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''This article is about the writer. For the actor, see [[Graham Greene (actor)]].''
{{Infobox Writer
| name = Henry Graham Greene
| image =
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| pseudonym =
| birth_date = {{birth date|1904|10|2}}
| birth_place = [[Berkhamsted]], [[Hertfordshire]], [[United Kingdom]]
| death_date = {{death date and age|1991|4|3|1904|10|2}}
| death_place = [[Vevey]], [[Switzerland]]
| occupation = [[Novelist]], [[Playwright]], [[Short story|Short story writer]]
| nationality = [[United Kingdom|British]] {{flagicon|UK}}
| period = 1932-1991
| genre =
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| debut_works =
| influences =
| influenced =
| signature =
| website =
| footnotes =
}}
'''Henry Graham Greene''', [[Order of Merit (Commonwealth)|OM]], [[Order of the Companions of Honour|CH]] ([[October 2]], [[1904]] – [[April 3]], [[1991]]) was an [[England|English]] [[playwright]], [[novelist]], [[short story]] writer, travel writer and [[critic]] whose works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene combined serious literary acclaim with wide popularity. Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a "Catholic novelist" rather than as a "novelist who happened to be Catholic", [[Roman Catholic|Catholic]] religious themes are at the root of many of his novels, including ''[[Brighton Rock (novel)|Brighton Rock]]'', ''[[The Heart of the Matter]]'', ''[[The End of the Affair]]'', ''[[Monsignor Quixote]]'', ''[[A Burnt-Out Case]]'', and his famous work ''[[The Power and the Glory]]''. Works such as ''[[The Quiet American]]'' also show an avid interest in the workings of [[international politics]].
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==Life and work==
===Childhood===
Greene was born in [[Berkhamsted]], [[Hertfordshire]], the fourth of six children — his younger brother [[Hugh Greene|Hugh]] became the [[Director-General of the BBC]], and older brother [[Raymond Greene|Raymond]] an eminent doctor and mountaineer. Their parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion née Raymond, [[cousin couple|were first cousins]] and members of a large and influential family that included the owners of the [[Greene King]] brewery, and various bankers and businessmen. Charles Greene was "second master" at [[Berkhamsted School]], where the [[Head teacher|headmaster]] was Dr [[Thomas Fry]] (who was married to another cousin of Charles).
In 1910 Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster, and Graham attended the school as a pupil. Bullied and profoundly unhappy as a [[boarding school|boarder]], Greene made several attempts at [[suicide]] (some of them, Greene claimed, by playing [[Russian roulette]] — though Michael Shelden's biography of Greene discredits the truth of these incidents), and in 1921 at the age of 17 he underwent six months of [[psychoanalysis]] in London to deal with [[clinical depression|depression]]. After this he returned to the school as a day boy, living with his family. Schoolfriends included [[Claud Cockburn]] and [[Peter Quennell]].
While he was an undergraduate at [[Balliol College, Oxford]] his first work, a volume of poetry, was published, but it was not widely praised.
===Early career===
After graduation, Greene took up a career in [[journalism]] but he was very unsuccessful, first in [[Nottingham]] (a city which recurs in his novels as an epitome of mean provincial life), and then as a subeditor on ''[[The Times]]''. While in Nottingham he started a correspondence with [[Vivien Greene|Vivien Dayrell-Browning]], a [[Roman Catholic]] (by conversion) who had written to correct him on a point of Catholic doctrine. Greene converted to the faith in 1926 (he described it in ''A Sort of Life''). He was baptised in February the same year <ref>the conversion happened after having argued a couple of times with father Trollope, as Green had been trying to defend atheism. - ''The Power and the Glory'' New York: Viking, 1990. Introduction by John Updike, p. xiv</ref>, and the couple were married in 1927. They had two children, Lucy (born 1933) and Francis (born 1936; died 1987). In 1948 Greene left Vivien for Catherine Walston, but they remained married.
===Novels and other works===
Greene's first published novel was ''[[The Man Within]]'' in 1929, and its reception emboldened him to give up his job at ''The Times'' and work full-time as a novelist. However, the following two books were not successful (Greene disowned them in later life), and his first real success was ''[[Stamboul Train]]'' in 1932 — as with several of his books, this was also adapted as a film (''Orient Express'', 1934).
His income from novels was supplemented by freelance journalism, including book and film reviews for ''[[The Spectator (1828)|The Spectator]]'', and co-editing the magazine ''[[Night and Day]]'', which closed down in 1937 shortly after Greene's review of the film ''Wee Willie Winkie'', starring a nine-year-old [[Shirley Temple]], caused the magazine to lose a [[libel]] case. Greene's review claimed that Temple displayed "a certain adroit coquetry which appealed to middle-aged men", and is now seen as one of the first criticisms of the sexualisation of young children by the entertainment industry.
His fiction was originally divided into two [[genre]]s: thrillers or mystery/suspense books, such as ''[[Our Man in Havana]]'', that he himself cast as "entertainments" but which often included a notable philosophical edge, and literary works such as ''[[The Power and the Glory]]'', on which his reputation was thought to be based.
As his career lengthened, however, Greene and his readers both found the "entertainments" to be of nearly as high a value as the literary efforts, and Greene's later efforts such as ''[[The Human Factor]]'', ''[[The Comedians (novel)|The Comedians]]'', ''[[Our Man in Havana]]'' and ''[[The Quiet American]]'', combine these modes into works of remarkable insight and compression. He also penned the 1949 classic [[noir]], [[The Third Man]]
Greene also wrote many short stories and several [[plays]], which were also, on the whole, well-received, although he was always first and foremost a novelist.
Greene's long, successful career and very large readership (for a serious literary novelist) led his fans to hope that he would be awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]]. However, although he was apparently seriously considered in 1974, he never received the prize. His broad popularity may have counted against him among the scholarly elite, while the centrality of religious themes in his work may have alienated some of the judges. Greene's friend and sometime publisher, [[Michael Korda]], wrote in his memoir, ''Another Life'' (1999), that Greene believed he was always one vote short of the prize, withheld by a judge who disliked his Catholicism and left-wing sympathies and "who seemed determined to outlive him".
===Writing style and themes===
Greene had one of the most recognizable writing styles of twentieth-century English authors. His [[novel]]s are written in a lean, realistic style with clear, exciting plots (avoiding [[modernist]] experiments, which might partially account for his popularity) and often utilising a cinematic visual sense in his descriptions. Yet he also concentrated on portraying the internal life of his characters, their mental, emotional and spiritual depths. They are usually deeply troubled by internal struggles, world-weariness and cynicism and living in seedy, sordid or rootless circumstances. Greene tended to set his novels in poor, hot, dusty or tropical backwaters in countries such as [[Mexico]], [[West Africa]], [[Vietnam]], [[Cuba]], [[Haiti]] or [[Argentina]]. This has led to the coining of the expression "Greeneland" to describe such settings.
Greene's were probably the last literary novels written in English in the twentieth century which had at their centre religious themes (though they had similarities with the [[French literature|French novels]] of [[François Mauriac]]). Catholicism is usually explicitly present. Greene in his [[literary criticism]] attacked most [[modern literature]] for having lost any religious sense or themes, which resulted, he argued, in dull, superficial characters who "wandered about like cardboard symbols through a world that is paper-thin." Only by recovering a religious element, the consciousness of the drama of the struggle within the human soul carrying infinite consequences of [[salvation]] and [[damnation]], and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and grace, could the novel recover its drama and power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresent in the fallen world Greene depicts, and Catholicism is presented against a background of unvarying human evil, sin and doubt. Indeed, [[V. S. Pritchett]] praised Greene as the first English novelist since [[Henry James]] to present, and grapple with, the reality of evil.<ref name = "Crisis">[http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2005/feature2.htm Crisis Magazine].</ref>
Although the novels very often portray powerfully the Christian drama of the struggles of the individual soul, from a Catholic point of view Greene has also been criticised for certain tendencies in an unorthodox direction — sin is so omnipresent in his world that sometimes the vigilant struggle to avoid sinful conduct seems to be portrayed as doomed to failure and, hence, not central to holiness. His friend and fellow Catholic writer [[Evelyn Waugh]] attacked this as a revival of the [[Quietism|Quietist]] heresy. This aspect of his work was also criticised by the leading theologian [[Hans Urs von Balthasar]] as giving sin a "mystique". His characters, although their inner suffering and struggles with doubt reflect a central Christian reality (human fallenness), rarely exhibit other realities of the Christian life, simple, uncomplicated faith and true inner peace and joy. To the latter point, Greene responded that constructing a vision of pure faith and goodness in the novel was beyond his talents. Praise of Greene from an orthodox Catholic point of view by Edward Short can be found in ''Crisis'' magazine:[http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2005/feature2.htm], while a Catholic critique is presented by [[Joseph Pearce]]:[http://www.catholicauthors.com/greene.html].
In his later writings, Catholicism decreased in prominence. The sense of supernatural realities which haunted his earlier works declined and seemed to be replaced with a more [[humanism|humanistic]] viewpoint, a change reflected by his public criticisms of orthodox Catholic teachings. Left-wing political critiques took on a greater importance in his fiction (for example, his attack on [[Vietnam War|American policy in Vietnam]] in ''The Quiet American''), and the tormented believers he portrayed were now more likely to have faith in [[Communism]] than Catholicism. Critics usually agree, however, that his most profound works are the earlier ones in which Catholicism plays a major role.<!-- critics? citations?-->
Unlike other "Catholic writers" such as [[Evelyn Waugh]] and [[Anthony Burgess]], Greene's politics were always essentially left-leaning, though some biographers believe politics mattered little to him. In his later years he was a strong critic of what he saw as [[American Empire|American imperialism]], and he supported the [[Cuba|Cuban]] leader [[Fidel Castro]], whom he had met.<ref name = "Kirjasto">[http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/greene.htm Kirjasto].</ref> For Greene and politics, see also Anthony Burgess ''Politics in the Novels of Graham Greene''<ref>in ''Journal of Contemporary History'' Vol. 2, No. 2, (Apr. 1967), pp. 93-99.</ref> In ''Ways of Escape'', reflecting on his trip to Mexico, he complained that Mexico's government was not left-wing enough (e.g compared with Cuba's) <ref>P.xii of John Updike's introduction to ''The Power and the Glory'' New York: Viking, 1990.</ref>. In Greene's opinion, “Conservatism and Catholicism should be... impossible bedfellows.” <ref>As cited on p.xii of John Updike's introduction to ''The Power and the Glory'' New York: Viking, 1990.</ref>.
{{Quotation|In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.| Graham Greene}}
===Travel===
Throughout his life, Greene was obsessed with travelling far from his native [[England]], to what he called the "wild and remote" places of the world. His travels provided him with opportunities to engage in [[espionage]] on behalf of the [[United Kingdom]] (in [[Sierra Leone]] during the [[Second World War]], for example). Greene had been recruited to [[MI6]] by the notorious [[double agent]] [[Kim Philby]]. He reworked the colourful and exciting characters and places he encountered into the fabric of his novels.
Despite his love of travel he left [[Europe]] for the first time relatively late in life, when he was 31 in 1935, in a trip to [[Liberia]] which resulted in the non-fiction [[travel literature|travel book]] ''[[Journey Without Maps]]''. A 1938 trip to [[Mexico]] to see the effects of a campaign of forced [[anti-Catholicism|anti-Catholic]] [[secularisation]] was funded by the [[Roman Catholic Church]]. This resulted in the factual ''The Lawless Roads'' (published in America as ''Another Mexico''), and the fictional ''[[The Power and the Glory]]''. The novel was censored by a [[Roman Curia|Vatican]] office in 1953, though in a later private audience with Greene, [[Pope Paul VI]] told him to forget about the troubles. Greene would later travel to the [[Haiti]] of [[François Duvalier]], better known as Papa Doc, which became the scene of his 1966 novel ''[[The Comedians]]''. The owner of the [[Hotel Oloffson]] in [[Port-au-Prince]], where Greene was a frequent guest, later named a room after him.
{{Quotation|There is so much weariness and disappointment in travel that people have to open up — in railway trains, over a fire, on the decks of steamers, and in the palm courts of hotels on a rainy day. They have to pass the time somehow, and they can pass it only with themselves. Like the characters in [[Anton Chekhov|Chekhov]] they have no reserves — you learn the most intimate secrets. You get an impression of a world peopled by eccentrics, of odd professions, almost incredible stupidities, and, to balance them, amazing endurances.|Graham Greene|The Lawless Roads (1939)}}
Many of his books have been filmed, most notably [[Brighton Rock (film)|''Brighton Rock'' (1947)]], and he also wrote several original [[screenplay]]s, most famously for the film ''[[The Third Man]]'' (1949). [[Michael Caine]] starred in both ''[[The Honorary Consul]]'' (1983) and the 2002 remake of ''[[The Quiet American]]'', while ''[[The End of the Affair]]'' (1999) starred [[Ralph Fiennes]] and was directed by [[Neil Jordan]].
===Final years===
Greene moved to [[Antibes]] in 1966, to be close to Yvonne Cloetta, whom he had known for several years, and this relationship endured until his death. In 1981 he was awarded the [[Jerusalem Prize]], given to writers concerned with 'the freedom of the individual in society'. One of his final works, ''J'Accuse — The Dark Side of Nice'' (1982), concerns a legal matter embroiling him and his extended family in nearby [[Nice]]. In the pamphlet, he declared that [[organized crime]] flourished in Nice and that the upper levels of civic government had protected judicial and police corruption in the city. This led to a libel case, which he lost [http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/specials/greene-riviera.html]. He was vindicated after his death, however, when in 1994 the former mayor of Nice, [[Jacques Médecin]], was convicted of several counts of corruption and associated crimes and sentenced to prison.
In the last years of his life, Greene lived in the small resort city of [[Vevey]], on [[Lake Geneva]] in [[Switzerland]]. His book ''Dr. Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party'' of 1989 bases its themes on a combination of philosophy and geographic influence. He had ceased attending [[Mass]] and going to [[Confession]] some time in the 1950s, but in his last years it seems he sometimes received the [[sacraments]] from a Spanish priest who became a friend, Fr. Leopaldo Duran. On his death at the age of 86 in 1991, he was interred in the nearby cemetery in [[Corsier-sur-Vevey]].
October 2004 saw the publication of the third and final volume of ''The Life of Graham Greene'' by [[Norman Sherry]], Greene's official biographer. The writing of this biography created a story in itself in that Sherry followed in Greene's footsteps, even coming down with diseases that Greene had come down with in the same place. Sherry's work reveals that Greene continued to submit reports to British intelligence until the end of his life. This has led scholars and Greene's reading public to entertain the provocative question, "Was Greene a novelist who was also a spy, or was his lifelong literary career the perfect cover?"
===Trivia===
{{Trivia|date=June 2007}}
{{Cleanup-section|May 2007}}
Greene greatly enjoyed parody. In 1949, when the ''[[New Statesman]]'' publication held a contest for parodies of Greene's distinctive writing style, he submitted an entry under a pseudonym and won second prize. (The first prize, he was surprised to learn, was awarded to an entry by his younger brother [[Hugh Greene|Hugh]].) The resulting work, ''The Stranger's Hand'', was later finished by another writer and brought to the screen by Italian film director [[Mario Soldati]]. In 1965, Greene entered a similar ''New Statesman'' parody contest, again under a pseudonym, and won an honourable mention.
The novel ''[[Brighton Rock (novel)|Brighton Rock]]'' is a particularly rich source of cultural allusions. It is quoted in "[[The West Wing]]" Season 2 finale episode "[[Two Cathedrals]]". President Bartlett quotes Greene saying, "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God." He then goes on to say, "I don't know whose ass he was kissing because I think you're [God] just vindictive."<sub>6</sub> On [[Julian Cope]]'s first solo album, ''World Shut Your Mout'', one track is called "Kolly Kibber's Birthday", after the character in ''Brighton Rock''. The [[Morrissey]] song "NOW MY HEART IS FULL" lists four more of its characters:"Tell all of my friends/(I don't have too many/Just some rain-coated lovers' puny brothers)/Dallow, Spicer, Pinkie, Cubitt."
Greene's short story "[[The Destructors]]" was featured in the movie ''[[Donnie Darko]]'', where a character confused him with ''[[Bonanza]]'''s [[Lorne Greene]].
Greene features in a song by [[The Volvos]] entitled 'Get Yourself a Good Wife' from the 1991 album ''Making it Up''.
Greene appears as character and narrator in the [[Doctor Who]] novel ''The Turing Test'', which gives a fictional account of Greene's time as spymaster in Sierra Leone and World War II Paris.
Graham Greene makes acameo appearence in François Truffaut movie "La Nuit Americaine" (1973) as an English Insurance Broker.
<references/>
6. as cited from http://www.whysanity.net/monos/westwing3.html
==List of major works==
See [[List of books by Graham Greene]] for all works.
*''[[Brighton Rock]]'' (1938)
*''[[The Power and the Glory]]'' (1940)
*''[[The Heart of the Matter]]'' (1948)
*''[[The Third Man]]'' (1949) (novella, as a basis for the screenplay}
*''[[The End of the Affair]]'' (1951)
*''[[Ways of Escape]]'' (1980) (autobiography)
==Further reading==
* [[Paul O'Prey]], A Reader's Guide to Graham Greene, Thames and Hudson, 1988
* [[Richard Michael Kelly|Kelly, Richard Michael]], ''Graham Greene'', Ungar, 1984
*[[Richard Michael Kelly|Kelly, Richard Michael]], ''Graham Greene: A Study of the Short Fiction''. Twayne, 1992.
* [[Leopoldo Duran|Duran, Leopoldo]] , ''Graham Greene: Friend and Brother'', translated by Euan Cameron, HarperCollins
* [[Michael Shelden|Shelden, Michael]] , ''Graham Greene: The Enemy Within'', (pub. William Heinemann, 1994), Random House ed. 1995: ISBN 0-679-42883-6
* [[Norman Sherry|Sherry, Norman]] (1989-2004), ''The Life of Graham Greene: vol. 1 1904-1939'', (pub. Random House UK, 1989, ISBN 0-224-02654-2), Viking ed. 1989: ISBN 0-670-81376-1, Penguin reprint 2004: ISBN 0-14-200420-0
* [[Norman Sherry|Sherry, Norman]], ''The Life of Graham Greene: vol. 2 1939-1955'', (pub. Viking 1994: ISBN 0-670-86056-5), Penguin reprint 2004: ISBN 0-14-200421-9
* [[Norman Sherry|Sherry, Norman]], ''The Life of Graham Greene: vol. 3 1955-1991'', (pub. Viking 2004, ISBN 0-670-03142-9)
* ''The Graham Greene Film Reader''
==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*[http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/ Greeneland: the world of Graham Greene]
*[http://www.angelfire.com/journal/ggbtps/GGBT_SiteMap.htm The Graham Greene Birthplace Trust]
*[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1864 Graham Greene Writeup in the Literary Encyclopedia]
*[http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/greene.htm Biography at Authors' Calendar website]
*[http://www.hirohurl.net/lawlessroads.html A Review of Graham Greene's "Lawless Roads"]
*[http://www.wiredforbooks.org/normansherry/ 1989 audio interview of Norman Sherry, biographer of Graham Greene, RealAudio]
*[http://theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/5180 The Paris Review Interview]
*[http://www.catholicauthors.com/greene.html CatholicAuthors] Biography by Joseph Pearce
*[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5204 Find-A-Grave profile for Graham Greene]
[[Category:1904 births|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:1991 deaths|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:British spies|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:Christian writers|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:English dramatists and playwrights|Greene, Graham]]
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[[Category:English novelists|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:English Roman Catholics|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:English screenwriters|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:English short story writers|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:English spy fiction writers|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:English travel writers|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:Members of the Order of Merit|Greene, Graham]]
[[Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour|Greene, Graham]]
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[[Category:Roman Catholic writers|Greene, Graham]]
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