Burnt-Out Case Research Articles

The Presence of Grace in People

Theology and literature, as the twentieth century progressed, increasingly treated religion not in terms of the objectifications of dogmas and devotions but as the unseen presence of the divine in an individual life. Readers and critics saw degrees of belief and modalities of sin in the novels of Graham Greene. The writer acknowledged the influence of European novelists and theologians on his narratives. Karl Rahner’s theology of human existence within an atmosphere of grace along with a presentation of the transcendental and the categorical in expressions of faith and grace recall some modern novels like Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case. Both theologian and novelist point to God’s presence as silent, varied, mysterious, and real.

Guarding the Guardians: Fictional Representation of Manipulated and Fake News in Graham Greene’s Work

Abstract Drawing upon mass communication theories, concretely Walter Lippman’s theory of stereotypes, Erving Goffman’s theory of frames, and Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and simulation, we examine the fictional representation of manipulated and fake news in three novels by Graham Greene, Stamboul Train (1932), The Quiet American (1955), and A Burnt-Out Case (1960). In this paper, within the frame of one of the key concepts in his work, the ‘virtue of disloyalty’, we argue that Greene’s fictional representation of journalism (mal)practice constitutes a piece of grit in the machinery of the western press, questioning the political and cultural dominant discourse conveyed to the public. In this line, Greene’s literary representations of the journalistic practice can be read as indicators (and, in turn, shapers) of the western culture’s prevailing perceptions of the reported news and the professionals that convey the facts to a general public. With his fictional representation of the profession of journalism, Greene makes readers aware of the way information can be manipulated and the necessity of developing a critical mind concerning the news and how they are conveyed through the media.

Living on the frontier of Catholicism: Graham Greene’s disloyal conversions

ABSTRACTGraham Greene’s novels are often discussed – and evaluated – in light of the author’s religious preoccupations. As Greene was a convert to the Catholic faith from a nominal Anglican upbringing, critics have often addressed the representation of Catholicism in his work as an alternative – and minority – discourse of modernity, trying to categorize his religious affiliations and utilizing his theological concerns as a means of interpreting the moral discourse of his narratives. Moving beyond the debate of such categorizations, in this paper the authors examine Greene’s conversion as an individualized process, reconsidering his religious conversion through an analysis of one of the key paradoxes that extends throughout all of Greene’s work: his sustained argument for the ‘virtue of disloyalty’ found in both his essays and novels. Through the lens of Yuri Lotman’s cultural semiotic theory and, concretely, his notion of the frontier, this essay suggests a fresh understanding of the role that his conversion played in his developing moral and political vision. By focusing on four of Greene’s major novels, The Power and the Glory, A Burnt-Out Case, The Honorary Consul and Monsignor Quixote, the authors examine how Greene apprehends the frontiers of his Catholic faith.

Doctors as writers and patients: manuscripts don't burn, Chekhov and phthisis.

It is said that doctors make good writers because they are good observers and listeners. There is now a long list of doctors who have become famous writers. Many writers, with no medical training, by working with meticulous recording and attention to detail have been able to describe the human condition and even illnesses with amazing accuracy. Leo Tolstoy, for example, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), describes a case of terminal illness and existential regret at a life lived inauthentically, while Graham Greene in A Burnt-Out Case (1960) depicts leprosy. Books and articles on the medical humanities often draw on Russian literature to show the interaction between medicine and literature. Two examples of Russian writers who were also doctors and had chronic illnesses were Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)1,2 and Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940).3 Chekhov practised medicine on and off for most of his life but turned to writing as a medical student to earn money. In 1888 the novella The Steppe was published as a partly autobiographical work …

The Ethics of Facing Western Notions in Graham Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case

Taking as a basis Søren Kierkegaard’s narrative strategy of attack and defence, this paper will analyse the representation of western civilization in connection with the worldview of the native people living in a leper colony in Belgian Congo in Graham Greene’s novel A Burnt-Out Case. I will examine concretely the way in which Greene attacks in the novel the hegemonic structure of the European colonizers, which both ignores and imposes itself on the African native society, considering it a no-structure. Additionally, I will study the cases of the priests in the leper colony and of doctor Colin, characters that, being on the frontier between both value systems, become cultural translators and thus make communication possible. These characters acknowledge that the native way of life is as legitimate as the European and represent the possibility of an empathic side of western civilization. In contrast with the attack mentioned above, with the priests and Dr Colin Greene defends the European community living in the area. Through the use of the narrative strategy of attack and defence, therefore, contradictory messages are inserted in the text so that the readers take an active role solving the paradoxes they find in their reading. Finally, I will focus on the main protagonist, Querry, whose internal journey starts with his contact with Deo Gratias, a member of the native society, and whose spiritual evolution throughout the novel cannot be explained without his experience with the native culture.

The sins of the fathers: The missionary in some modern English novels about the Congo

This essay offers a discussion of some novels written in English in which the (Belgian) Congo forms the historical background to the fictional world, and that were published after that country became independent. Works by internationally well-known authors like Graham Greene (A Burnt-out Case, 1961) Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, 1998), Robert Edric (The Book of the Heathen, 2000) and John le Carré (The Mission Song, 2006), fall under the spotlight, though references are also made to other and earlier relevant works. The texts represent different eras in a history of just more than a hundred years and all of these narratives relate, in a direct or implied manner, the nature and impact of a Christian missionary presence. Whilst genre, story line and narrative tone differ considerably in the individual books, the reader is exposed to a remarkable analogous range of subject matter and theme: amongst others the disappointments of the missionary ideal, the corruptive power of authority and the subservient part played by the female devotees. The plight of the Congo is narrated from a postcolonial point of view, though the story lines indicate that this vast country has always been, and still is, at the mercy of colonial exploitation, in which the missionary set-up played a crucial part. The novels also display a remarkable intertextual relationship through recurring motifs, titles, images and names and thus contribute to that body of work forming a tradition of (English language) Congo literature.

Literature’s place in the global public health arena: Graham Greene’s fictional translation of leprosy in A Burnt-Out Case

ABSTRACTThis paper traces the engagement of Graham Greene's novel A Burnt-Out Case with traditional discourses of leprosy (the biblical ‘leper’ as a sinner, missionary care, tropical medicine, Albert Schweitzer's hospital in Lambaréné, germ theory), and shows how it suggests an ethics of care which highlights the psychosocial aspects of disease and healing. The paper argues that the reception of the novel opened a discursive space for the re-negotiation of images of leprosy after empire, making visible the structures and agents of global public health communication and their diverging conceptions of explanatory authority, scientific accuracy and the relation of science and literature. The article incorporates archival sources from press reviews to draft versions of the novel and the author's correspondence with prominent leprosy experts. It draws on media and science communication studies, disability studies and on contributions to the sociology of knowledge by Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn and Bruno Latour.

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

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...

Dangerous edges of Graham Greene: journeys with saints and sinners

Foreword. David Lodge Introduction. Mark Bosco, S. J. and Dermot Gilvary 1. Stamboul Train: Timetable for 1932. David R.A. Pearce 2. 'Ghost on the Rooftops': How Joseph Conrad Haunted Greene. Cedric Watts. 3. The Making of the Outsider in the Short Stories of the 1930s. Rod Mengham 4. The Riddles of Greene: Brighton Rock Revisited. Francois Gallix 5. 'Innocence and Experience: Condition of Childhood in Greene's Fiction. Peter Hollindale 6. Janiform Greene: Paradoxes and Pleasures of Power and the Glory. Cedric Watts 7. Sigmund Freud and Greene in Vienna. Brigitte Timmermann 8. Going Especially Careful: Language Reference in Greene. David Crystal 9. Prophecy and Comedy in Havana: Greene's Spy Fiction and Cold War Reality. Christopher Hull 10. Graham Greene and Burnt-out Case: Psychoanalytic Michael Brearley 11. A Touch of Evolutionary Religion. Darren J. N. Middleton 12. Inside and Outside: Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Robert Murray Davis 13. The Long Wait for Aunt Augusta: Reflections on Greene's Fictional Women. Judith Adamson 14. Graham Greene and Alfred Hitchcock. Mike Hill 15. The Plays of Greene. Michael Billington 16. Graham Greene and Charlie Chaplin. Neil Sinyard 17. The Later Greene: From Modernist to Moralist. Frances McCormack Afterword: Reading Greene in the Twenty-First Century Monica Ali For Further Reading Websites Relating to Greene Contributors Index.

Community, Enquiry and Auto-Immunity in Graham Greene's A Burnt-Out Case

A Burnt-Out Case (1960) is part of Graham Greene's “African writings,” together with the novel The Heart of the Matter (1948), and the travelogues Journey without Maps (1935) and In Search of a Cha...

"Shadow of Abandonment": Graham Greene's <i>The Confidential Agent</i>

"Shadow of Abandonment"Graham Greene's The Confidential Agent Robert Lance Snyder When compared with what usually are considered Graham Greene's "major" novels, The Confidential Agent (1939) may seem oddly marginal.1 Unlike such better-known narratives as The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Quiet American (1954), A Burnt-Out Case (1961), and The Honorary Consul (1973), Greene's ninth production does not explore in depth any of his characteristic themes—the theological mystery of grace, the ambiguity of love versus pity, the entanglements of postcolonial intervention, the recuperation of existential purpose, and the moral dilemma of responsibility for others. To this can be added the fact that its author categorized The Confidential Agent as an "entertainment," a designation that pigeonholed it along with Stamboul Train (1932), A Gun for Sale (1936), The Ministry of Fear (1943), and Our Man in Havana (1958) as a type of fiction that gave priority to the development of plot rather than character. Further qualifying the text's standing within Greene's corpus are the circumstances of its composition. As recounted by biographer Norman Sherry, in 1938 Greene methodically cranked out 2,000 words per day in the mornings for six weeks, all the while fueling his creative effort with Benzedrine, before laboring more deliberately on The Power and the Glory—at his customary stint of five hundred words—during the afternoons (2: 14). Given these factors it perhaps is unsurprising that Greene's story about "D.," a former lecturer in medieval French literature who endeavors unsuccessfully to negotiate a coal contract in Great Britain on behalf of his unnamed socialist country (Republican Spain), is not as widely read as his "mature" work. If we recontextualize The Confidential Agent, however, its stature grows. As John Coates has demonstrated, Greene's novel rigorously challenges the "pre-1939 thriller" popularized by Erskine Childers, John Buchan, Dornford Yates, William Le Queux, E. Phillips Oppenheim, and "Sapper" or H. C. McNeile (48). Central to these earlier "Clubland" adventure sagas during the years prior to World War I was a xenophobic "them"/"us" binary that vilified the former while valorizing the latter [End Page 203] group (see Cawelti and Rosenberg 38–45; Stafford 503–04). Repudiating this simplistic dichotomy, Greene reveals how it exploits an ethnocentric premise of cultural superiority while ignoring humanity's shared plight between two cataclysmic wars. Far more keenly than any he encounters in an England still basking in Edwardian isolationism, prolonged by Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, D. understands that "It was if the whole world lay in the shadow of abandonment" (72). The metaphor, of course, is quintessential Greene. Bespeaking his skeptical vision, akin to Thomas Hardy's, of Earth as a blighted planet, it conducts us immediately into "Greeneland," that familiar milieu of seedy borderlands and far-flung frontiers whose degradation highlights the spiritual bankruptcy of a materialistic West. Not accidentally, "abandonment" as well as its cognate forms loom large in The Power and the Glory, appearing (often in combination with the related motifs of "nausea," "hollowness," "desertion," and "vacancy") nearly a dozen times in the novel and anticipating, some two decades later, the experience of Querry in A Burnt-Out Case upon awakening at 6:00 a.m. in an African leprosarium to experience "the panic of complete abandonment" (25). The awareness of some universal dispossession, as T. S. Eliot describes it in Four Quartets (1943), is a well-established hallmark of modernism, and Coates rightly observes that in The Confidential Agent "Greene imports into the thriller … the sense of desolation and impending doom" associated with poetry of the 1920s and 1930s (53). One might argue that this dimension is merely a staple element of the thriller conceived as a "'metagenre'" (Rubin 4). Such is Jerry Palmer's stance in Thrillers: Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre, which posits that "bleakness" dominates what he calls the "negative thriller" (39), but his rather haphazard approach fails to define specifically whence that quality arises or what it signifies. Another wide-ranging study published a year earlier, Bruce Merry's Anatomy of the Spy Thriller, takes no note of any historical Angst in "second...

The sins of the fathers: The missionary in some modern English novels about the Congo

This essay offers a discussion of some novels written in English in which the (Belgian) Congo forms the historical background to the fictional world, and that were published after that country became independent. Works by internationally well-known authors like Graham Greene (A Burnt-out Case, 1961) Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, 1998), Robert Edric (The Book of the Heathen, 2000) and John le Carré (The Mission Song, 2006), fall under the spotlight, though references are also made to other and earlier relevant works. The texts represent different eras in a history of just more than a hundred years and all of these narratives relate, in a direct or implied manner, the nature and impact of a Christian missionary presence. Whilst genre, story line and narrative tone differ considerably in the individual books, the reader is exposed to a remarkable analogous range of subject matter and theme: amongst others the disappointments of the missionary ideal, the corruptive power of authority and the subservient part played by the female devotees. The plight of the Congo is narrated from a postcolonial point of view, though the story lines indicate that this vast country has always been, and still is, at the mercy of colonial exploitation, in which the missionary set-up played a crucial part. The novels also display a remarkable intertextual relationship through recurring motifs, titles, images and names and thus contribute to that body of work forming a tradition of (English language) Congo literature.

Leprosy and the genome—not yet a burnt-out case

Leprosy and the genome—not yet a burnt-out case

THE END OF THE CATHOLIC NOVEL?

A number of recent writers have claimed that the 'Catholic Novel', associated particularly with Graham Greene in his middle period, Evelyn Waugh, Georges Bernanos and Francois Mauriac, came to an end some time ago. I shall argue rather that the 'Catholic Novel' still flourishes, but that it has changed its nature and geographical location, and widened its scope. The claim mentioned is made by Professor Bernard Bergonzi, among others, in his essay 'The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Novel'.1 There he characterizes the Catholic Novel as seeing life poised between Heaven and Hell, salvation or damnation, illuminated with possibilities of grace and divine mercy. He argues that this world-view has now collapsed, and has been replaced by the 'humanistic Catholicism' of the Second Vatican Council, exemplified in the Father Superior of Greene's A Burnt-Out Case. Bergonzi sees this development as both a loss and a gain:

An autopsy case of human T lymphotropic virus type I-associated myelopathy (HAM) with a duration of 28 years

An autopsy case of human T lymphotropic virus I-associated myelopathy (HAM) of a duration of 28 years in a 61-year-old man with serological confirmation of HTLV-I infection was reported. The spinal cord was grossly atrophic. There was severe symmetrical degeneration of the lateral funiculi, particularly of the bilateral pyramidal tracts, involving all levels of the spinal cord, but anterior horn cells were relatively well preserved. In the most severely damaged middle and lower thoracic segments, the white matter degeneration also involved the anterior funiculi. In the degenerated white matter, both the myelin and axons were equally lost and had been replaced by glial scars. Marked adventitial fibrosis was commonly seen in small parenchymal vessels in both the white and gray matter. Although there was no evidence of inflammation in the spinal cord, mild lymphocytic infiltration was occasionally observed in the subarachnoid and perivascular spaces in the brain stem, cerebellum and cerebrum. This case was considered as a burnt-out case of HAM.

Graham Greene's Childless Fathers (review)

Reviewed by: Graham Greene's Childless Fathers A. A. DeVitis Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan . Graham Greene's Childless Fathers. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. 115 pp. $29.95. Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan's study of seven of Graham Greene's major novels addresses Greene's notion of fatherhood as it applies to his religious views. She sees the father-to-child relationship as biological, metaphorical, and religious, arising from "a deeply, rooted need for a metaphysical framework serving as an ideal reflection of human relationships . . . the ultimate source of grace, pity and love . . . behind human realities. . . ." Erdinast-Vulcan's sensible and scholarly approach to Greene's fictional universe addresses the ethical and moral concerns that the works adumbrate, sometimes in mysterious and bewildering ways. She is fully aware of the fact that in the novels once called "entertainments" but now called "novels" by their author, the theme of parental responsibility glances at and indeed sometimes centers on the relationship of the protagonist to the God he refuses either to believe in or to dismiss, as is the case with Raven in A Gun for Sale. She has, however, chosen for specific analysis several representative novels of Greene's maturity that indicate both the constants in his thinking as well as the shifts of emphasis necessitated by the nature of the particular fable. Occasionally her approach leads her to startling conclusions, as in her analysis of Brighton Rock, where her emphasis diminishes the dramatic tensions of the novel occasioned by Greene's dialectical, allegorical exploration of good and evil. To Erdinast-Vulcan, Rose is at once a mother, representative in some ways of the Virgin, as well as "the prototype of Greene's father figures" in her willingness both to love and to suffer damnation with and for Pinkie. The study, however, deals more persuasively with the presentation of the priest in The Power and the Glory, Major Scobie in The Heart of the Matter, the Fowler-Pyle relationship in The Quiet American, Querry's quest in A Burnt-Out Case, Brown's relationship to the Smiths and Papa Doc in The Comedians, Maurice Castle, a "priest without a church" in The Human Factor, and Eduardo Plarr, whose search [End Page 704] for a father crowds almost every page of The Honorary Consul. Erdinast-Vulcan examines these characters in the complex of human relationships yet never neglects the priest figures who also function as norms, usually ineptly, within the narratives. Her approach, needless to say, works best in those novels in which the three levels of responsibility are clearly evident, as in The Heart of the Matter and The Honorary Consul, but her insights into the nature of the childless parent in all the fictions that she deals with are always challenging. In discussing The Heart of the Matter she accepts the notion that the novel's framework is necessarily religious and then explores Scobie's relationship to his dead daughter Caroline, to the child-woman Helen he grows to love, to the wife for whose welfare he feels responsible, to the children he compassionately tends once the torpedoed ship places them in his orbit. Erdinast-Vulcan is correct when she points out that in the love affairs portrayed in The Heart of the Matter and in other Greene novels, there is seldom any joy, that sadness is the chief emotion. Perhaps this sadness is occasioned by the hint of incest that these relationships suggest, for the woman is almost inevitably younger than her lover (even in such a light-hearted entertainment as Loser Takes All), the major exceptions, of course, being The End of the Affair and The Human Factor. In The Heart of the Matter the father-child relationship emerges forcefully once the journey to the interior sequence has occurred and lends poignancy to the tale of adventure Scobie concocts for the shipwrecked boy about the exploits of Bishop among the Bantus. Scobie becomes to Erdinast-Vulcan a tragic hero when Christ becomes for him "a real suffering being"; the character becomes a father on earth without a father in heaven to support him: "Scobie is a twentieth-century hero in that he has lost his metaphysical reference—there is...

The Land of Aridity in A Burnt-Out Case

The Land of Aridity in A Burnt-Out Case

The Pursuit of Salvation: A Critical Guide to the Novels of Graham Greene (review)

Reviewed by: The Pursuit of Salvation: A Critical Guide to the Novels of Graham Greene A. DeVitis George M. A. Gaston . The Pursuit of Salvation: A Critical Guide to the Novels of Graham Greene. Troy: Whitston, 1984. 164 pp. $18.50 In a recorded interview played at the First International Conference on Literature and Religion (Nov. 8-11, Fu-Jen University, Taipei, Taiwan) Graham Greene answered a question concerning the expression "Catholic atheist" that has surfaced in recent studies of his work (V. S. Pritchett, NY Times Magazine 26 Feb. 1978: 40). Somewhat amusedly Greene said that the term he had intended was "Catholic agnostic," adding that journalists, even those with tape recorders, were not to be trusted. In his excellent study of Greene's works, The Pursuit of Salvation: A Critical Guide to the Novels of Graham Greene, George M. A. Gaston, although he makes reference to "Catholic atheism" as an aspect of Greene's fictional universe, has not fallen into the trap of accepting it wholly. Rather he takes Greene as [End Page 358] Greene once asked to be taken, as a writer who happens to be a Catholic rather than as a Catholic writer. He understands that Greene is not to be taken seriously when making comments about commitment and that his off-hand remarks frequently say more about his beliefs than do those that appear more dogmatic, such as the one he made to Françoise-Marie Allain, published in The Other Man, that he hopes that God is still dogging his footsteps. Gaston's thesis, "that there is an important line of development leading from those earlier eschatological works to the more recent, secular ones," is undeniable. He takes into full account the fall-from-grace aspect of the novels, aware that Greene's attitudes have modified as time and experience and wisdom have come to him. In pursuit of his thesis Gaston sets about locating evidences of grace in the novels from Brighton Rock through The End of the Affair where, to be sure, they abound. The increasing ambiguities of the works beginning with A Burnt-Out Case pose no special problems for him, and he is generally up to the task of finding evidences of his salvation theme. His insights are, in about equal measure, provocative and provoking. His discussion of Travels with My Aunt, for example, a pivotal book in the later phase of Greene's development because he gave up the category of "entertainment" with its publication, is both sensible and sensitive. Gaston correctly discerns Henry Pulling affirming life, despite the modest irony implicit in the quotation from Browning's "Pippa Passes," which concludes the narrative. Yet it is not always possible to agree with Gaston's interpretations; nor need it be. For Greene in his later works is dealing purposefully with ambiguity as an integral aspect of the tragicomedy he discovered as a consequence of the writing of A Burnt-Out Case, the landscape of Cervantes where, as he says in the introduction to that novel, he intends to stay. Gaston is fully aware of the problematical aspects of these books, especially those in what may be Greene's darkest novel, The Comedians, reading Brown's joining of Fernandez as an undertaker at the book's conclusion as life-affirming. Such a reading, however, excepts the carefully drawn relationship among Brown, Papa Doc, and Baron Samedi. Brown's failure in what is, I think, a better reading of the text, one that considers the setting as a trope for hell itself, becomes in Kierkegaardian terms the failure of the individual to actualize the self, in religious terms implying the loss of the soul. The real point, however, is that The Comedians lends itself to various interpretations, all of which depend upon a proper appreciation of Greene's use of a macabre humor and dark comedy that incorporate ambiguity. To me the novel is more a dance of death than a celebration of life. If Gaston's interpretation is finally unconvincing, it is nevertheless cogent. [End Page 359] Copyright © 1987 Purdue Research Foundation

Edward Bond's Summer : "a voice from the working class"

Edward Bond's Summer: "a voice from the working class" PHILIP ROBERTS In an unpublished interview given to Salvatore Maiorana in February 1981 (p. 142), Bond states: "It would be too presumptuous of me to say that I consider myself a voice ofthe working class but I do consider myself a voice from it. ..." The interview took place less than a month after the final draft of Summer was completed and at the same time as detailed notes for his new play, Human Cannon, began (although preliminary notes for the latter play exist from July 1979). There are notes, dated July 1979, fortwo plays, Restoration and Hlimon Cannon. Bond decided to write Restoration first, but before turning his attention to the laner of the two plays, he embarked upon Summer. Notes for several plays often coexist in Bond's papers, but the play in question, once begun in detail, proceeds to the virtual exclusion of all else, apart from occasional revisions. Thus, although Bond continued to modify Restoration in parts until October 1980, the sixth and final draft was completed in July. Early notes for Summer are extant for April 1980, but detailed notes commence in August. Before picking up Human Cannon again, although he worked on the playa little from February 1981, Bond directed Restoration at the Royal Court (opened July 1981) and also Summer at the National Theatre (opened January 1982). Once Summer opened, Human Cannon came into focus again and was substantially completed by the end of July 1982. The writing of Summer is characteristic ofBond's rigorous working methods and divides into three stages. The first consists ofdetailed, handwritten notes on theme and structure contained in four small notebooks beginning in August 1980 and running to November (although there are a few notes dated after this and going to mid-January 1981). The second is a typed "preliminary outline" for 27 October 1980, followed by a "draft outline" on 14 November. The third comprises six drafts of the play, typed from November 1980 to January 198!. At the end of this stage, a clean copy was sent to Bond's agent, Margaret Ramsay, early in 1981.' The play began rehearsals in December 1981, opened 128 PHILIP ROBERTS in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre on 27 January 1982, and closed on 19 June. The reviews (about par forthe course in confrontation with a play by Bond) ranged from the accusation that Bond's cast ofmind is "typically Khmer Rouge" to the beliefthat Summer "puts him back in his rightful place, in the very forefront of our living dramatists.'" I am not concerned particularly with the critical schizophrenia which has attended Bond's work since Saved in 1965; nor with the fact that some reviewers see nothing alarming either in maintaining an entrenched hostility regardless of the play in question (at least consistency is not in doubt), or in consigning Bond to the status of a burnt-out case one year and hailing the importance of a new work the next. It is an unfortunate concomitant of instant criticism that such vagaries are inevitable. An examination of the evolution of a play such as Summer does not excuse what may be regarded by some as problems in its finished state. The intention here is not to protect the play, which stands or falls as it exists publicly. But such an analysis may help to clarify the author's relationship to his material. It may show why the play took the shape it did. Above all, it may be of some use to theatre workers to illustrate the driving preoccupations of a writer whose art displays both a remarkable consistency of development and a readiness to experiment with new ways of showing reality (i.e., truth) on the stage. Since it is impossible, for reasons of length, to chronicle every step in the development of the play, I propose to look at five areas in the notebooks. The first of these concerns the relationship between mundane living and the processes of history; the second, the central conflict between Marthe and Xenia; the third, the alliance of Xenia and the German soldier; the fourth, the analysis of subjective...

James Joyce’s Manuscripts: An Index by Michael Groden

cation of The Heart of the Matter. Before that date his novels earned an average of 12 notices a year; after, the yearly average soars to 64. One can also note his progress through the circles of literary esteem as reviews give way to articles, to books, to dissertations. An overview like this permits one to begin to sketch out the history of cultural taste from one decade to the next and on both sides of the Atlantic, judged, for example, on reader response to controversial novels like The Heart of the Matter or The Quiet American. The subject index gives a scale of longer range literary judge­ ments. The Heart of the Matter is the novel that has drawn most critical attention (140 entries), followed closely by The Power and the Glory; A Burnt-Out Case (100) is third; then comes the pack of other major fiction (70-80), followed far behind by straggling entertainments and neglected early novels, none of which has received a quarter of the notice accorded the standard Greenes. Finally, reading synopses of reviews centred on a single novel can be an instructive lesson in critical vagaries and human nature. Does The Human Factor, for instance, demonstrate Greene’s “virtuosity with locale” (Bed­ ford), or show “ a sense of time and place vague in the extreme” (Veit) ? Does the novel err in its “faulty” London topography (Wheatcroft), or shine by its “neurotically accurate topography” (James) ? Is the novel “a master’s homecoming” (Clemons), or “a regression rather than a trium­ phant return to the world of espionage” (Christman) ? Does the novel’s power “lie in Castle’s character” (Kennedy), or is Greene’s hero “curiously opaque and undefined” (Ratcliffe) ? Is the novel a conglomeration of “scraps, homilies, analogies, generalizations” (Leonard), or is it “concise, ironic, acutely observant of contemporary life, funny, shocking and above all compassionate” (Burgess) ? In short, is it a “fatuous, fake, moralizing fable” (Stone), or “ a lean, finely governed piece of work” (Steiner)? Bewildering? So it goes in the great literary carnival, especially when provocative Mr. Greene is master of revels. You buys your ticket and you takes your pick. And with such a spectrum of opinion to choose from, it’s well worth the price of admission. Ph ilip Stratford / Université de Montréal Michael Groden, compiler, James Joyce’s Manuscripts: An Index (New York: Garland Publishing, 1980). xv, 173. $25.00 Rather curiously this Index is not published as an integral part of the sixtythree volumes of photographic reproductions that constitute the James Joyce Archive, of which Professor Groden is General Editor. Nevertheless it is, in 380 fact, the index volume and a guide to the Archive, and it also contains an important gathering of errata in the latter. It is true that the Index goes somewhat beyond the scope of the Archive in serving as a checklist of all the pre-publication forms of Joyce’s work known to be extant; though it does not itemize letters and miscellaneous documents excluded from the Archive. Other materials excluded from the Archive, whether by editorial decision or because they were not made available for reproduction, are listed here; as is necessary in such a guide as this is. A very “ user-friendly” guide it is too: clearly listing materials in ways that correspond to the distinct reasons for which they are likely to be consulted. In the first major index, Joyce’s works (including individual poems in the collections) are listed alphabetically and keyed to the Archive. The Ulysses and Finnegans Wake scripts and proofs are so listed that it is possible to trace through them, fairly readily, either the strictly chronological sequence toward publication of the whole work or the (often interrupted) progress of particular episodes and sections. The second major index lists materials according to the locations of the original manuscripts, of which it is now the most complete published record. It was sensible not to attempt, in this context, bibliographical description, dating, or other elaborations of the listings but to concentrate upon pro­ ducing a very useful set of indices to the manuscript, typescript, and proof versions of Joyce’s work in and beyond the wide boundaries of...