It might be thought that it's only the current absence of Faulkner and Waugh and even Hemingway that makes Greene seem a novelist of consequence instead of, say, a fourth-rate Conrad. Is Greene not really a writer whose conceptions, plots, and style are, if the truth were told, as seedy as his famous settings? Can he construct? Can he imagine plausible characters and deliver believable images of their behavior in an efficient style? Is not his melodramatic, Manichean vision of life less a sign that he is "a Catholic novelist" than evidence of a coarse intelligence? Are not his psychological studies of fear and guilt forced and fraudulent? Is there the qualitative difference he imagines between his novels and his "entertainments"? Does not his instinct for spy and detective adventure betoken a literary sense considerably less than subtle? These are the troubling questions that arise whenever Greene is put forward as a major writer. They arise anew with [Ways of Escape, the] second volume of his memoirs.
The first volume, A Sort of Life, appeared in 1971. It dealt with his life only up to his 20s. Here we have the rest of it, from 1929 to 1978. As Greene admits, "rather less than half" the book has been cobbled together from the introductions he's provided for the collected edition of his works. These bits are now arranged chronologically and bridged by new passages. There is thus an air of pastiche and incoherence about the whole, although the parts are often attractive.
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