Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Penguin (Non-Classics) (1981), Paperback, 352 pages
Description
Collected Essays contains nearly eighty essays, reviews and occasional pieces composed between novels, plays and travel books over four prolific decades. From Henry James and Somerset Maugham to Ho Chi Minh and Kim Philby, the range of subjects is eclectic and stimulating; his subjects brought vividly to life. The resulting collection is as revealing as autobiography and characteristically rich in humour, insight and doubt.
Media reviews
New York Review of Books
Whether they add or ruffle, Greene's opinions have an artist's necessity in them. Let the academics weigh up, be exhaustive, or build their superstructures – the artist lives as much by his pride in his own emphasis as by what he ignores; humility is a disgrace. Greene has a marked loyalty to
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writers who have influenced him and to those who are out of fashion. He is free of the snobbery that pretends it has no time for the juvenile or second rate. The books of boyhood - Ballantine, Hope, Mason, Weyman, Rider Haggard and the Viper of Milan — were decisive for him: two or three themes, central in Greene's own writing, expand from them. Exotic, thrilling adventure, the lost childhood and its betrayal, the warnings against success, the lure of perfect evil. Show Less
Mr. Greene's fictive method fails only when his sympathy fails. There is one dud (Samuel Butler, to the beauty and funniness of whose thought he's unsusceptible) in what amounts to a gallery of literary portraits on the lines of John Aubrey (for whom and writers roughly like him Mr. Greene keeps a
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learned and appreciative corner) or of Theophrastus with the theorizing left out.Mr. Greene knows by ear what it needs the genius of a Freud to reach by ratiocination: art is that lost childhood pursued and never quite regained. "Perhaps," he says in the first sentence of this volume, "it is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives." I'm not the person to contradict him. His prose rained on, his moral honesty seeped into, the lost afternoons of my own childhood. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member booktsunami
Many years ago I read something by Graham Greene and was not greatly impressed so I have avoided his writing ever since. However, I picked up this little book because it was a series of short essays and I thought my son might improve himself and his writing by reading a few of them. Of course, that
However, I persevered and read a few essays deeper into the book. Confession: I have not read all the essays...just a selection. But sometimes there are flashes of brilliance ...and his captivation by Rider Haggard and King Solomon's mines reflects some of my own early fascination with books ...including King Solomon's mines and Biggles in the Desert...which I think rather draws from Rider Haggard.
And on a biography of Conan Doyle: "it isn't easy for an author to remain a pleasant human being: both success and failure are usually of a crippling kind". And on Ford Maddox Ford, p 127, "A novelist is not a vegetable absorbing nourishment mechanically from soil and air; materials not easily or painlessly gained..."
I have come away, rather more appreciative of Greene's writing....and even impressed with his self deprecating addendum to his review of Beatrix Potter's work:"On the publication of this essay, I received a somewhat acid letter from Miss Potter correcting certain details.......She denied there had been any emotional disturbance at the time she had been writing Mr Tod: She was however, suffering from the after-effects of the flu. In conclusion she deprecated sharply the 'Freudian school' of criticism."
I still find much of his prose to be overwrought but recognise that he has a style all of his own that is actually quite entertaining ...though he is inclined to flaunt his erudition.
Three stars from me
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has not eventuated so i have been reduced to reading them myself. They are a rather eclectic lot. Much of it falls into the category of literary criticism and I cannot but be impressed with the depth of Greene's reading and his grasp of language. the first couple of essays are reviews of Henry James and initially I felt the old distaste for the overly wrought prose and the carefully balanced sentences. It all seemed somewhat contrived. And trying a bit to hard to be "literary".....which in fact just made it rather difficult to read.However, I persevered and read a few essays deeper into the book. Confession: I have not read all the essays...just a selection. But sometimes there are flashes of brilliance ...and his captivation by Rider Haggard and King Solomon's mines reflects some of my own early fascination with books ...including King Solomon's mines and Biggles in the Desert...which I think rather draws from Rider Haggard.
And on a biography of Conan Doyle: "it isn't easy for an author to remain a pleasant human being: both success and failure are usually of a crippling kind". And on Ford Maddox Ford, p 127, "A novelist is not a vegetable absorbing nourishment mechanically from soil and air; materials not easily or painlessly gained..."
I have come away, rather more appreciative of Greene's writing....and even impressed with his self deprecating addendum to his review of Beatrix Potter's work:"On the publication of this essay, I received a somewhat acid letter from Miss Potter correcting certain details.......She denied there had been any emotional disturbance at the time she had been writing Mr Tod: She was however, suffering from the after-effects of the flu. In conclusion she deprecated sharply the 'Freudian school' of criticism."
I still find much of his prose to be overwrought but recognise that he has a style all of his own that is actually quite entertaining ...though he is inclined to flaunt his erudition.
Three stars from me
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Language
Original publication date
1969
Physical description
352 p.; 7.8 inches
ISBN
0140031596 / 9780140031591