No Man's Land
Good old Graham Greene. Don't you love how he just thrusts you into a scene and expects you to get on board immediately? He certainly doesn't, as some authors do, apologise for making you listen to or read the story. He simply assumes you'll want to hear it as much as he wants to tell it.
I first read some of GG at 19 and hated it; now I like his works very much. So far I like "The End of the Affair" the best, closely followed by "The Quiet American". This particular story - which has been just published by Hespereus Press, and is considered a "lost" story of his - is also very good. It contains the mystical Catholic elements of "TEoTA" and some of the intrigues of "TQA". It's all about trust - does the narrator trust Brown, the quiet man who is in an unusual place just after WW2? Does Brown trust Clara, the woman he fell in love with on sight? And what about Starhov, Clara's lover, as well as being a Turgenev lover (and really a character straight out of Turgenev)?
This story was actually written as a film treatment although it never became a film; which is why, I suppose, it was lost for so long. It reads the same as any of his other short stories however. You are put firmly into a certain time and place - the descriptions are meticulous. There's always an air of something about to happen, and something always does happen, and you are never sure if anything positive is going to come out of it all. I think the romance is the weakest point in the story, and I assume that if hadn't been for a film he may have written it differently.
In the same edition there's a piece of writing with a funny story behind it. Apparently Graham Greene went in a competition which was for a piece of writing which best parodied Graham Greene! He went in it anonymously and he didn't win. However he eventually used the piece of writing for another film treatment, which did go on to become a film, and that piece of writing is included here.
No Man's Land isn't the best thing by GG ever, but it's pretty good; with excellent writing and thought-provoking ideas, what more could you ask for?
I first read some of GG at 19 and hated it; now I like his works very much. So far I like "The End of the Affair" the best, closely followed by "The Quiet American". This particular story - which has been just published by Hespereus Press, and is considered a "lost" story of his - is also very good. It contains the mystical Catholic elements of "TEoTA" and some of the intrigues of "TQA". It's all about trust - does the narrator trust Brown, the quiet man who is in an unusual place just after WW2? Does Brown trust Clara, the woman he fell in love with on sight? And what about Starhov, Clara's lover, as well as being a Turgenev lover (and really a character straight out of Turgenev)?
This story was actually written as a film treatment although it never became a film; which is why, I suppose, it was lost for so long. It reads the same as any of his other short stories however. You are put firmly into a certain time and place - the descriptions are meticulous. There's always an air of something about to happen, and something always does happen, and you are never sure if anything positive is going to come out of it all. I think the romance is the weakest point in the story, and I assume that if hadn't been for a film he may have written it differently.
In the same edition there's a piece of writing with a funny story behind it. Apparently Graham Greene went in a competition which was for a piece of writing which best parodied Graham Greene! He went in it anonymously and he didn't win. However he eventually used the piece of writing for another film treatment, which did go on to become a film, and that piece of writing is included here.
No Man's Land isn't the best thing by GG ever, but it's pretty good; with excellent writing and thought-provoking ideas, what more could you ask for?
posted by Carly at 2:58 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home