Graham Greene

Review: It’s A Battlefield

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It’s A Battlefield

It’s A Battlefield, Graham Greene. Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504053976) 2018, first published 1934.

Summary: The private “battles” of those connected with Jim Drover, a bus driver convicted of murder for killing a policeman.

Jim Drover was convicted of the knife murder of a policeman about to bludgeon his wife, Milly, during a demonstration. He was sentenced to die by hanging. The action in this story involves the people who know Drover and their efforts to secure a reprieve. As they do so, we see figures involved in private battles. The title refers to a battle in the Crimean War where a fog isolated soldiers from the larger battle, so they ended up fighting individually, without a sense of the whole but just trying to survive.

The Home Secretary has asked the nameless Assistant Commissioner to give him a report of what effect an execution will have on Communist demonstrations. Jim’s brother Conrad, the “brains” to Jim’s “braun” tries to find a way to secure his release. He solicits the efforts of the Communist party with only desultory results. Conrad urges Milly to persuade the policeman’s widow to sign a release, which she does under pressure. However, no one holds out much hope for the petition. Milly’s sister Kay goes to bed with Mr. Surrogate, a widower who is an influential Communist economist to solicit his support, but also to satisfy her own urges. Both Surrogate and the Assistant Commissioner try to persuade Caroline Bury, a society influencer to use her influence. All of this is to no avail.

The reports the Assistant Commissioner receives suggest that the response to Drover’s impending execution will be indifferent. There is the question of doing justice, since Drover was defending his wife. But he hides behind his duty to enforce the law, and that the determinations of justice lay with others.

Meanwhile, as Conrad Drover and Milly recognize the apparent futility of their efforts, they end up in bed, a release but unsatisfying. This was not the “look after Milly” he promised his brother…or was it? Struggling with guilt and ineffectuality, he buys a gun and begins stalking the Assistant Commissioner.

Greene portrays a group of people with no great purpose or vision, who are just trying to get through life, and survive the battle that is life. Conrad, in his desperate plan at least strives for something more–if nothing else to do “something” for his brother. Even the usually conscientious Assistant Commissioner sits on the report. In the end, Jim Drover, who defended his wife, looks the most heroic. But over all seems to hang the bleak curtain of a faithless and indifferent modernism.

Review: Loser Takes All

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Loser Takes All, Graham Greene. Penguin Classics (ISBN: 9780140185423) 1993 (first published in 1955).

Summary: On a honeymoon in Monte Carlo, Bertram’s gambling successes force a choice between love and money.

Mr. Bertram is getting married. Neither he nor Cary are affluent. He’s a low level accountant in a business firm, with few aspirations for advancement. But they are excited to share a frugal life with each other, beginning with a modest honeymoon in Bournemouth.

All that changes one day when he is called on to resolve some accounting problems for the firm’s director, Mr. Dreuther. He does so in short order. Bertram mentions his wedding plans and Dreuther insists on what is an enticing alternative. He invites him to go to Monte Carlo to get married, and then join him on his yacht for a sailing honeymoon. How can he and Cary say no to that!

They arrive in Monte Carlo. But there is no Mr. Dreuther. Bertram and Cary marry and enjoy their honeymoon suite. But they had not planned to stay. Bertram visits the casino in hopes of winning enough to afford it. They are living on snacks. At one point, the hotel even fronts him a loan as a member of Dreuther’s firm. He keeps losing until his “system” starts working and he wins enough to pay back the loan. He keeps winning, and at one point gains the balance of controlling shares in his firm from another firm director who has been losing at the tables.

But as he spends all his waking hours gambling or thinking about it, he loses something else. He loses Cary, who loved the hungry and poor Bertram, not this rich stranger. It all comes to a head when Bertram discovers Cary has moved out of their suite to be with a hungry young man she has met during all those days Bertram left her alone.

Then Dreuther shows up, pleading a breakdown to excuse his delay. He finds Bertram alone and hears the sad tale. Instead of counselling him to accept a failed marriage, Dreuther suggests a plan to win Cary back, a plan suggested by the book’s title.

The story is a kind of parable on the saying, “One cannot serve two masters.” In this case, Bertram must choose between love and money, and he chose poorly. Fortunately, we do not have to wait long in this short novel to discover whether Dreuther’s plan will allow him to redeem his poor choice.

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Thanks for visiting Bob on Books.  I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]

Review: The Lawless Roads

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The Lawless Roads, Graham Greene. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781504054263) 2018 (first published in 1939).

Summary: Greene’s journey through Mexico to the states of Chiapas and Tabasco where Catholicism was most severely repressed.

Graham Greene is one of my favorite novelists. However, I would not pick him as a travel writer. I have to admit to not looking closely when I purchased The Lawless Roads, only discovering after beginning to read the book, that it was a non-fiction account of Greene’s journey from north to south in Mexico during 1938. His publisher asked him to investigate the anti-Catholic purges in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.

These began in the 1920’s under Plutarco Elías Calles, President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 and de facto leader of the country from 1929-1934. Being a Catholic, the publisher thought Greene would have a special connection to the people. As a travel account, it is a dreary read, reflecting the dysfunctional and dangerous character of Mexico in this period. However, the account served as backgroud of perhaps his most acclaimed novel, The Power and the Glory.

He begins at Laredo, then crosses over into northern Mexico, where he succeeds in interviewing General Cedillo, leader of a rebel state. As it turns out, Cedillo is aging and President Cardenas will soon replace him. He then makes his way to Mexico City, describing the life of the city, attending Mass, and meeting the exiled Bishop of Chiapas, “considered “one of the most dangerous and astute of the Mexican bishops.” That visit hardened his determination to reach Las Casas. Then, he travels to Veracruz, on the coast.

From here the journey grows more perilous. He books passage on the Ruiz Cano, little more than a barge, in unbearable heat, with constant rolling motion, and cramped quarters with no sex divisions. Then, he takes another barge from Frontera to Villahermosa, capitol of Tabasco, meets up with a Scottish adventurer, and spends a Sunday with no Mass, comforting himself in a godless state by reading Trollope. Then on to Salto in a small plane, from which he hoped to get a flight to Las Casas. Instead, he settles for a mule trip to Yajalon, with a sketchy guide, from which he hopes to catch a plane. Before departing, he learns of covert mass baptisms by itinerant priests in Yajalon

Finally, when no plane turns up, he embarks on another mule trip across the mountains to Las Casas, braving Arctic chills, changes in elevation, and passing cemeteries of slain Catholics, before finally reaching his destination in time for Holy Week. Masses occur in private homes, hidden services on Good Friday, a visit to the site of miraculous healings on Easter. All the while evidence of the suppression of faith is all about.

By this time, Greene himself is deathly sick with dysentery and we wonder if he will make it back. He does and in an epilogue recounts the journey home. Mass in Chelsea is “curiously fictitious.” He writes:

“[N]o peon knelt with his arms out in the attitude of the cross, no woman dragged herself up the aisle on her knees. It would have seemed shocking, like the Agony itself. We do not mortify ourselves. Perhaps we are in need of violence.”

Greene’s narrative has little plot, only a destination. Apart from the gritty faith of the people, led by courageous priests, there is little to inspire. Crass tourism, corrupt government, risky transport, and endless heat and mosquitoes are recurring themes. Perhaps the most suspenseful part of the account is our uncertainty that Greene will survive. At best, it is an unvarnished account of the aftermath of totalitarian rule.

So this is a tough read. It offers good background for The Power and the Glory. It describes the venality that descends on a nation under totalitarian rule. And it recounts the instances of courage of faith-led resistance. If you are a Greene fan and these reasons are important to you, it is a worthwhile read. Otherwise, you may just find it a slog.

Review: The Man Within

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The Man Within, Graham Greene. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781504054003), 2018 (First published in 1929).

Summary: Francis Andrews flight from smugglers he betrayed endangers a girl with whom he takes refuge.

This is Graham Greene’s first published novel. The main character is Francis Andrews, son of an abusive smuggler. When his father died, Carlyon, his second, took him under his wing in the smuggling business. But he never fits in, no more than he did with his father. Consequently, he writes a letter to customs officers, tipping them off to the smugglers’ whereabouts.. When the customs officers show up, Andrews escapes during the fight that ensues, leaving a customs officer dead.

A group of the men are taken into custody and face murder charges. But Carlyon escapes and is hunting Andrews, his former friend. During a foggy night, Andrews flees across the downs, knowing that if Carlyon finds him, Carlyon will kill him. Desperate, he seeks shelter in a cottage whose only inhabitant is a young woman, Elizabeth. Actually, when he arrives, he finds himself face to face with a corpse, a man who had been Elizabeth’s guardian after her own father died.

Elizabeth shelters him, passing him off as her brother to a nosy cleaning woman. When Andrews tries to leave, he nearly encounters Carlyon on the road and retreats to the cottage. Elizabeth hides him and Carlyon leaves. A bond forms between them. She doesn’t want to be alone. But she also senses the turmoil Andrews struggles with in what seems a cowardly betrayal. She urges him to go to the assizes where the men will be tried, to give his testimony. He does, although he makes a hash of it. Not only is his testimony compromised by the cleaning woman, who identifies him as staying with Elizabeth, who she calls “a loose woman.” He sleeps with another woman, who was a kind of bribe for his testimony. The smugglers are acquitted and Andrews is the object of opprobrium.

Elizabeth is also in jeopardy. Carlyon is on the loose as are the other men. They know she hid Andrews. And this exposes the central thread of the whole story. Andrews struggles with seeing himself as a coward, a legacy of his father’s abuse. He saw betraying the smugglers as a way to strike back, yet betrayal feels the ultimate cowardly act. Now, will he save his own skin, confirming what “the man within” has been saying? Or will he attempt to save Elizabeth? She acted in courage in her love for him. Will he? And what risks and consequences could this mean for them both.

In a sense, Greene offers us two people dealing with a person within, the voices of the dead they are seeking to live free of. Each is bereft when they meet the other, alone in the world. Each faces the question of “is love worth the risk?” In this first published work, Greene gives us characters we come to care for and explores large questions such as the line between cowardice and courage and the risks of love.

Review: A Gun for Sale

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A Gun for Sale, Graham Greene. New York: Open Road Media, 2018 (originally published in 1936).

Summary: A paid assassin murders a foreign minister of war, creating an international crisis that could lead to war but is betrayed by the middleman who paid him, who he pursues even as the police pursue him.

Raven is a paid assassin whose life represents a series of betrayals from being born with a hare lip to finding his mother dead by suicide as a child. Taking lives for hire does not trouble him. And so being hired to kill the Minister for War of Czechoslovakia is just another. He cleans up, killing the overly diligent secretary as well.

Back in England, he discovers that the payment from Mr. Cholmondeley (pronounced “Chumley”) is in stolen notes and police, in the person of detective Jimmy Mather is on his tale. He’s betrayed again by a doctor he asks to operate on the telltale hare lip. His picture is in the papers and serial numbers in the possession of shopkeepers. Betrayed. He has to flee and wants to find Cholmondeley. He spots him on a train to Nottwich, to visit a theatre he supports under the name Davis, using his patronage to pick up women actresses. Anne Crowder, Jimmy Mather’s girl is on the same train, to try out for a part at the theatre.

In short order, Anne escapes attempts of both Raven and Cholmondeley to kill her only to be taken hostage again by Raven as the police, including Mathers, converge on a coal shack where the two are sheltering. A “Stockholm syndrome” type of situation arises as Raven trusts Anne and Anne learns of the plot behind the assassination, to create an international crisis leading to a war that will profit a steel company Cholmondeley/Davis works for. But will Anne survive to tell the story and Raven to exact revenge?

Greene crafts a story at a personal level around trust and betrayal. Raven, as noted, has crafted his life story around betrayal. Anne, the hostage, is in the midst of it. She’s torn between betraying Jimmy and betraying Raven, all to save her life. The story is also about betrayal at a larger level–powerful companies manipulating foreign policy at the cost of many young lives in war (and the expendability of their assassin). Greene includes several scenes showing the vapid social relations among the elite who indulge themselves while preparing to sacrifice young lives. He reminds me of Dwight Eisenhower’s famous and prescient warning about the military-industrial complex.

This was one of Greene’s earlier novels, and in my opinion, not one of his best. Anne’s ability to get into and out of trouble stretches credulity as does the setup that she just happens to be Jimmy Mathers girl. Still, the relationship that forms between Anne and Raven, and the dialogue in the coal shack signals to me what Greene would become as a writer.

Review: The Captain and the Enemy

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The Captain and the Enemy, Graham Greene. New York: Open Road Media, 2018 (orginally published in 1988).

Summary: A boarding school boy is taken to live with a poor woman in a London flat by a confidence man called “The Captain,” who sporadically visits, provides money and seems to care for the woman, Liza, who become’s “Jim’s” mother. Only years later does he understand more about this mysterious figure, and the various relations in his life.

There is much in the setup to this story that stretches plausibility. Victor Baxter, a boarding school student whose distant father is known as “The Devil” is taken out of school one day by a distinguished figure of military bearing, only known as the Captain. That things are not on the up and up becomes clear when, first The Captain asks the boy to lend him what little money he has, and then takes him for an extravagant meal at a hotel, charges it to his room, and then leaves without paying for anything. They are driven to a poorer part of London, to a basement flat, where a poor young woman, Liza lives. The Captain instructs Victor that he is to call her mother and that he will be Jim, and will not be going back to school. He tells Victor/Jim and Liza that he won the boy in a game of backgammon from his father.

The Captain shows up sporadically, always giving Liza assistance, though the source of the money is obscure. Newspaper reports of jewelry thefts mention a figure like The Captain in description, and there are times when he must make himself scarce and times they are not to answer the door to anything but his signal. When he is present, The Captain gives history and geography lessons that suggest wartime escapes and flights. It’s evident that he cares for Liza, that there is some deep bond. “Jim’s” role as he becomes older is to look out for Liza in The Captain’s absence–more prolonged now that he is in Panama. His letters promise wealth around the corner, but again, don’t mention where this will come from.

“The Devil” also shows up and doesn’t challenge the arrangement. It turns out that Liza had been a mistress of his, became pregnant, and a botched abortion resulted in her inability to have children. Through The Captain, one child of the Devil replaces another one lost. The Captain comes off as the noble trickster or confidence man, using deceit to accomplish his idea of the good.

As Jim grows up, he starts working for a newspaper, eventually moving out but staying in touch with Liza. The Captain, now going by Smith, sends money for them to come to Panama. Before she is able, Liza is struck by a car, on an errand Jim once ran. Jim decides to come to Panama, but conceals the truth of Liza’s death. He is met by Quigley, an acquaintance, but not a trusted friend of Smith, who seems very interested in knowing from Jim what the Captain is doing. Jim learns that it has to do with Smith’s plane, which he uses to haul “cargo” for various customers. Remember, this is in the late 1970’s. Jimmy Carter has signed a treaty to turn over the canal to Panama. There are various revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements. Arms are needed, drugs are sold to pay for them. The latter part of the book have to do with the Captain’s efforts, supported by the Panamania government who set a guard on his lodgings, and Mr. Quigley’s real work behind the mask of a financial journalist.

The culmination of the story reveals more of this shadowy figure’s true character, his love for Liza, and Jim’s own relationship with The Captain/Smith. Personally, while I wanted to see how the story would resolve, I felt Greene stretched plausibility and the story didn’t work for me. How schools, family, and social structures let this happen, even after an aunt found out what was going on stretched credulity. I felt this was not up to the level of his great novels of the 1940’s and 1950’s although having the whiff of espionage, of characters who live in the shadows, and yet who love and long for purposeful lives. This one, written toward the end of his life in 1988 (he died in 1991), is for fans who want to read all of his works. I would not base my opinion of Greene on this work but rather ones like Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, and Our Man in Havana, all written before 1960.