(See Cover) THE END OF THE AFFAIR (240 pp.)—Graham Greene—Viking ($3).
It was one of those London cocktail parties where everybody showed up with a hangover. The host, a distinguished novelist named Graham Greene,* roamed restlessly about his book-cluttered flat, listening to the mock-tragic tales of woe. Not to be outdone, the host confessed that he too was feeling like hell: he had been up all night drinking with his priest.
It was the kind of shocker characteristic of Graham Greene—the kind of remark that induces a slight creeping of the flesh (although on this occasion it may be doubted whether the effect was either intended or achieved). Graham Greene deals in shockers.
Penny Dreadfuls, Plus. He writes about sin and God, about the presence of evil and the absence of good. And he writes about these supposedly abstract, Sunday subjects in shockingly immediate, shockingly weekday terms. His stories, as gripping as a good movie, are penny dreadfuls about moral problems—but they cannot be dismissed as penny dreadfuls.
The people who have made Graham Greene the popular success he is today are, by & large, people who like the movies —people who go for a "good thriller," ordinary people, people who never embarrass themselves or one another by using the word "sin." Greene himself uses the word sometimes, and the fact continually, but he manages to make it as homely and credible—and as interesting—as the neighbors' behavior.
Like any Catholic theologian, Graham Greene thinks of sin as the normal climate of life on earth. But he translates the algebra of theology into the personal terms of stories as human as the tabloids tell—and much more convincing.
Once rated as a spinner of superior thrillers (The Ministry of Fear, This Gun for Hire), he is now seriously discussed as possibly "the finest writer of his generation." No other writer in England enjoys Greene's combination of popular and critical success. The Midas-movies have touched his work to gold (twelve pictures, at least three of them first-rate successes: The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, Confidential Agent). In 1948, The Heart of the Matter was a Book-of-the-Month Club choice in the U.S., and on the Continent Greene is England's bestselling author.
In his best books—the books he has tried to make more than "entertainments" —he has written about sinners, who are last seen heading in various directions (to heaven, hell, or purgatory). It was in the cards that sooner or later he would try his hand at a story about a good person—a saint. In his latest novel, published this week in the U.S., Graham Greene shows his hand.
Better to Hate God? The End of the
Affair (the title is characteristically tricky) is—on the face of it—the story of an adulterous affair. The story succeeds in showing the fear and agony and hatred of a love affair. It fails when the author reports a miracle, and cannot prove it.