncia a un tentativo di fuga dalla prigione del popolo: «Riportami al mio whisky. Quello è il mio sacramento».

Gabriel Josipovici, in his 'Whatever Happened to Modernism?', slams Greene and most other post-war British writers; he says, I think, only Muriel Spark and someone else are top-rate. He bases this on his own, personal belief that the best writing is self-reflexive. Well, obviously he didn't read 'The Honorary Consul.' Aside from being a great story - up there with my favorite Greenes, Heart of the Matter, Power and Glory, Quiet American, Our Man in Havana - this one's also full of questioning and self-doubt about the role of literature in the world, the kind of writing one should do if one is going to be a writer, the relation between literature, politics and religion, and so on. There's also plenty of room for autobiographical allusion: Greene seems to be asking himself whether he'd achieved anything, really, by his life's works.

Admittedly, it doesn't manage this by making any wild stylistic or formal experiments. It's just that the characters, aside from the 'innocently' by-standing main man, are: a novelist, a prostitute, an 'ex-'priest and his 'wife', a poet/revolutionary, and a bunch of really, really poor and oppressed villagers. And, as you'd expect from a serious Greene novel, they're all complex and interesting and both sympathetic and utterly repulsive- you know, like people. You could easily teach this to a high school student, asking her which is the best life? While also helping her to think about how hard it is to answer a question like that.

So it's all intellectually stimulating, and well written and that sort of thing. The only flaw is that towards the end it suddenly becomes a second rate Dostoevsky novel: all long, looping, repetitive, completely unbelievable dialogue about God, politics and life. I wouldn't mind this in general, but the novel's really twenty or thirty pages too long. That this is my only complaint is some pretty good evidence, though, that the thing's well worth reading.

Regarded as one his own favorite works, this novel rightly categorized as a tragi-comedy as opposed to a spy novel in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hon...) depicts an unmarried physician in his early thirties called Dr Eduardo Plaar (nicknamed Ted) who has lived in an Argentinian provincial town, Correintes. Interestingly, "The Honorary Consul" itself refers to Charles Fortnum, an alcoholic divorcee in his sixties; when I first browsed its title I misunderstood him as the sole protagonist; however, the key protagonist should be Dr Plaar due to his life and role as a British descent who has left Paraguay with his Spanish mother for Buenos Aires (B.A.) and left his English-born father as a rebel there. In fact, Fortnum as an accidental hostage neither serves the Foreign Office nor holds any duty that involves intelligence of any kind; I think Greene might have used the title to be seemingly political-related, supported by a group of revolutionaries who have tried to kidnap the Ambassador and negotiations with the police done by Dr Plarr as an intermediary.

When I first saw the book cover, I wondered on the involvement of the sunglasses till I have reached the scene when Dr Plarr meets Clara at Kruber's shop where he approaches her, talking with her for more intimate relationship and buys her a pair of flashy sunglasses in spite of his knowledge that she has already married to Fortnum. This is one of the first steps of his plan fatefully leading to his seduction with her consent; I don't think he has done out of his love, he might have done that due to his lingering obsession since he first casually saw her and noticed a small scar on her forehead at Senora Sanchez's house where she first worked as a lady of the night at sixteen. He recognizes her during his medical visit called by Mr Fortnum, her husband, due to her stomachache.

Kidnapped by a group of revolutionaries headed by Father Leon Rivas, Fortnum and Dr Plarr have also talked heatedly on the doctor's seductive relation with 18-year-old Clara; the Consul seems submissive due to, probably, his advanced age and weaker character. Obviously, his wound forces him to lie in a coffin with little hope of rescue from the authority under the negotiation for the release via Dr Plarr with Colonel Perez till the 60-minute ultimatum is periodically counted down. As the agreed time is over, Dr Plarr steps out to meet the police and in a devastatingly horrible suspense he is shot in cold blood and liquidated, probably mistaken for Father Rivas.

There is a point of my admiration on Greene's writing in his novels, short stories, memoirs, etc. is that very rarely I've encountered any unreadable foul language, instead I'd be delighted to read his quotable sentences or some words masterfully used; therefore, he has long been one of the honorable Oxonian authors whose texts are a delight to read in awe and respect. For instance:

Patience and patients were words closely allied. (p. 95)

If I have not asked you to come to see me it is only that I have been disgustingly well. (pp. 138-139)

If he had known about it in time he would have stood by the graves and said a few words like Dr Saavedra, though he could not remember ever having made a speech in his life: all the same he could have found the courage in the heat of his indignation. (p. 257)

To continue ...

" دکتر پلار هیچ گاه کس دیگری را در شهر ندیده بود که کتاب بخواند. وقتی در خانه آشنایان به شام دعوت داشت فقط کتاب هایی را می دید که پشت شیشه محبوس بود تا از رطوبت در امان بماند. هیچ گاه کسی را کنار رودخانه یا حتی در یکی از میدان های شهر گرم خواندن چیزی ندیده بود - مگر گاه و گدار خواننده إلی لورالا، روزنامه محلی را. گاه عاشق و معشوقی روی نیمکت ها بودند یا زنان خسته ای با سبدهای خرید، یا ولگردانی که با فراغ بال روی نیمکت ها می نشستند، اما هیچ گاه کتابخوانی نبود. هیچ کس نمی خواست با ولگردی به شراکت بر نیمکتی بنشیند، و به خلاف بقیه مردم جهان نتواند دست و پای خود را به راحتی دراز کند. "