Con esta obra me estreno con este autor tan renombrado, que lastima no fue de mi agrado, en realidad es un texto un poco difícil de entender, es lo que yo describo como infumable (aunque no fumo), La historia que se presenta en cuatro fases no logra cuajar un hilo conductual; parece que fuera del genero del absurdo y no del genero del espionaje.
Si logre entender que el agente que lo llaman D., no le encontré sentido porque si su nombre código era D. se supone que su nombre cristiano debería ser otro; nunca logre comprender quien era su jefe o sus aliados; solamente el hombre tenia puras desgracias e infortunio; cuando llegue a la cuarta parte y finalice la última pagina, dije: "por fin se acabo"...

This is a strange novel. Its very fractured structure, its utterly isolated protagonist, its inchoate blundering, alienates.

'It was all hopelessly jumbled together...' (Penguin, 1975, p.156).

Greene's version of a 'confidential' agent has that same air of the amateur secret agent as Conrad's eponymous protagonist, but where there, there were clear political boundaries, here politics is more of a metaphysical shadowland where the morality of both sides merges in a commonality of purpose, but one side wants to kill to preserve their privileged status, the other wants to survive its dominating brutality. We know what side we are on, yet feel strangely uncomfortable with the weary war-wise agent's naïveté: do they really want to kill him? will they corrupt anyone connected to him? He knows the answers, but is for some absurd reason hesitant at coming to the obvious conclusion instantly. Like Verloc, D. is a naïve amateur.

Against the backdrop of what is probably the Spanish Civil War, D. is sent to England to secure a contract for coal for his side - probably the republican union of communists and anarchists - harried by his counterparts - probably of the nationalist monarchists and conservatives - who are willing to do anything to win the contract for themselves, or prevent his side from securing it. En route, he finds a couple of unlikely allies. D. stands out like a victim. D. is a victim.

All this lends the mood of a precariousness that is shabby, like an old coat that will identify you in a crowd, give you away to enemy eyes seeking to put you down. No one can be trusted, but strange loyalties are strangely gifted, as inexplicable as the human heart. In Greene's world, motive and desire are strange chaotic forces; the front half of his novels create a sense of delirium, where inchoate motives are about survival, where the world is like a pack of untamed beasts, impelled by individual want and need. Then - as in The Quiet American, where the volte face is abrupt and comes right in the middle - suddenly something coalesces, morality is a visible stream, the motives become honourable, austere, seared like polymers born after the first anarchic storm, creating impelling structures, true as DNA, as impossible to deny, the very marrow of action, of being. It is a form of art, suddenly, and all the chaos spent.

But that does not happen here. The confidential agent blunders his way through his little tasks and associates as though a stranger in any land, as though a mind segregated from the real world by its hopeless ineffectuality, blundering on past a life riven by war and loss, lost itself, not belonging to anything but the losing, doomed side. Only the strange attraction of two females for him, both really girls, keeps him on any path at all. He is always losing. And he is pitifully ineffectual. The plot meanders under largely unseen forces, hidden off the side-lines like figures behind the fog, and D. is pulled this way and that, perpetual victim of a better organised opposition. He has no skill at all, no tradecraft, not even common-sense. He is utterly inept, out of place and pathetic. How can a side win, dependent on him?

But if this rambling story were written deliberately to reflect this inadequacy, it also alienates by doing so. This must have been Greene's intention, just as it was in that first half of The Quiet American, creating a shifting, uncertain, chaotic world of broken morality or moral torpor. But here, we have no restoration of moral fibre, of social order, through our weak, wavering protagonist. He merely blunders from one beating to the next, stumbling blindly into the next trap, a worse situation, losing, losing, losing.

This is a very strange novel, unreprieved by anything - not character, plot turn, nor genre twist. Strange.

This is the twelfth Graham Greene novel I've read this summer. That would be my entire review if Goodreads didn't demand more text in a review. I don't know what to say other than all his themes, motifs and stylistic ways are present.
His description of place is, perhaps, his strong suit. A train ride through the Midlands is pastoral and stark at the same time. A brief part of the book is set in a seaside hotel. I wouldn't say that part is more than six pages, but its documentary accuracy and insight into the concept of this hotel (which seems to be a cross between a holiday camp and Club Med) show Greene's real genius. Time and again, his books show people at the mercy of geography. Often it is a man-made geography, but you'll notice the hotel would have none of its allure if it weren't nestled in a dune by the sea. Nature does have the upper hand.
The parts about London offer the delight of brand-names we still know or have a knowledge of, and Tube stations and parks we can go to in 2017. Of course, throughout Greene's career, he reminds readers of what bombs can do to cities. This book was published in 1939. Hitler invaded Poland in September of 1939. So the London described is just pre-Blitz. But the main character, from an unnamed, war-torn country, has survived a bombing of just the sort experienced in London in the years immediately after THE CONFIDENTIAL AGENT came out. 1951's THE END OF THE AFFAIR features characters who have survived a London bombing. The short story "The Destructors" deals with the destruction of an apartment during the Blitz. Greene's own apartment building was bombed during the war. Greene was a world traveler and was well aware of atrocity as a tool of war. In some sense, in THE CONFIDENTIAL AGENT, he is preparing the reader for what is ABOUT to happen in World War Two.
No honest reader can come away from THE CONFIDENTIAL AGENT without noticing Greene's antisemitism. That it is casual does not lessen its insidiousness.

I enjoyed this book. I've read some Graham Greene before so I had some idea what I was getting into. It was published in 1939 and the blurb on the back says it is the "model for the modern novel of espionage". I can see that as I've read many espionage novels. Lots if double crossing and a physically weakened good guy with huge odds to overcome. Can't tell the good guys from the bad guys and of course a femme fatale. Don't mean to sound so cynical as I enjoy these books (I think I've read all the Robert Ludlum books at least the ones Ludlum actually wrote) but you can see a common thread. Nevertheless I recommend this book if you enjoy espionage novels.

The edition I read was from "The Collected Edition" and had an introduction by Greene himself. According to Graham Greene, in his introduction, Kim Philby read this and said that it described how he felt about what he did. Greene wrote the book in 1939 "as an entertainment" that would supply income to his wife in case things went badly for him in what he knew was coming. The book is full of deep sorrow and much fear as well as no trust for anyone. The chief character, Mr. D., is handling negotiations for an unnamed country's government which is trying to buy coal from England. Mr. D is actually a scholar who teaches Romance Languages at an unnamed university and he doesn't know who, if anyone, he can trust. Not the Other Side, obviously, although who is on the Other Side, and what about those who are on Our Side? Are they really or are they just waiting for an opportunity to betray us? He has no idea who is truthful and who the liar. The young woman he meets refuses to listen to anything smelling of "drama" because she thinks it's all fabulous (in the original sense). She doesn't trust all these cloak and dagger tales, but she believes D as long as he doesn't make things dramatic. It is a very sad book, very sad, and the word "entertainment" was such a peculiar one to use.

I have to admit that although this book was a bit long at 300 pages (long because the text itself would suggest the book should be shorter), there is a lot to enjoy here.  This may not be considered one of the author's great novels by any means [1], but it is a compelling tale of an idealistic Spanish liberal on the side of the government trying unsuccessfully to obtain some much-needed coal for his side dealing unsuccessfully with the eventually successful fascist rebels.  Politically speaking, I must admit I have little if any sympathy for the main character, or others of his ilk in my contemporary society whose merciless destruction I could likely think about with some equanimity, but Greene (who was far more sympathetic to his protagonist) does wrap him with enough decent humanity to make him worth caring about in spite of his leftist politics.  And it is worthwhile to have a protagonist in a novel to root for, even if simply to root for his getting home to be inevitably slaughtered by the victorious fascists, who would not let a man like this one live.

The novel is rather intriguingly divided into several parts.  The first half or so of the novel consists of the protagonist meeting up with some strangely "coincidental" happenings that he takes (correctly) to be tied to various intrigue between his side and the side of Franco's rebels.  As a result of this intrigue he finds himself under observation, has his papers stolen from him so he is unable to complete his deal, and is about to be framed for the murder of a young and pert maid he had befriended, when he suddenly snaps into action and refuses to be a victim.  At this moment the story becomes much better as the protagonist ponders the meaning of the Song of Roland and tries to stir the tepid workers of the coal mines to his side while evading the English police and trying, eventually successfully, to leave for home with a woman somehow in love with him.  Even if our life expectancy is as short as the protagonist's, someone who everyone involved, himself included, realizes is doomed, that is something we can all appreciate.  Indeed, the last section of the book is called "The End," and one wonders how far off the end actually is for our brave Spanish academic.

In reviewing this book I feel somewhat ambivalent.  On the one hand, Greene does a good job at portraying the humanity of someone who is totally unsuited for the life of a secret agent for a government struggling for its life against brutal fascist enemies.  Our hero is a man who should have the love of a good woman and a life spent reading and interpreting ancient poetry.  Yet the novel presents a world not so unlike our own where everyone, even those wholly unsuited to an existence of violence and subterfuge, has to pick sides.  I read this novel not as something interesting about the troubled 1930's, but as something that could very easily happen to me--the protagonist is a very Nathanish person, after all--and that gave the novel a sense of grounding in reality that many readers probably do not view it with.  The more you can see this novel as having the savor of truth, the more you can see the reality that there are no neutrals, and that in the face of violence people must ultimately choose whom they serve.  There has always been a war going on that demanded such a choice, but few times has it been as obvious as it is in the novel and in our own lives.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

Many a long and weary year ago I read a fair few Greene books. This one has a nice grimy atmosphere and a very real uncertainty about who, if anyone, can be trusted. The Esperanto lesson always seemed like a nice touch, invented stories, pretended loyalties, unreal language, no end of deceptions.

This is a lot of fun. A fuddy-duddy lecturer, D, comes to England as the confidential agent. Only he seems pretty incapable and scared of his own shadow. He befriends a young woman, and the pair grow humorously close as they face constant danger and espionage. D gradually finds the courage and conviction he needs.

A well-written thriller and on of my favourites out of Greene's "less serious" works.

D is a confidential agent, a poor intellectual, who has come to post-war England to make a coal deal for the government of his unspecified Eastern European country. On the boat he sees L, an upper-class confidential agent charged with the same mission and working for the rebels. D's country is at civil war and the deal is vital to both sides to win the conflict. L does everything in his power to stop D and is aided by D's constant bad luck as he encounters various British officials and members of the upper classes who are suspicious of D as a scruffy foreigner. D becomes more and more paranoid, he cannot trust anyone in London, only Elsie, a maid in his hotel, and Rose, a young woman who seems to be in love with him.

The story is very Kafka-esque with its one letter characters, it's petty bureaucracy, and its trust-no-one paranoia, but it is also quintessentially British. D meets a lot of pinch faced home-counties types, who are cold and unfriendly because he perceived as a working-class foreigner. In these encounters there is constant mistrust and misunderstanding as well as an undercurrent of racism, but it is all couched in the curious politeness of the English and their obsession with the 'right' sort of behaviour in any given situation. Has D brought the stench of war with him to peaceful England or is it already their in this unpleasant and unwelcoming place?

Graham Greene is one of my favourite authors, having started reading his novels when I was in my teens, many years ago, though I haven’t read one of his books for several years.

Now, on re-reading “The Confidential Agent”, I know why, I like him so much. He is a great storyteller and has a wonderful way of phrasing his sentences, in which not a single word is ever surplus to requirements. It is a joy and pleasure to read what he has written.

“The Confidential Agent” was written by Greene, as one of his entertainments, in the late 1930’s and gives a wonderful evocation of what London must have been like then with inclement weather, foreign intrigue and a sense of impending doom.

The story of D a confidential agent given the job of securing coal supplies for his government, as it battles a civil war, is intriguing from start to finish, with plot twists and turns throughout the story, which will have you absorbed until the end.

A great story by a master writer.

Κλασικό κι ατμοσφαιρικό μεν, βραδυφλεγές και παρωχημένο δε.

Βαθμολογία: 3,4/5 ή 6,8/10.

Θα γίνει και εκτενέστερη κριτική του βιβλίου.

Atmospheric, unsentimental and sophisticated.