Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene's Adventures in Haiti and Central America, 1954–1983 by Bernard Diederich

Abstract

Nanao Sakaki How to Live on the Planet Earth Blackberry Books Japanese nomad, nature-lover, and poet Nanao Sakaki gives us a collection of poems from his global travels. Each piece captures the observation of a simple beauty provided by the earth and catches the reader’s breath, leaving one wishing to have been in Sakaki’s shoes every step of his incredible journey. Zeeshan Sahil Light and Heavy Things Faisal Siddiqui et al., tr. BOA Editions Translated from Urdu, the short poetry collection Light and Heavy Things is remarkable in its combination of simplicity and achingly beautiful imagery. War and poor health besieged the Pakistani poet Zeeshan Sahil (1961–2008), but his spirit continues to shine brightly through these poems, illuminating a path of steadfast hope and affirmation of life. Nota Bene Sad, drive by car with their madcap artist friend, Ida, through a surrealistically glacial landscape studded with ice mountains like “panels of torn planet” and replete with ice bats “the size of toasters” on a journey that includes stops at a body shop and a psychiatric clinic. Their alternately breezy and dispirited conversations along the way give the characters an eccentric, passive air that at times can make their state of mind seem almost posthumous: “Whatever / happened to your / autobiography says Sad / . . . I / gave it up says G / nothing was happening in / my life.” This makes for an exasperating but compelling read—we advance, tantalized by our own uncertainty of what the characters will do or say. Ultimately, the whimsical odyssey has a serious destination—the room where G’s mother lies dying in a bed “as / big as a speedboat.” Until now, Carson ’s use of poetic language has been random and casual, but here poetic unity is seamless, and the novel comes metaphorically alive in a deathbed scene of unforgettable lyrical intimacy: “And the / reason he cannot bear her / dying is not the loss of her / . . . but / that dying puts the two of / them (now) into this / nakedness together that is / unforgivable.” At the moment of her death—“This roaring air in his arms”—he is stunned by the force with which sensations of freedom and relief contend with feelings of grief. And the Wife of Brain sequence that intervenes is hauntingly lucid: “Mothers ashamed and Ablaze and clear / At the end / As they are / As they almost all are, and then / Mothers don’t come around Again / In spring.” Rita Signorelli-Pappas Princeton, New Jersey Bernard Diederich. Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene’s Adventures in Haiti and Central America, 1954–1983. Pico Iyer, foreword. London / Chicago. Peter Owen (IPG, distr.). 2012. isbn 9780720614886 In a Time magazine movie review of Graham Greene’s The Comedians, its critic commented that the screenplay had “everything but economy . . . a story that might have been twice as good at half the length.” This might also apply to Seeds of Fiction. Bernard Diederich, a journalist born in New Zealand, founded an English-language newspaper in Haiti, became a resident correspondent for various US and English papers, was arrested by Papa Doc’s Tonton Macoutes, expelled from the country, and met and traveled with Greene throughout Haiti and Central America. Diederich admits to being in awe of his subject, describing his subject as a “warm, self-deprecating man, whose boyish exuberance followed him into old age” and for whom “there was no doubting the sincerity of his concern about the human condition .” Greene never lost his eagerness for adventure, which Diederich vividly describes in his account of January–February 2014 • 75 76 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews their travels in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. Greene’s books usually had appropriate settings: The Power and the Glory (Mexico), The Quiet American (Vietnam), The Heart of the Matter (West Africa), A Burnt-out Case (Central Africa), Our Man in Havana (Cuba), and The Comedians, set in Papa Doc’s Haiti. His writings reflect his latent anti-Americanism (although he forgives English imperialism ), which Diederich apologetically excuses as “sympathy for the underdog.” Diederich concentrates on Greene’s Haiti years, reflecting on the concentrated misery and poverty of the people. Greene himself did not aspire to luxurious living per se, although Diederich admits that...