Misquotes didn’t mean much to Raven.
The works of Graham Greene inhabit a strange
non-place called Greeneland. I find
the easiest way to recall whether or not Graham
has an e at the end of it is by
reminding myself that he is Graham
Greeny.
Greeneland is not a place: it is a statement
of mind.
To sum it up in one word would be difficult,
as I’d aim for the word guilt on my
way to the word betrayal. I order the
firing squad out of barracks before dawn, with the intention of having one word
shot. Guilt dies in a hail of
bullets, leaving betrayal on the
doormat come the morning.
Betrayal. I pick it off the doormat and open
it up to thorough examination. What’s on your mind, in Greeneland? Betrayal. That’s
not the only one-word statement that fits, but it fits so well that it serves
as the poster of the movie of the book of the anecdote that furnished the tale
initially. I read a Graham Greeny story to another author.
*
This is a report from a
fugitive. Writers, in being writers, should rarely break cover. If you are the
grouse, breaking cover is bad for your health. I go about my business,
observing things. That’s something I do from a position of cover. And then I
write. This puzzles people, from time to time, when I am forced to ask unusual
questions.
I am forced to ask unusual questions, O Best
Beloved, on account of my ’satiable curtiosity.
Yes, I’ll break cover if I have to, and flap
my way out of a tricky situation. If I go around asking awkward questions and
people want to know who I am, I simply announce that I’m an author and all the
difficulty goes away.
Yes, I
sneaked into your nuclear reactor for research into how to sneak into your
nuclear reactor.
Oh, that’s fine.
This was the case when questioned by the
head of special operations at the Federal Reserve Bank. He confirmed to the
armed guards that, yes, indeed, my passport was a genuine travel document. They
didn’t have to open fire or close the blast doors on me. My excuse for being
me, myself, and I? Oh, I’m an author.
Shortly thereafter, it’s a case of…
“And now the highlight of our tour: the gold
vault.”
*
Graham Greene didn’t care for
being identified as Graham Greene when out and about. Being Graham Greene
certainly opened a few dictatorial palace doors and tent-flaps to him. But
being recognised as Graham Greene while on the job, out in the dusty streets,
interfered with the work.
There was a time when I broke cover in the
company of friends, which is not breaking cover at all, and I read short
stories to them. These events, readings, occurred with or without alcohol in
the audience.
Occasionally, members of the audience
emerged to read stories of their own. An opening line about discovering a hatred
for children stays with me. I laughed, and I believe to this day that I was
meant to find the line funny.
The author of that piece was then subjected
to my work, and declared, rather drunkenly, that my writing was more than
parody, more than pastiche, wasn’t it? I’ll admit to going a bit meta from time to time. Let’s leave it
at that.
These were not published stories. I received
a letter by way of apology for the drunkenness, and a declaration that my work
would find an outlet one day. One day it did, when I took those unseen stories
from my readings and published the damned things.
In the end, I inherited hundreds of volumes
from a library as a result of my time in the trenches as a performer of tales.
And I am still moving those tomes about, with an eye to the stacks as I type.
But I went into cover again, and cut back on reading stories.
The last time I read an unpublished story of
my own was to a fellow author, who laughed throughout. It was meant to be
funny, since you ask.
Filthy author Joy Eileen guffawed at all the dirty jokes
she imagined were in my tale. Who was I to stand in the way of a reader’s fun?
(Also, there may have been some dirty jokes hidden in amongst the dirty jokes.)
*
Now we come to Greeneland.
No, I wasn’t betrayed. I ended up performing The Fallen Idol, by Graham Greene. If you haven’t read it, or
haven’t seen the film, I’d avoid any introduction by Greene in the text. Skip
it. He betrays story details there.
Somewhere along the way, in unspooling the
story to author K. Woodward, I’d agreed to read the tale in a Scottish accent.
Luckily, I happen to have a vaguely Scottish accent. This provided only a small
difficulty.
To the distant observer, American in nature,
I sound vaguely Irish. And to the close observer, even amongst Scots, I have
been called Irish-American. Everyone in town wonders which town I came from
originally. Aye, aboot that…
The small difficulty in remaining Scottish
for this reading was that I seemed determined to remain Scottish for this
reading. Ordinarily, I’d do different voices for all the characters who strut on
the stage of the page. And I’d add one other voice, as narrator.
I started with unreasonable intent, and
found my Rogue Brogue1 possessing characters as I went along. One
voice fits all. Betrayed by my own accent? Over a Graham Greene story? How apt.
I was eyebrow-deep in Greeneland.
The story began as The Basement Room, and was adapted for the screen as The Fallen Idol – that’s the title we go
with now in print. Viewers may encounter the movie under yet another title: The Lost Illusion.
Let’s say the original story is bleaker than
the film is, and leave it to simmer without spoiling anything. I am reminded of
the nasty ending to Greene’s Brighton
Rock and the even hollower nastiness to the end of the film adaptation
starring Richard Attenborough.
The not-so-hidden-hand of Terence Rattigan
nudged the end of the movie in that direction: the direction of the so-called happy ending. With Greene on
the adaptation duties himself, he left that bit in, knowing that certain
viewers wouldn’t count the film’s finish as happy at all. Clearly, I’m in the
latter camp…
Read Brighton
Rock and find the end bleak. Watch the 1948 movie and find the finish even
bleaker. Fight me. Don’t fight me. Not advocating violence…merely the imagery
of violence. Again, viewers may find the movie under the title Young Scarface. Why, yes, I do mean the
Americans.
Did Greene betray his own work when adapting
it for the screen? The book is the book, and the movie is the movie, and never
the twain shall meet. Writing a novel is a solo collaborative process. The
author teams up with all the voices inside the scribbler’s head. A
book-to-movie adaptation…is under the guiding boot of the production’s budget.
When writing the script of the original
text, first ally yourself with the accountants.
*
I keep having allergic
reactions to Ernest Hemingway. After a particularly painful attempt at reading
Hemingway again…
We shall label this THE HEMINGWAY FIASCO, and ride quickly past the wreck of an old
motor carriage dragged halfway into the swamp, for fear of lingering there and
unleashing ghosts…
KOFF KOFF.
After a particularly painful attempt at
reading Hemingway again, I resolved to inflict a divisive writer on the Canadian
K. Woodward. I’d marched into the banqueting hall and allowed her to chop off
my head with the Hemingway. As the tale goes, I must return and flip that coin
to the underside through a sense of fairness. Though what is fair in surviving
decapitation by means of faery sorcery, I do not know.
This is the tale of Sir Gawain and the Graham Greene Knight.
And so, it fell about that I inflicted
Greeneland upon her. In a reading, no less. We tackled The Fallen Idol. Yes, in a very Scottish way. The story pulled me
up by the reins when I revisited the racism.
Greeneland is packed with Colonial Types:
short-fused buttoned-down penitents weighed under murky water by the guilt on
their epaulettes – ambulatory administrative catastrophes who sail for weeks on
end to countries they could never understand, trying to escape what they left
behind.
Those characters understand even less than
before, finding themselves waiting for themselves at the docks, and only rid
themselves of themselves by reaching for
the revolver. Or the whisky bottle. It little matters which, under a hot
climate.
And so, to the editing of the words. Greene
uses certain words to show the racist nature of a character’s life overseas.
The character brought all of that back with him to the land of pubs and stout
and blowsy characters and Imperial measures and no internet.
Reading aloud, I rephrase the sentences as I
go. Greene himself worked the same toil in the fields, when accused of
anti-Semitism. I’m not saying he was the George Lucas of his day, but we know
Han shot first.
There’s no escaping the paperwork-fuelled
brand-name colonial racism in Greene’s depiction of paperwork-fuelled
brand-name colonial racism. Why, then, did Greene toil in the editorial fields
to reduce the anti-Semitism in his works?
It’s difficult to get hold of the original STAR WARS. Oh, it can be obtained. The
same is true of Greene’s early work, The
Name of Action. If I really wanted to read an original copy, I could buy an
original copy for £GASP. Battered by critics and savaged by Greene himself, the
author took that early story off the market.
As for books decidedly still available, I
think of Greene going back in and softening the anti-Semitism on his pages.
Accidentally, he intensified it. Once you know there are two versions of a
tale, you see something worse in what he’d done in going from there to here. To
take out a reference to a Jewess and
instead to call her a bitch isn’t
what I’d call sensible editing.
The author’s distaste for his own distaste
is typical Graham. He’s not called Henry
for a reason. Though he will punt the name off to Scobie, a Colonial Type
digging deep into The Heart of the
Matter.
Greene disapproved of much in (and off to
one side of) his world. He gives us the label of entertainments for his thrillers and lets us know there are other,
more serious, literary works waiting in the wings.
I’m not buying it. Greene abandoned the entertainments position as he filled
bookshelves the world over.
Greene didn’t care for Greeneland, though he was an early adopter of the notion. He alludes
to it by referencing Greenland in his
work.
Harshly, he didn’t care for himself, as
witnessed by his attempts on his life. Russian Roulette with the revolver. This,
from an author who later realised exactly why Hemingway shot himself. Greene
wanted out, by any old means, weighing himself under clean water with aspirin
on one last swim in the pool. He’d go on to drown, very slowly, in whisky.
Justly or unjustly, Greene wasn’t exactly a
fan of adaptations of his work. He’d pan his own adaptation wearing the hat of
Greene the film critic. I have no way of knowing how far into the whisky bottle
he was before the self-loathing emerged. I’d venture…as far as uncorking it
went.
Greene did not care to be corralled with a
herd of Catholic Writers. And I see why. Even in Brighton Rock and The Power
and the Glory, Greene comes across as an observer of that faith rather than
as a full participant in it.
But then, I will gleefully read C.S. Lewis
and feel that Aslan is nothing more than a big magical talking lion with
superpowers. So what do I know. Hey, if you want to view Aslan as Jesus…go for
it.
On Greene, I could foist digression after
digression upon you. To return to the point. I’m reading a story aloud. The
language is reprehensible. I cut and stitch and patch my way through the mire,
editing Graham Greene on the run. My audience of one gets the idea of colonial
repression minus the language employed by the original scribbler.
*
The Fallen Idol
is a story of betrayal. Greene was well-used to that. All writers are spies.
Greene wouldn’t be out of place in an Eric Ambler novel. Drop Greene in Weimar
Germany with a bundle of notes and the instruction to meddle constructively,
and he would dabble semi-enthusiastically.
One cannot mention Graham Greene and
betrayal without starting a sentence with the word one. And that sentence would lead straight to his old boss in the
spying game. One cannot mention Graham Greene and betrayal without mentioning
Kim Philby.
Kim Philby. No traitor, he. After all,
according to the traitor himself, To
betray, you must first belong. I never belonged. Take that one with a pinch
of a salt-mine and a samovar-sized gulp of suspicion, Comrade.
Philby serving some very cold tea, indeed,
as he held the platter out to his Russian masters.
Kim Philby was the charming sort of middle
manager who would cheerily hand you a cocktail you’d never heard of at a party
he’d call a soiree. All the while,
he’d be banging your nanny and telling himself it was distinctly in the cause of Communism, old boy.
Graham Greene’s distaste for what he saw as
Philby’s office politicking, a power-grab fuelling ambition off-the-leash,
later fell away with Philby’s exposure. At that point, Greene forgave Philby
over appearing to be a bit of a dick in the office.
Greene
realised Kim’s being a bit of a dick in the office was merely cover for
Philby’s advance as an espionage careerist of a wholly different kind – a
Soviet-controlled one.
I am tempted to use the word forgiveness when describing Greeneland.
But it crouches unseen, in the company of guilt.
Betrayal is the Dickensian Spirit,
concealing both beneath its lengthy robes.
The problem with people like Kim Philby is
that people liked Kim Philby. Hauling himself out of middle management into the
upper reaches of betrayal with a smile, a quip, and oodles of charm didn’t make
him any less a bastard when he was sending agents to their deaths in Albania.
With Greene, betrayal is personal. How much
more personal then, is forgiveness? Philby is a traitor. Greene can’t forgive thuggish
office politics. Was Philby really as careerist as all that? Hard to believe.
Doesn’t sit right.
But then Philby looks a likely suspect as The Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring.
Here Greene’s earlier tale of the same name slots into position as a quirky
piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is history. It carries no meaning.
Philby’s political game in the office was
the cover story for the bastard’s infiltration into a position of power and safety
for himself. And Greene forgives that.
Eerily, Greene placed himself in the role of
the official uncovering Philby’s treachery and imagined giving the old boy a
day’s head-start out of a twisted sense of fair play.
Just get out
of London. Clear off with minimum fuss, why don’t you? What does it serve us to
air our dirty laundry in public? The whole point of our line of business is
that we conduct it behind closed doors. It’ll be better for all if the fox is
already bright in Paris while the hounds hunt dimly through Chelsea. The damage
is done. Why hurt some more? Newspaper headlines never get the story straight
anyway. Here’s a packet of fags. I know you’re short.
Yes, that’s always going to be fake
Greene-ery on my part, and not a patch on the author himself. No beer
references, for a start.
After reading Greene’s story to a fellow
author (and K. didn’t have an allergic reaction to Greene), I was asked if I
thought less of Greene in his forgiving of Philby’s treachery. Betrayal, guilt,
and forgiveness are all major themes in Greene’s work.
Greene
is also the colour of envy.
On
deep reflection, I’d expect Greene to
forgive Philby. It’s in his nature to do that. He’d frame adherence to a political
cause, Communism, the same way that he’d frame adherence to a religion without
thinking of religion as a political cause. Betray the nation, while sticking to
the cause. There’s a whisky priest in Greene. Minus the priest.
The blurred anti-Semitic character
portrayals of the past make way for softened writing championing individual
freedoms, with the rough spots ironed out, to the extent that Greene easily
found himself in Jerusalem picking up a writing prize. His earlier anti-Semitic
statements were raised alongside eyebrows over the nature of the award.
You may dislike Greene for many reasons. The
man forgives the ultimate traitor, Philby. Greene makes betrayal all about the isolated
individual, against the backdrop of a revolution or whatever political disturbance
is going on in his stories.
Hundreds might be dying in rioting or
unrest, but Greene takes it to the personal level. What of this one man, this
one woman, or down in the basement…what of this child in the story…
Yes, I think Greene’s forgiveness is very
Graham Greene. Philby himself characterised Greene as the only person who would
understand. Two old Commies, sitting not trading war stories, in a flat in
Moscow. Both are fakes. One is faker than the other. Flip a coin to determine
which is which. Loser Takes All.
*
A key feature of my readings
was always to waffle and babble at the start. I’d offer explanations.
Background information to the writing of a tale. Once, I was asked if I always
started story readings this way. Yes.
Until recently, on reading Graham Greene. I
guess a general audience could know of Graham Greene beforehand, but a story
out of my imagination, read to a private audience, needs a procession of notes
in front of it.
They
know ME beforehand, in the audience, but they know nothing of the story’s
background. At least as I type this, I am in a better position to talk about
the construction of my own stories than is Graham Greene concerning the
fashioning of his.
Oh, you’ll find his views in printed snippets.
But he won’t be waving a whisky at you as he recites his latest scribblings.
For his scribblings have been his late scribblings, of late.
My talk, here…
And it is talk, as I read my work aloud. (High Five to C.S. Lewis. Oh,
he’d go for it, to the onlooking disapprobation of Mr Tolkien.)
My talk here is the equivalent of the banter
that normally goes with a reading. This time around, reading someone else’s
work, I saved the notes until after the story. My mentioning of themes in
Greeneland is always going to be a talk on betrayal. And so I reached for my thoughts
on Greene and Philby. Here we are, with a blog post twice its usual length.
C.S. Lewis gives great writing advice. Read your work aloud. You can read
someone else’s work aloud, too. The world won’t end. Here’s scribbling advice
to take advantage of before the world ends: write
your work down.
1The Rogue Brogue
is a pending patent, currently © and soon to be ™ author K.C. Karr.
No comments:
Post a Comment