Backlisted - Graham Greene

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

The whole of the next hour and a bit is dedicated to the work of Graham Greene – a writer we have long wanted to tackle. We cover several representative pieces – not necessarily the most famous of Greene’s work – and try to apply a fresh perspective to his long and sometimes controversial career. We start somewhere near the beginning with The Name of Action from 1930, a book Greene himself wanted suppressed… The books featured (with rough timings where they appear in the show) are: The Name of Action, 1930 (11'34) The Ministry of Fear, 1943 (18'15) The Quiet American, 1955 (30'32) May We Borrow Your Husband? & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life, 1967 (45'46) Lord Rochester’s Monkey, 1976 (58'01) * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit backlisted.fm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp.com. PC Optimum members save more. For exclusive offers and members-only pricing, just scan and save. And don't forget in-stock promise, where you can count on great offers being in stock or get a rain check. Discover more value than ever at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions apply. See in-store for details. Hello and welcome to a new season of Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. Today, you find us in a small room in the back streets of Saigon in the mid-1950s. As a kettle boils on the stove, while on the end of a bed, a young woman gently needs a ball of hot opium paste in the bowl of a long bamboo pipe, and its sweet smell fills the air. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound.

And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And we're back. We're back from our sabbatical. Again, our failed sabbatical. I haven't been on this for ages, but Nicky and John have been holding the fort for us. Flickering candle. It's fine. just the background staff keeping things in the road marvelous people oh you're both well done and so we thought we'd start uh the new season of shows

by um picking up the baton from the specials which uh we ran over the last few months choosing a selection of books and talking about them. But instead of having a theme like science fiction or children's writing, we've chosen an author. And the whole of the next hour and a bit is dedicated to the work of the novelist, journalist, playwright, children's book author, biographer, libertine, Graham Greene. Graham Greene is a writer that we've long wanted to tackle on Backlisting.

We've decided to shake things up a bit with the format so there isn't a guest on this episode it's just us do i get an introduction yeah you're in the intro you're in the intro but we're building you up for that okay right yeah so uh uh we decided that we wanted to come back and talk about something we we all felt enthusiastic about that we that we spent the last seven and a half nearly eight years trying to get a Graham Green episode off the ground it's never quite happened so we thought okay well as a gift to ourselves and the listeners we'll do it this time John why is it that we feel compelled to talk about Graham Green this time I think we're compelled to talk about Graham Green I mean if one of the

things that Backlisted does is to obviously cast light on writers whose careers have fallen from kind of prominence, then I think there's a strong argument to say that Graham Greene, who when he died back in the, when was it? 91. It was 91.

I remember, yeah. When he died, he was widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of the of the um 20th century and the feeling generally i have and i think you share andy is that his you know his star is no longer in the firmament in in quite the same way and why that is um and why his reputation has waned if we believe think, think it has waned. It's sort of one of the things we feel that's our remit. We sometimes, obviously, we'll have an episode about a writer you've never heard of, but this is a writer that I think

most people will have heard of, but maybe not as many people as used to have read. Also, Graham Greene is a name that has come up time and time again in the last eight years while we've been recording this show. Absolutely. The number of times a writer we we've looked at male or female from anywhere in the world um we or our guests have compared to graham green uh positively or negatively he's probably he's the most mentioned author on backlisted about whom we haven't actually made an episode yet until now

so and i think also we should say because so many people have said if you ever do a graham green episode can i be on it we sort of thought maybe we'll just let's just do it let's just do it the only person who hasn't said that is our producer guest nicky birch i know because i haven't read many graham green books that's why that makes you the perfect um guinea pig for this particular we have we have the i think we have all our bases covered on this one read many grey and green books. That's why. That makes you the perfect guinea pig for this particular episode. I think we have all our bases covered on this one, don't we? Yeah, so Nikki, tell everybody,

what is your relationship to the work of grey and green? Well, my relationship to the work of grey and green is people handing me a book saying, you must read this, and me going, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and putting it away and never reading it. Until now, you've made me read, I've read one Graham Greene novel and one short story.

So I'm very much a beginner. Please be kind. No spoilers to listeners. What will they be? John Mitchinson, what is your relationship to the work of Graham Greene? I think my relationship is of a man of my generation who grew up with Graham Greene as one of the big literary stars in the sky and who, I suppose, not since...

I haven't read any Greene since my 20s, but I did read then the books, the hits. Such as? Brighton Rock. Yeah. The Power and the Glory. Oh, yeah. The Heart of the Matter.

The Comedians, the one set in Haiti, which I love. So I have a sort of idea of Green as the writer of kind of very, very literary Catholic-tinged thrillers set in exotic locations. And how has your reading this week measured up against what you thought you were going to read? I have to say i'm i'm you know i know this is a bit of a backlisted trope but i feel i have discovered another graham green this week and i have enjoyed that graham green hugely um and very excited to talk about the the books that we're we're um we're going to talk about. What about you, Andy? Come on. I know the answer to this question, but tell everybody.

You have read? Everything. Everything. Everything. A full, clean sweep. Everything by Graham. A full, clean sweep. I know for a fact,

I can say, sitting here today, I have read everything Graham Graham ever wrote. The journals, the articles, the short stories. Short stories, memoirs of Capri. You name it, I've read it.

What does that make you? Are you like a greenist? It makes me a very typical man of my generation. A honorary citizen of Greenland. But I first read Green when I was a teenager. I read Brighton Rock for the first time during a school trip to Berlin, both East Berlin and West Berlin. And I have such vivid memories of reading the book.

I wish I had the equivalent vivid memories of what East Berlin was like, but they've faded. I lived in Brighton partly because I loved Brighton Rock so much, Brighton Rock and Quadrophenia, obviously my two totems. I read Brighton Rock again very recently about six months ago probably and it was when i was rereading it and thinking wow this no author gives me the feeling of familiarity and yet simultaneously strangeness that i get when i read graham. He's been a presence in my life for 40 years, more than 40 years,

and yet every time I pick up one of his books, even the ones I think aren't very good now, I am astonished at something that's hiding in plain sight on the page, some stunt metaphor or some incredibly risky subject matter. Sometimes he can't get it right. He can't make it work. But I find him endlessly fascinating. He's not my favorite writer. He was my favorite writer, but still I'm reluctant to consign him to the 20th century. I want to carry him into the 21st.

So before we start our discussion, I thought you might like to hear this clip. I've waited 32 years for a right of reply to these comments. This was recorded in a phone interview on the night Graham Greene died in 1991 on BBC 2. Nigel Williams presented a show dedicated to Green, and they spoke on the telephone in the south of France to Green's great friend, the novelist Anthony Burgess. And this is what Burgess said.

I don't think it was all that great. He loved life in a sense, but life to him, I think, meant really travel, going to exotic places. And this, he put down, I think, as a kind of escape from himself. I don't think he quite knew who he was. And by changing the scene all the time, he didn't really have to ask that question,

who am I? What's your final estimation of his stature as a writer? Is he a great writer, do you think? Well, one should not say this now. One should not say anything bad of the dead. But I think the time will come in a few months, or possibly a year, when people will

begin to consider his stature as a writer. I don't think it's very high myself. I don't think it's as high as that of, say, Evelyn Waugh, a friend and contemporary, or, say, Anthony Powell. I think that he is

liked as a writer because he does purvey a special bit of flavor of his own, a mixture of the kind of adventure story and Catholic theology. But the thing about it now, he was fond of Conrad. He was fond of Ford and Alex Ford, and he thought of himself

as a kind of success as a Conrad. But he knew and admitted to me that he wasn't as great, that he had, in a sense, opted out of the possibility of greatness. He was writing novels that would sell, but some of them were very great brevity. He never gave himself a chance to expand in the

depiction of character, or indeed even in the development of his ideas. He ends up as a very good minor writer, but his stature is far, far less than that of Conrad or of automatic sports. Anthony Burgess, thanks very much indeed. Thank you, Nigel.

Now, there is Anthony Burgess cheerfully consigning his friend Graham Greene to the ranks of the minor writers. Anthony Burgess, of course, is no longer with us, but as a surprise, I'm tapping the table here in this studio and Graham Greene will be appearing to pass judgment on the novels of the writer, Antony Burgess. What do you think about hearing that now?

I can remember at the time being outraged. He admitted to me he was a minor writer. Oh, come on. It's massively arrogant when a person has just died to describe them as a minor writer. And when you also know of Burgess's own work, you know, which obviously taking digs at him for writing, because he also wrote lots of books set in exotic locations,

big, fat, big, fat sort of novels. Some of them brilliant. The Enderby novels I think are great. They fell out, hadn't they? They'd fallen out before he died. It's very, very sour, sour grapes. Hadn't they fallen out because Burgess had written a review or something

of one of his books and it had all gone a bit kind of pear-shaped, their friendship. But also Green loved falling out with people. Right. He really did. It's one of the great you know he loves a row provoking around and then having a drink two days later so i'll just say that we're going to talk about five different books by graham green and um the first one i brought with me uh from the library because it's extremely rare and i had to sign an actual piece

of this is amazing this is the one he suppressed right right this is his second novel i had to sign a piece of paper to say i would look after this um uh his second novel it's called the name of action just to be clear there's no like tea stains or anything. I can see you are looking after this. No, I am really looking after it nicely, right? And he wrote, it was published in 1930. And like his third novel, Rumour at Nightfall, it received terrible reviews and Green never allowed it to be republished in his lifetime. And he gave instructions to his literary executors that nor should it ever be allowed to be reprinted.

Wow. So this copy, which is nearly 100 years old, is unlikely ever to be in mass circulation. Green was, in his late 20s when he wrote this novel, The Name of Action, it is fascinating insofar as it isn't very good. And his decision was the correct one. But it has so many of the things, John, that we come to associate with green.

It has the seediness, the espionage element, the misanthropic element. It rings with self-pity. In other words, teenage me would have absolutely loved this. There are murders, there's politics. It's like somebody's been asked to write a Graham Greene novel. Who isn't Graham Greene? He hasn't quite cracked it yet. Martin Amis says about Green that Green is an author like Orwell,

who we tend to discover in adolescence and therefore leave him in adolescence. And there is a sort of adolescent quality to Green's writing. Do you think that's male adolescence? I don't necessarily think so but there is certainly a kind of streak of masculine self-pity which i think green kind of is the poet laureate he is he captures and also he loves joseph conrad at this point he's so he's like burgess was saying he's obsessed with conrad later he becomes he's a great admirer of Henry James and in a sense you can see those two elements constantly warring with one another in Green's work Conrad sort of adventure story of sorts dark versus deep kind of complex uncovering of human motives so what I thought I'd do is I thought I would read the beginning

of chapter two of The Name of Action because this is so rare. This is such a rare piece of prose. But you'll hear, I will try not to milk this, you can recognise it's the same writer except it doesn't quite work.

The Name of Action by Graham Greene, two through the black Roman gate which stood away from the streetlights like an old elephant fascinated but afraid of the campfires lit in its familiar jungle now we're laughing because that is a brilliant example of a greenian stunt simile i'll read it again because i've because i've interrupted myself so delighted am i in that it doesn't work through the black roman gate which stood away from the street lights like an old elephant fascinated but afraid of the campfires lit in its familiar jungle chant passed into an easter peace the shop windows were full

of hairs dragging little carts laden with confectionery, with toys and unpretentious gifts. A man in a green suit with a feather in his hat bent, absorbed and spectacled eyes upon a tray of marzipan. A whiff of cigar smoke blew from a beer house door and at a corner two old women stood reluctant to part, their faces knotted like the roots of oak trees seemed to brood on innumerable easters, their memories a playground of hares and carts and blonde children waking early and reaching through the sunlight to the bottom of their beds. Walking so slowly down the Simeon Estrasse that he became unconscious of his own exertion and it

seemed the shops that moved chant felt a kind of paternal benevolence towards all these people he had come to trier to help them although for a moment a doubting inner voice asked whether indeed they needed help everything in the lamplight under the shower of pale gold dust which lay across the roofs and on the clothes and faces of the last shoppers spoke of peace. In the windows that jogged gaily past him, the small hairs strode with their burdens, or else crudely painted images of the Lieberfrau returned his gaze with a vacuity which failed to express the idea of an agonizing love. Somewhere from an invisible tower, a clock relinquished its load of hours. Now, I'm going to stop there.

Now, I sort of am delighted to read that loud because I can hear simultaneously the flaws and the attractions in Green's prose. The rhythm is beautiful beautiful the rhythm of that prose is absolutely beautiful the willingness to try out something ambitious in terms of a metaphor is he's throwing metaphors against a wall in order to see what's to somewhere from an invisible tower a clock relinquished its load of hours is trying hard arguably a bit too hard he said something wonderful which almost is about the book which almost kind of gives you a an embryo what happens with the rest of his career

he said the main character oliver chant is only a daydream in the mind of a young romantic author for it takes years of brooding and of guilt of self-criticism and of self-justification to clear from the eyes the haze of hopes and dreams and false ambitions. I was trying to write my first political novel knowing nothing of politics. I hope I did better many years later with The Quiet American, but how little I'd learned of life and politics during three years in the sub-editor's room of the Times. He's not a fully formed Graham Greene at all in this book. The elements are there, but it's just not gelling at all. Should we move on to the next novel, which you have read,

The Ministry of Fear? Yeah, so The Ministry of Fear. John, you hadn't read this before. The Ministry of Fear, this is a novel that he writes. 13 years later. In 1943 1943 in the middle of the war. It's one of his so-called entertainments. So he divides his books into entertainments and more serious novels. Fictions, yeah. And the entertainments are supposed to be lighter. But it's nonsense, really. This is one of the most brilliant philosophical novels i think i've ever read

i mean it's also one of the funniest i'm so happy that we're talking about the ministry of fear this is the novel that i have hoped for the last eight years someone would choose as a book for this was the one i had a mark for the perfect if i had to choose one novel for this podcast by graham green the ministry of fear is why you choose this? Because it's not very famous. Right. Because it's very peculiar. It seems to, he calls it an entertainment. It's a very, very strange novel of two halves,

very deliberately of two halves. I mean, dealing with Nazis in 1943, which, you know, Fritz Lang made an amazing film where there is actually, he put more, as it were, car chases and shootouts in it than the book's got. Is it a thriller? is it is it a thriller it's it's a graham green spy novel sort of that i think it's an incredibly dark it it has it has um a real similarity to the feel the black and white films of michael powell and emmerich Pressburger in as much as they seem to be thrillers or action films.

But as you dig into them, they get stranger and weirder. It's true, actually, of Brighton Rock, as well as the Ministry of Fear from the early stage of or Stamboul Train from the early stage of Breen's career. He himself said, I would start writing the the book fully intending it to be as commercial as i could to make some money yeah and then they just get away from me because i find more interesting things to write about while i'm writing them and you get that feeling don't you john with the ministry of fear that the second half of the novel takes off in a very strange direction i cannot believe was planned at the start i mean it it starts to put a kind of

um backlisted listeners in some sort of sense who haven't read it maybe it's it almost has that kind of jaunty muriel spark girl of slender means or or a seedier version of that let's say patrick hamilton um yeah you know it it starts it starts in London with sort of bomb damage, and it starts at the most brilliantly English thing you could possibly have. They're having a church fete in a square in London, and he goes, the main character, we don't really know the full story at the beginning of the novel, but he's been in a psychiatric hospital,

I think I can give a bit of a story, for the mercy killing of his wife. So, dark. That's right, yeah. Another light-hearted thriller from Ray. And he's jauntily going along. You don't know this. He goes jauntily along to a fete where he

goes to a fortune teller and he gets information about the competition to win a cake now a cake is a big thing at the time it's obviously rationing so it's incredibly delicious and he really describes this delicious dark fruit cake in brilliant description and you you're almost one you really want him to win the cake and he does win the cake but that shall i read just a little bit the main character school arthur rowe he won the cake. He's trying to leave the fate. The speculation interested Arthur Rowe,

and he scarcely took the fact that the last of the treasure hunters was making for the garden gate, and he was alone under the great plains with the stallkeepers. When he realized it, he felt the embarrassment of the last guest in a restaurant who noticed suddenly the focused look of the waiters lining the wall. But before he could reach the gate, the clergyman had intercepted him jocosely. Not carrying away that prize of yours so soon? It seems quite time to go. Wouldn't you feel inclined? It's usually the custom at a fete like this to put the cake up again for the good cause.

Something in his manner, an elusive patronage as though he were a kindly prefect teaching to a new boy the sacred customs of the school, offended Roe. Well, you haven't any visitors left, surely? I mean to Aukston, among the rest of us. He squeezed Roe's arm again, gently. Let me introduce myself. My name is Sinclair. I'm supposed, you know, to have a touch for touching. He gave a small giggle. You see that lady over there? That's Mrs. Fraser. The Mrs. Fraser. A little friendly auction like this gives her the opportunity of presenting a note to the cause unobtrusively. Sounds quite obtrusive to me. Obtrusive to me. They're an awful set of people. I'd like you to know them, Mr... Roe said obstinately.

It's not the way to run a fate, to prevent people taking their prizes. Well, you don't exactly come to these affairs to make a profit, do you? There were possibilities of nastiness in Mr. Sinclair that had not shown on the surface. I don't want to make a profit. Here's a pound note. But I fancy the cake. I don't want to make a profit. Here's a pound note, but I fancy the cake. Mr. Sinclair made a gesture of despair towards the others openly and rudely.

Rose said, would you like the little duke back? That's the book he's got. Mrs. Fraser might give a note for that, just as unobtrusively. There's really no need to take that term. The afternoon had certainly been spoiled. Brass bands lost their associations in the ugly little fracker. Good afternoon, Rose said, but he wasn't to be allowed to go yet. A kind of deputation advanced to Mr. Sinclair's support.

The treasure hunt lady flapped along in the van. She said, smiling coyly, I'm afraid I'm the bearer of ill tidings. You want the cake too, Rose said. She smiled with a sort of elderly impetuosity. I must have the cake, you see. There's been a mistake about the weight. It wasn't what you said. She consulted a slip of paper.

That rude woman was right. The real weight was three pounds seven ounces, and that gentleman, she pointed towards the stall, won it. It was the man who had arrived late in the taxi and made for Mrs. Belair's booth. He kept in the dusky background by the cake stall and let the ladies fight for him. Had Mrs. Belair's given him a better tip? Rose said, that's very odd. He got the exact weight? There was a little hesitation in her reply, as if she'd been cornered in a witness box, undrilled for that question. Well, not exact, but it was within three ounces.

She seemed to gain confidence. He guessed three pounds ten ounces. In that case, Rose said, I keep the cake, because you see, I guessed three pounds five the first time. Here is a pound for the cause. Good evening. He'd really taken them by surprise this time. They were wordless. They didn't even thank him for the note. He looked back from the pavement and saw the group from the cake stall surge forward to join the rest, and he waved his hand. A poster on the railing said,

The comforts for mothers of the Free Nations Fund. A fete will be held under the patronage of royalty. Oh, it's marvellous. Come on. A great little... Nigel Balkin, it's marvellous. Come on. Nigel Balkan, yes. Rose McCauley, yes. Patrick Hamilton, yes.

Elizabeth Bowen, yes. But novelist and storyteller of the Second World War, Greene is, to my mind, is the greatest. Ministry of Fear is a very good example. The story we're going to talk about later in the show, The Destructors, is another fantastic story which takes the psychogeography of the war as its starting point, the end of the affair, one of the great novels of the Second World War.

The Third Man, he writes The Third Man, the script on The Third Man. And the other trope about Green that you hear in that is his ability to see the worst in everyone. Also, the cake, apparently a MacGuffin.

That cake comes back to haunt. It's very Hitchcock. I was going to say Michael Powell. It is very Hitchcock as well. Why is it Hitchcockian? Because MacGuffin is the term that you wouldcock. I'm going to say Michael Powell, but it's very Hitchcock as well, isn't it? Why is it Hitchcockian? Because, well, McGuffin is the term that you would use. I think because, what are we doing in this book? We're reading a book about a man who's just won a cake. Why is the cake a book?

It feels really creepy. He takes the cake home. I mean, the cake is obviously an object of desire because it's made with real eggs. So, you know, the landlady really wants to taste it. And then the lodger, the creepy lodger, who is very Hitchcockian, I like, Kate. Yeah. Do all his books have that sense of impending doom?

Yes. Just so we're clear. Like life, Nicky. It doesn't end well. One of the things I noted from the book that I read was that it was like a series of really well crafted scenes. Yes, he likes a set piece. The set piece that follows the fate is this really hilariously unpleasant seance, which again has that kind of Patrick Hamilton feeling of

lodging houses and scurf on the collar and the seediness of the 40s the damage you know

just damaged broken city bomb damaged it's funny I do really want to go back and read those other books now because I just read them when I was too young

reading Graham Greene from the point of about to turn 60, he was really onto something about ageing and disillusion. Yeah, he talks quite a lot about death. The early run of novels which would take in A Gun for Hire, England Made Me, Confidential Agent, this one, Stamboul Train.

I think the Ministry of Fear is the best of them. Where they fall down, it tends to be in a kind of monomaniacal negativity. But he strikes me as a writer who has a way of seeing very early in his career and becomes increasingly expert at articulating what he sees. So the themes of the name of action and the themes of the Ministry of Fear, 13 years apart, are not that different from one another. But his capacity to express them has improved by leaps and bounds. He talks about his themes.

We've got a clip of him. Should we play it? Please. Yeah, so this was from 1969 when he was doing an interview with the BBC. Are you a nine-to-five man? You mean working from nine to five? No, good heavens.

I'd say that I was nine until a quarter past ten. Do you do it all in longhand? All in longhand. And I set myself a minimum number of words. In the old days, it used to be 500. And now, to encourage myself, I have to sometimes put as low as 200 words a day. What are your preoccupations in your books? The Hunted Man is an obvious one, isn't it?

And I suppose it is a dangerous edge of things psychologically and sometimes politically the dangerous edge psychologically and politically also before we take us on to the next novel we're going to talk about but can I can I just say from a very young age green instilled in me the certain key ideas about how brilliant it must be to be a writer like famously like so you write a top a tops you write 500 words a day you you abandon mid-sentence so you know where the next day you've got something you know exactly where to pick up from also he um green used to do a thing when he was finishing a book he would book himself into the Grand Hotel in Brighton to just ensure that all he thought about was getting the work done.

500 words a day, probably a bit more than that at that point. You imagine once he's done his half past ten, he's clocked out, he's definitely doing something lugubrious somewhere. He's drinking a martini or smoking some opium. Or definitely meeting a connection somewhere. So, Nikki, what's the third novel we chose to talk about? The third novel, which I think is from the, written in the 50s? Mid-50s.

Mid-50s. It is called The Quiet American. And that is one that we've all read. Yes. That is the novel, Graham Greene novel that I've read. Finished this morning. So hot as a press. You got up that i've read and finished this morning um so hot you got up early i got up early this morning and i enjoyed it i've actually got to put my little copy here you know i'd never read it before this before preparing quite american we should say

the quite american is a very famous novel it is this is by far and away the most famous of the novels or the books we've chosen to talk about in this Green episode. I'll sit back and let my colleagues carry the weight on this one. Nicky, you hadn't read a novel by Graham Green before. So tell me what struck you about this novel written in the mid 1950s? I feel like that's a leading question that I need to have the right answer to. Yeah, you're right. The clue is there in the 1950s. Is it a modern novel novel what struck me about it i think at first i'm just going to say my how i felt about it when i started reading it to when

i finished reading it were very two very different feelings i think as someone who was never very interested in what was going on in the sort of vietnam war it wasn't one of those areas of it i'm not i'm not someone who's interested in war particularly. So the detail, the setting is set in fifties in Vietnam and the, when the French are still kind of having a Indochina war, they were the colonialists before the Americans got involved or as they're starting to get involved. And there's massive amount of detail around that political situation that I

didn't know anything about. That's, that was kind of the first bit that kind of hit me. I was like, oh, God, I really don't know what's going on here. And I had to go and do a bit of research to then understand the context of the book. And I think that was, so that was the sort of first I was quite confused about that. Where's North Vietnam, South Vietnam?

Who's doing what? Who's fighting who? Because there's a lot of knowledge that you assume knowledge perhaps and then as the story takes over and the characters take over then all of that is very important and fundamental to the

story but I then just found myself absolutely loving those particularly the scenes that were set, the set pieces as you described them, where it was. He's in the, when he's in the tower. The tower. Oh my God, he's in this tower, you know,

potentially about to be killed at any point. And what he does is he kind of goes to a scene, describes the whole scene, describes the characters, people's feelings, people's emotions. And what happens in that scene is the story moves on one nugget. And then he goes to the next scene. And then he does the same thing. He's a whole new set of, the place, the characters, the people, moves on another nugget.

I mean, amongst many of the things I love about this book is it's structurally unimprovable. The way he unravels the story and moves forwards in time and backwards and forwards in time there's a there's a love triangle obviously I mean it's we can talk about the book and it's a really interesting relationship to colonialism and what he's trying to do but fundamentally there are two world views here that are in stark kind of contrast with one another there's fowler who is the cynical middle-aged englishman who is trying not to he's a journalist he's a foreign correspondent you know he he drinks he smokes a lot of opium um he's in a involved in a relationship with a much younger

vietnamese woman who doesn't have much of a character in the book to be fair interesting we'll we'll we'll park that there because i i i'm sitting it out i think there's a there are good reasons for that um anyway but and then you've got um you've got pile who is this young idealistic american who has arrived with a um with a game plan he's been reading a kind of one of those um one of those American academic journalists who's basically said the way to solve this problem is there needs to be a third force in Vietnam, not the existing regime, not the French, but a third force to turn. Anyway, he becomes much more involved in politics and the war than he needs to be without giving all the plot away.

But what it really is about is kind of innocence and idealism versus the kind of Fowler who is the archetypal green character who is sort of filled with sort of a kind of Weltschmerz. He's ruined his marriage. He knows he's not doing any good for the young Vietnamese girl he's involved with. But there is inside him some sense of the way the world should be. He knows that the innocence and the kind of of the American, the so-called quiet American. Fatal innocence.

The fatalness is wrong. It's dangerous. And also, can we just say very, very ahead of its time. Amazing. This is the mid-50s. Actually, I was leading you, Nicky, there. This is the mid-50s. This is before the Vietnam conflict.

And it is diagnosing already what will cause such carnage, i.e. American power. There's a brilliant little thing that he says to pile he says i hope to god you know what you're doing here oh i know your motives are good they always are i wish sometimes you had a few bad motives you might understand a little more about human beings and that applies to your country too pile yeah one of the things that i thought is is absolutely brilliant about it is, and it's interesting that you love it so much, Andy, because the plot is fantastic.

It's a really, you know, it's full of plot. Absolutely. And it does this thing, it tells you right at the beginning that one of the characters dies, you know, right at the beginning. And yet how their death happens and who's responsible for that get played out throughout the book in a really, really clever way. And the timing of each sort of scene and sequence is completely out of step. But it doesn't matter. It's very easy to understand.

And I really wondered, Andy, as someone who famously doesn't like plot, why do you like this? You know what? I've been thinking about this because I thought one of you would ask me because I am very aware how much plot there is in Graham Greene novels. And Nikki, you are so right. I should not like it, and yet I do. And the best I can say is I think plot in a Greene novel is the pretext for self-examination.

So plot is the thing that allows Gre green to enter the psyche of the character to see how the character responds to the event now the reader in the short term gets the hit from the story but green gets his energy from allowing the psychological complexity into those situations and um i i think that we've we've talked about paul and pressburger and hitchcock there's a similar hitchcock is very much about how can i keep the audience in suspense by showing them what this does to the psyche of the protagonists and the characters. And there's a similar thing going on in Green. I'd also like to say one more thing about The Quiet American, right?

Green is the absolute king of opening and closing lines of novels, right? Brighton Rock begins before he arrived in Brighton. He knew they were meaning to kill him, and it ends with Rose going to the worst nightmare of all. The end of the affair has the, please God, just leave me alone, which is incredible final line. Well, what I always remember about The Quiet American,

and it's not a spoiler because it's just, it's the last sentence. I always remember the last sentence about The Quiet American, and it's not a spoiler because it's just the last sentence. I always remember the last sentence of The Quiet American. And this is Fowler, who John was talking about, this jaded English middle-aged man who knows in his heart he's done wrong. This is the last line. Everything had gone right with me since he had died. But how I wish there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry.

It's perfect. I don't often say that. It is perfect. I've got two little things just to throw in. One is plot. I've got two little things just to throw in. One is plot. Two men are in a tower, a sentry tower,

where they are expecting to be attacked and killed. That's quite a tense situation. What does Green do? He has them have a proper kind of like Dantian conversation about God and punishment. Yes, yes. And somehow, I read it and then I had to reread it. How does he do this? I mean, you know, it's right up there with sort of,

I think, you know, Camus. There's a sort of mid-20th century existential, what are we all here doing? And it's a key moment in the book. And then, you know, then there's an action where they he gets injured and there's gunfire and but somehow he finds the space in that novel to do that the other thing i just wanted to come back to fuang that that fuang who's the vietnamese character and this is just a little bit of of zaidi smith's introduction because i think it's brilliant and exactly what i feel too

in this emblematic love triangle, Phuong is of course representing Vietnam to some extent, but she is still everywhere, her idiosyncratic self. She is the girl in white dancing better than Pyle. She is curled up in bed reading about Princess Anne. She keeps her counsel. One feels that where Green did not know enough of her life or could not imagine, he resolved not to describe. As a result, Fong floats free of her symbolic weight. She has her own inviolate life in the Rue Catinat, buying silk scarves, drinking milkshakes outside the reach of Fowler's narrative eye, and thus denying the reader's base and natural request that she embody her entire country. We sense a real breathing woman, not just the idea of a woman that Powell is trying to steal from Fowler.

I find it hard to carve against Zadie Smith. John playing Zadie on you there. One of the things that I would say, didn't he actually, Green, have a girlfriend called Fong when he lived there? And just one of the things that sort of struck me about her is that she's just sort of very complicit in whatever, you know, this sort of changing situation. And there's sort of an expectation that she'll go along with whatever.

And maybe that is the case. And the other thing I just wanted to add about The Quiet American, which it does raise, is that thing about a journalist in a war zone or foreign correspondence, and at what point can you ever be neutral? And I think that carries on today all the time. You have to take sides at some point. You have to take sides. Or even by being somewhere,

there's a scene where he gets invited in a plane where they're dropping bombs on a village. That's an amazing scene. It's an incredible scene. But by being in that plane, he is complicit in that scenario. And he hasn't come along just to write about it. Which is another great Greenian theme, is the idea of there will come a point where

you will have to make a choice. And there is always a reckoning. Nobody gets off in Jim Graham Green's books. Also, this novel comes from the beginning of the second half of his career, where he very much, quite self-consciously actually as Anthony Burgess suggested is taking on the role of jet setter and journalist traveling around the world finding new areas of conflict with which to talk about the things he's interested in wherever you're going you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every

drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. I also want to say something as quickly as we can about Catholicism.

Yes. Now, John said many years ago on Backlisted that was the reason that Green isn't so widely read anymore because of his reputation as a Catholic novelist. And I think it was even more extreme.

I think they said, oh, his book's disfigured by his obsession with Catholicism, to which I bridled, of course. I'm not a Catholic. I don't read Green for the Catholicism. And again, I want to just quote from Zadie Smith because she begins this introduction to Quiet American with perfect way of seeing this. I had to find a religion said Graham Greene to measure my evil against. This puts Greene the Catholic novelist a description he detested into correct perspective. Before he chose Christ as his highest value he was first a man obsessed with scale itself. No 20th century writer had

a subtler mind for human comparison. Where lesser novelists deploy broad strokes to separate good guy from bad, Breen was the master of the multiple distinction, the thin lines that separate evil from cruelty, from unkindness, from malevolent stupidity. His people exist within a meticulously calibrated moral system and they fail by degrees. So there is no real way to be good in Greene. There are simply a million ways to be more or less bad. I mean, that seems to me what Greene is really interested in is not so much Catholicism as Catholicism as a system that allows, as she says, to calibrate the moral complexity of any decision. And I think with the Quiet America, one of the things that's so magnificent about it,

as is embodied in that fabulous last line I read, he kind of knows he's done the wrong thing. He can't quite, I wish there was someone to whom I could say I was sorry. And that's the beginning of the rest of the story, is Fowler living with the ramifications of that moral failing. For me, I think that's the open ending of that. So it was, like many films it was turned many of his books it was turned into a film wasn't it about 20 years ago in fact it's been

made into film more than once i think but it was made into film about 20 years ago starring brendan fraser as pile and michael caine as fowler it's a terrific film if that if you haven't seen it seek it out it's really good i think the the reason why The Quiet American works so well as an adaptation is because it has resonance to the 50s, to the 60s and 70s, and to the modern era. That is not a theme that has grown old. The idea of what power does to the people who have it is a perennial theme. Now, speaking of power, the next book we're going to talk about is a book of short stories that was published in 1967 called May We Borrow Your Husband. Now, the title story, May We Borrow Your Husband, is not great.

I'm going to put my hand up now and say that has not worn well. You know, there's a kind of attitude. One line reason why? It's probably quite homophobic. Yeah. It's very of its time, as we would say. Yeah. But nevertheless, Green was a great writer of short stories.

Some of his stories are truly magnificent. And his story, A Shocking Accident, which I think I may have talked about on this before. I'm still going to read you the opening of it. I have read this before, haven't I? I'm still going to do it on this episode because it's great. I think you did it on a lockdown lock listed, I seem to remember. Okay, so this story is from May We Borrow Your Husband.

It's one of my favourite short stories. And as John said, Green is a writer who doesn't get credit for being funny, but when he wanted to be funny, he could be exceptionally so. Anyway, this is how this story starts. Jerome was called into his housemaster's room in the break between the second and third class on a Thursday morning. He had no fear of trouble, for he was a warden, the name that the proprietor and headmaster of a rather expensive preparatory school

had chosen to give to approved, reliable boys in the lower forms. From a warden, one became a guardian, and finally, before leaving, it was hoped for Marlborough Rugby, a crusader. The housemaster, Mr Wordsworth, sat behind his desk with an appearance of perplexity and apprehension. Jerome had the odd impression when he entered that he was a cause of fear. Sit down, Jerome, Mr Wordsworth said. All going well with the trigonometry? Yes, sir. I've had a telephone call, Jerome, from your aunt. I'm afraid I have bad news for you. Yes, sir? Your father has had an accident. Oh. Mr. Wordsworth looked at him with some surprise. A serious accident? Yes, sir.

Jerome worshipped his father. The verb is exact. As man recreates God, so Jerome recreated his father, from a restless widowed author into a mysterious adventurer who travelled in far places, Nice, Beirut, Mallorca, even the Canaries. The time had arrived about his eighth birthday when Jerome believed that his father either ran guns or was a member of the British Secret Service. Now it occurred to him that his father might have been wounded in a hail of machine gun bullets. Mr Wordsworth played with the ruler on his desk. He seemed at a loss how to continue.

He said, you know your father was in Naples? Yes, sir. Your aunt heard from the hospital today. Oh. Mr Wordsworth said with desperation, it was a street accident. Yes, sir. It seemed quite likely to Jerome that they would call it a street accident. The police, of course, had fired first. His father would not take human life, except as a last resort.

I am afraid your father was very seriously hurt indeed. Oh, in fact, Jerome, he died yesterday, quite without pain. Did they shoot him through the heart, sir? I beg your pardon, what did you say, Jerome? Did they shoot him through the heart? Nobody shot him, Jerome. A pig fell on him. An inexplicable convulsion took place in the nerves of Mr. Wordsworth's face. It really looked for a moment as though he were going to laugh. He closed his eyes, composed his features, and said rapidly, as though it were necessary to expel the story as rapidly as possible, your father was walking along a street in Naples when a pig fell on him. A shocking accident. Apparently in the poorer quarters of Naples, they keep pigs on their balconies.

This one was on the fifth floor. It had grown too fat. The balcony broke. The pig fell on your father. Mr. Wordsworth left his desk rapidly and went to the window, turning his back on Jerome. He shook a little with emotions. Jerome said, what happened to the window, turning his back on Jerome. He shook a little with emotions. Jerome said, What happened to the pig?

Now, I think that has a claim to being one of the greatest openings of a short story ever. I don't want to spoil it, but it becomes a story about how, as Jerome grows older, he seeks to find someone anyone in his life who he can tell about his father's death without making them laugh and that seems to me to be a great truth about life in general you know the limits of human sympathy that's the great, another miserable green theme, but it is you know,

so well written, the rhythm of it as well, so beautiful. Another lovely thing that Zadie Smith says is that his invention, you know, the stories are just endless, stories poured out of him. I mean, Zadie Smith, you know, he was the kind of,

when Kingsley Amis and Graham Greene thought about novelists, these were, these were people with pens who wrote, and who wrote, who wrote to order and who, who saw their work as a job. It wasn't, wasn't primarily about kind of aesthetic self-expression. It was about telling stories. When you kind of look at Graham Greene books, you could say, yeah, he's kind of writing in exotic locations and he's writing about things that John le Carre wrote about on one hand and maybe even kind of really popular novelists like Wilbur Smith or Alistair Maclean in the other. He's not writing in a kind of self-consciously literary way. He was writing what he thought he wanted to be best sellers he's also an author who comes from the era when being an author quote unquote is a very useful double bluff yeah um the idea of the

man of letters striding the world like norman mailer or malcolm muggeridge or all these big beasts who were men usually and for green green who was a seriously strange messed up uh individual a manic depressive bipolar he was bipolar and so a lot of his actions are he feared boredom he famously says more than anything else and so he's compelled to keep moving he's compelled to take action and compelled to play parts and one of the parts he plays is going around being an author you know you think that the reason why he's not so popular now is that people don't necessarily appreciate that kind of tension throughout and particularly from a kind of masculinity around each character and that kind of difficult antihero who isn't always, you know, the narrator isn't always someone you warm to. Do you think it's that that actually means that you don't i do i think it's a very 20th century idea of the centrality of the male artist not just in literature but but in

in painting and filmmaking you know i i totally see that i mean i i i nikki you will be aware of my own uh conflicted relationship relationship to masculinity and the roles. And so for me, when I when I read Green, we talked about I think we said this in the introduction to the archive episode on Jean Rees. One of the reasons I responded so strongly to Jean Rees when I first read her was because she reminds me of Graham Greene. when I first read her, was because she reminds me of Graham Greene. There is a kind of merciless eye on human frailty, which is nothing to do with gender. It's not to say that their work isn't informed by the power structures around their genders in the eras in which they were writing.

But for me, it's the absolute commitment to the truth is what unites Rees and and Green, different though they are, and, as we've said, the capacity to see the worst in everyone. And when Burgess says, you know, oh, he's always running away from himself, I mean, yeah, but he's a novelist, Anthony, like you are. That is surely what novelists... I mean, novelists are always escaping into character.

Ways of Escape is one of the title of Green's books. And when he says, there's a great line of his, when we're not sure we're alive, love that. And his books are all about not being sure. And that's the religious quality to his work. I mean, this idea that his religion is about some sort of faith, I think his religion is about doubt. His religion is about struggle.

His religion is about continually testing himself and testing his characters. Now, we talked about Green, didn't we, as a writer of the Second World War, but this story that Nicky's going to read a little from now might well be here in the 21st century Graham Greene's most popular work. It's called The Destructors. And the reason it's so popular is it's been on the school curriculum for years.

In England, hasn't it? In England, yeah. But it has a kind of quality of, it was written in the mid-50s. It has a sort of quality of Lord of the Flies about it. A group of small boys take a house to bits. The reasons you are left to interpret pretty much for yourself because it is there, like Everest.

And the backdrop being that it's a bombed out London and so therefore there's destruction all around them. Yeah. And so there's a sort of sense there was this one house that remained and it was actually a, is it a Wren house? Yeah. Yeah, so it's a very beautiful house that didn't get bomb damaged. One of the children's father I noticed on this reading is a, quote,

a former architect, a former architect. And the boy goes into the Wren house and says in a very mature, thoughtful way, it has a beautiful circular staircase. There's no way of understanding how it stays up. And he then, on the next page, is the child who suggests they tear the whole house down, bit by bit, methodically. Yeah, so I'm just going to read a little bit from it. They've started doing that.

They're a gang, aren't they? The owner's gone away for the bank holiday weekend. And so these kids have gone into his house and are sort of tearing it all apart. And one of them's gone off. T has gone off to find something special. Did you find anything special? Blackie asked. T nodded.

Come over here, he said. And look, out of both pockets, he drew bundles of pound notes. The person's house, they call, is called Old Misery. They call him Old Misery. Old Misery Savings, he said. Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them. What are you going to do? Share them.

We aren't thieves, T said. Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me. A celebration. He knelt down on the floor and counted them out. There were 70 in all. We'll burn them, he said, one by one. And taking it in turns, they held the note upwards and lit the top corner so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. I'd like to see old Misery's face when

we're through, T said. You hate him a lot, Blackie asked. Of course I don't hate him, T said. I'd like to see old misery's face when we're through, T said. You hate him a lot, Blackie asked. Of course I don't hate him, T said. There'd be no fun if I hated him. The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. All this hate and love, he said. It's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie. And he looked around the room, crowded with the unfamiliar shadow of half things, broken things, former things. I'll race you home, Blackie, he said. Oh, it's great. It's great. Fatal innocence again, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The idea that all boys come, all human beings come hardwired with a strain of corruption that if allowed to prosper in a group, will lead to things like destruction, war. Why take a house to bits? Why not take a house to bits?

Why go to war? Why not? Why not go to war? Yes, exactly. I love it. Innocence, he says in Quite American, is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell. Yes! Wandering the world, meaning no harm. That's what I mean. Like a dumb leper who has lost his bell wandering the world meaning no harm.

That's what I mean. Like a dumb leper. It's so great. Right, we should probably go on to our last and final book. Our last and final book. Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, so now our final book by Graham Greene was published in 1974. We've actually had a book from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s and now the 70s. It was published in 1974. It's non- a book from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, and now the 70s.

It was published in 1974. It's nonfiction. It was written a bit earlier, wasn't it? It was written between 1931 and 1934, and it's called Lord Rochester's Monkey, The Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. And I have a confession to make, which is that when I've spent years saying

that I had read everything by Graham Greene, I believed it was true. Speaking of fatal innocence, I believed I was telling the truth. But I realized when we were preparing for this episode that there was one book by Graham Greene I had never read. And that was Lord Rochester's Monkey, The Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. So I've read it for this. So I finally can say i have now read everything by graham green and um oh it was terrific i mean even this book that was written in the same in the same after he was just after he finished the name of action so back in 1930 he starts thinking what should I write next? I know, I'll write a biography of the pornographer and libertine, the Earl of Rochester. And no one will publish this book.

So it sits in a vault for 40 years until by the mid-70s, Green is so famous and it can be published. But the thing, if you like Graham Green, the thing about reading Lord Rochester's Monkey, which he writes in the early 1930s, is it's eerily predictive of Greene's own public reputation as a drinker, as an adulterer, as a compulsively bored man who needed to behave badly in order to get through the day. You know, there's a quote.

Life has somehow to be lived, and Rochester drank to make it endurable. He wrote to purge himself of his unhappiness. He flung himself, the better to forget the world, into the two extremes, love and hate. I mean, who else would have written that? That's so clearly Graham Greene. So it's a really interesting book. And if this were published now, Lord Rochester's Monkey, and bear in mind mind this was written nearly a hundred years ago it would it would feel contemporary it's a sort of it's not so much a biography as uh inspired by the idea of biography that Green cannot even in his late 20s or 30 when he wrote this he cannot simply phone in an orthodox biography or find a subject

that would be appealing he's compelled to seek out filth and art in equal measure i read a great review of the book that came out in 74 in the new York Times where it says that it's his best early book, but also says that Rochester becomes almost like he is the archetype of the Graham Greene black sheep hero. I mean, it's almost he gives him the sort of the basis, which is the character that he writes and rewrites and rewrites through all the great books, including at least two of the ones we've discussed today. He is in The Quiet American Fowler.

And also, I mean, Roe in Ministry of Fear. Yeah. This is an astonishing thing always, I think, when novelists do this, is they write variations on that basic character, which you have to say in some ways, Rochester gave him a model for doing it. So he is Rochester. Is that what you're saying? Well, I think he's, he's well what he says i'll tell you exactly what he says when he was writing it he says this he said so complex a character can be dramatized in henry

james sense in more ways than one the longer i worked on his life the more living he became to me yeah yeah i'm just going to read you one paragraph at the beginning. I mean, again, if you love Green, imagine my joy when I open it to page 48 and chapter four is called The Age of Spleen. At the time of his marriage, Rochester was nearly 20. Only 13 years of life were left him, years which are very difficult for the biographer to chronicle. They are full of fantastic stories and impersonations, some like that of Alexander Bendo, the quack doctor, well authenticated, others like the mock tinker of Barford, purely legendary. They contain his love affairs with the actress Elizabeth Barry, with Mrs. Boutel and with Mrs. Roberts, the king's mistress,

his literary friendships and his literary quarrels, which may have culminated with a hired Bravo's attack on Dryden in Rose Alley, his duels and attempted duels, his quarrels with the king. These years cannot be followed chronologically. Dates are too often the subject of speculation.

It is as if all those years were clouded by the fumes of drink. And still he writes the book. It's terrific. It's terrific. So listen, I'm just going to give a recap of the books we've been talking about. Yeah, and I've got a question I want to ask. All right.

Well, they are, in order that we discuss them, the name of action, that is not available in the shops. Or if it is, it's extremely expensive. But good luck finding a copy. It is available on the Internet Archive. Is it? It is, yeah. Hooray! We'll put a link in on the page.

The Ministry of Fear, that is widely available. The Quiet American, probably in a bookshop near you if you have one. May We Borrow Your Husband, that's probably not in print, but the complete short stories of Graham Greene are available. It's available on Kindle. And Lord Rochester's Monkey is not currently in print, but is widely available for upwards of one or two P on the internet. So you shouldn't have much trouble finding that.

Plus postage and packing. So Andy, was Anthony Burgess right when he said that Graham Greene is really a kind of perfectly okay author? Minor novelist. Minor novelist. He was not a minor novelist. He wrote some minor novels. What needs to happen for Graham Greene is we all need to die so that a younger generation can come up and see him unclouded in reaction to the 20th century, the somewhat discredited 20th century. will come back. I think there's also a phenomenon that writers who enjoy great success and reputation

in their lifetimes often sink into the obscurity for a while. I think as well of Iris Murdoch. Iris Murdoch, who was widely considered to be the most important female, like Doris Lessing, in fact, as well, the female novelist of their generation. Not widely read now. Don't shoot the messenger.

Not widely read. So for me, Nicky, I think, I would hope people would go away from listening to this episode full of reasons to read Green, none of which are to do with his Catholicism or what they think they know about him. And certainly your reactions, both your reactions to the books you've read,

I found incredibly encouraging and enjoyable. I think just for Schuch, his ability to tell a story, but to make a story count in the deepest possible way. I love this from Quiet American. Wouldn't we all do better this is of course fowler not trying to understand accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another not a wife a husband a lover a mistress nor a parent a child perhaps that's why men have invented god a being capable of understanding perhaps if i wanted to be

understood or to understand, I would bamboozle myself into belief. But I'm a reporter. God exists only for leader writers. One thing I would say about The Quiet American is if you want to read a book where

I think, as I said, it has some kind of level of complexity. It demands a reasonable level of intelligence of the reader, which is good, but that you finish and you go, you put it down and you go, oh, that was a book. That's the feeling that I get when I finished it this morning. I thought, oh, that's good, right to the very last line that you read out. I just wish there was someone to whom I could say I was sorry.

It's Marlene Dietrich. That was some kind of a book. But what does it matter what we say about people anyway? Oh, well, so thanks, everyone. Well, this has been great. Thank you. What a treat. Anyway, we've now got to climb aboard our small boat

and leave the shores of Greenland behind us. Like lepers with our bells. Like lepers with our bells. Thank you for listening. If you want show notes with clips, links, and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 184 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. And if you want to buy the books discussed, visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop and we're still keen to

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get their name read out on the podcast accompanied by lashings of thanks and gratitude. Like this. Jessica Miskelly. Thank you. James Hume. Thank you. name read out on the podcast accompanied by lashings of thanks and gratitude like this jessica miskelly thank you james hume thank you kate timmers thank you mandy bisco thank you stephanie fan thank you thank you linda mcclarnon thank you thank you john rozoff thank you mark hamilton thank you thank you thank you thank Mark Hamilton. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Steph. Thank you, Steph.

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Sorry, I didn't read this because John writes this. For remaining so staunch in your support. Jess, thank you for your staunchness, listeners. Staunch while we were away. We're really looking forward to the shows that we've got coming up. We are so excited. The books that we've got coming up, the guests that we've got coming up. It won't just be us.

There'll be guests coming back on here. But in the meantime, we hope you've enjoyed listening to the three of us talk about Graham Greene. At last, we've done Graham Greene. We can put that one to bed and we can move forward into, is this season two of that? Yes, I think it's a bit. I suppose this is. Well, the first 185 episodes.

This is season, episode one, season two. Episode one, season two. Thanks so much, everyone. As we say, just wish there was someone to like it. I'm sorry. Thank you. Bye.

Bye. For fans of Anthony Burgess out there... Both of you. We thought there, both of you, we thought a man who'd written, who was also, let's be honest, written some novels that weren't as good as his other novels. We thought you might enjoy this letter from Hunter S.

Thompson. Hunter S. Thompson at the time was working for Rolling Stone, August the 17th, 1973, Woody Creek, Connecticut. Dear Mr. Burgess,

Herr Wenner has forwarded your useless letter from Rome to the National Affairs Desk for my examination and or reply. Unfortunately, we have no international gibberish desk or it would have ended up there. What kind of lame, half-mad bullshit are you trying to sneak over on us? When Rolling Stone asked for a think piece, God damn it, we want a fucking think piece. And don't try to weasel out of any of your limey bullshit

about a 50,000-word novella about Le Condition Humaine, etc. Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? Rich hoodlums? Dilettante thugs? You lazy cocksucker. I want that think piece on my desk by Labor Day, and I want it ready for press. The time has come and gone when cheap jack scum like you can get away with the kind of scams you got rich from in the past.

Get your worthless ass out of the piazza and back to the typewriter. Your type is a dime a dozen round here, Burgess, and I'm fucked if I'm going to stand for it any longer. Sincerely, Hunter S. Thompson.