Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Garner on Greene's Greene (Hold the Garlic)


Absolutely delicious feast of a review of Graham Greene's voluminous correspondence collection, the one collated by the University of Toronto's Dr. Richard Greene (nope to the obvious question), Graham Greene: A Life in Letters.

Dwight Garner, arguably the best reviewer on staff @ The NYT, digs in citing a few of Greene's "near-masterpieces"; however, he fails to dish on what I consider the 2000-letters-per-year epistolarian's true masterpiece, The Quiet American, a book I still savour rereading and rediscovering. Greene never felt much affinity for the work of James Joyce; but, what the hell, nobody's perfekk (or everybody is):

"When Viking Press in 1969 urged him to change the title of his book Travels With My Aunt to something more saleable, Greene sent the following cable: 'Would rather change publisher than title.'"

(And, that's just a wee snackettino.)

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