grahame greene

[IdleRich]

seduction becomes routine. sex becomes routine. the words of intimacy and comfort become routine. and we abstract ourselves from them and stand a little further behind them each time

I think one of the main battles in life is in trying to avoid that.

 

[catalog]

the novel, to me, is fundamentally an adult form and about disillusionment. that is how i have always thought about it. poetry on the other hand is always about the first time. this is why rilke says writing a poem is always about becoming a beginner again

He said writing a big novel was like waking up every morning and feeling like you were drowning. He said poetry is like watching the sun go down and having a nice beer on a balcony. A big book is hard work. He said a slim volume is like a quick fuck, but the big book is going to a party and you fancy everyone and you've got all the drugs, but you realise you might not have the stamina.

 

[catalog]

I think one of the main battles in life is in trying to avoid that.

that's what the rise of S&M clubs is about?

 

[luka]

sounds like end of empire sort of stuff. like jg ballard's parents in shanghai.

its very explicitly end of empire stuff.

 

[IdleRich]

Well one of the ways to lose the battle is to take it literally and think that you will be safe if you travel round the world and eat different food every day.

 

[luka]

as everyones friend Jim says

That's the Graham Greene life, sweating in Catholic guilt drinking whisky at lunchtime then visiting a prostitute

 

[catalog]

sounds a bit like mad men but british

 

[luka]

no becasue theres no glamour

 

[catalog]

i might like it!

i really like patrick hamilton, which seems to be same era, but he's doing a more interior thing.

 

[luka]

you can buy them at any charity shop or 2nd hand bookshop for a couple of quid and read them in a day. so why not give one a try.

 

[IdleRich]

sounds a bit like mad men but british

Not really... they're a lot more buttoned up, lonely and cold, and even the empty glamour of Mad Men is hugely preferable to the empty non-glamour of the world that most of GG's characters inhabit.

 

[luka]

its very different to mad men but there is a huge, huge amount of whisky.

 

[IdleRich]

I dunno if Patrick Hamilton's actual writing or even themes are that similar, but they exist in the same world... imagine one of the characters from Hangover Square staggering out of the pub and brushing past a shabby civil servant hurrying by with a disant and faintly worried expression, the story's camera could switch to following him and you would have moved to a Greene novel all of a sudden.

 

[luka]

Life always repeated the same pattern: there was always, sooner or later, bad news that had to be broken, comforting lies to be uttered, pink gins to be consumed to keep misery away. 😂 🤣 😂

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

Just watched Our Man in Havana. Didn't realise it was Carol Reed again as well as Greene. Really does feel like a lighter 'Third Man' in Cuba. The drinking game towards the end is brutal.

 

[IdleRich]

i'm interested in the subject of why so many prominent intellectuals converted to Catholicism around that time

not sure if this is the best book on the subject but it's the only one i can find by googling

Amazon product ASIN 0801486637

Read this Oscar Wilde biography lately, although Irish he wasn't brought up Catholic, but when he "went up" to Oxford (like hmg I understand) he was so popular (not like.. etc) that there were loads of people trying to convert him. He spent years wrestling with the dilemma with all these freaks demanding it was the only way to save his soul... but in the end he fucked it off.

 

[IdleRich]

I dunno if Patrick Hamilton's actual writing or even themes are that similar, but they exist in the same world... imagine one of the characters from Hangover Square staggering out of the pub and brushing past a shabby civil servant hurrying by with a disant and faintly worried expression, the story's camera could switch to following him and you would have moved to a Greene novel all of a sudden.

That was good, don't remember writing it

 

[IdleRich]

Just watched Our Man in Havana. Didn't realise it was Carol Reed again as well as Greene. Really does feel like a lighter 'Third Man' in Cuba. The drinking game towards the end is brutal.

Isn't there a remake of that with the guy from The Mummy?

 

[IdleRich]

Check out Singapore Grip, it's not exactly gg but it's a similarly British (or maybe irish) take on that colonised thing, with a more ironic distance at times.

Singapore just before the Japanese invasion in the Second World War: the Blackett family's prosperous world of tennis parties, cocktails and deferential servants seems unchanging. But it is poised on the edge of the abyss: This is the eve of the Fall of Singapore and, as we know, of much else besides.

Not only the Blacketts, their friends and enemies, but many individuals are caught up in the events. Singapore at this historical watershed has never been so faithfully and passionately recreated.

What that doesn't mention is the way you feel the dirty oppressive heat, the sweat, the whisky sweats, the grime, the humidity, the heat and fevers. Book captured that well enough to make me need a shower

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

Isn't there a remake of that with the guy from The Mummy?

You're thinking of The Quiet American.