Accentuating the human factor

It is a commonplace to say that novelists should be judged by their work rather than their private lives or their publicly expressed views. And writers, of course, subscribe enthusiastically to this idea. It is true that it is usually for their books that novelists reserve their most considered and ordered thoughts; but the fact is they arise inescapably from one consciousness, the same one that is occupied in all the other activities which make up a life.

In Graham Greene’s case, I don’t think his novels are the key to understanding him. He writes, ‘I am my books,’ but this admirable volume of his letters suggests that for all his success he is not his books. He may have been a man of letters, but his books are, you feel, the means to an end, namely a kind of public eminence.

He is from a familiar mould, the journalist-novelist, the predecessor of John Le Carré and Robert Harris. In other words, artistic considerations are not his main interest. This relatively small selection from a vast correspondence seems to have been chosen specifically to invite the reader to view Greene as a more rounded and human figure. We see, for instance, his generosity to old friends like Kim Philby, his concern for his family, his encouragement of young writers, his wonderfully ironic sense of humour, his fascination with dreams and his scepticism about personal honours and accolades, although he accepted many, including the Order of Merit and the Légion d’Honneur; in fact he is sometimes found to be threatening to give one or the other back in order to apply political pressure.

The letters also demonstrate a very recognisable public school distaste for artistic posturing. Admitting to thinking of oneself as an artist or an intellectual would, in the wider world, as at Berkhamstead or Lancing, invite being flicked with wet towels by the hearties.