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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 4, 2018 5:54:33 GMT
10 pages into it. i already feel like i am in the hands of a master. there is so much detail packed into each page. also, so much despair.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2018 0:04:25 GMT
Haven't read any Greene yet. Amazon for a long time didn't have the novel version of Our Man in Havana.
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Post by hi224 on Sept 6, 2018 1:26:57 GMT
solid author.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Sept 7, 2018 1:55:35 GMT
Excellent novel with maybe a tad too much emphasis on religious faith.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2018 0:16:47 GMT
Planning to do Havana, Brighton Rock and The Third Man at a minimum.
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 8, 2018 3:46:03 GMT
my review:
“The Power and the Glory” is about a spiritual predicament and a political and historical event about which I know nothing. I am not a Catholic. I was also not aware of the persecution of Christians in Mexico in the 1930s. I read this book only because I am a big fan of Greene’s “entertainments”. A spiritually wounded priest is on the run from the Mexican police. He escapes on a mule, traveling from village to village. In each village, the miserable villagers beg him to perform mass and listen to their confessions. Despite great personal danger, the priest acquiesces to the wishes of the villagers in each single village that he hides out. His sense of decency prevents him from completely abandoning the people who look up to him for salvation. The priest is an alcoholic but despite a government-imposed prohibition, he finds wine, beer and brandy wherever he goes. I often got the impression that the alcohol helped the priest go on as much as him performing his duties as a priest. The protagonists in all of Greene's novels that I have read are heavy drinkers and uses alcohol as a crutch to face their misfortunes. I am not that well-read, so I could not find a proper reference or context that preceded this book. But while reading it, I was often reminded of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Greene’s descriptions of arid and desolate Mexican landscapes might have inspired Leone: "MR. TENCH went out to look for his ether cylinder: out into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few buzzards looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn't carrion yet. A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr. Tench's heart, and he wrenched up a piece of the road with splintering finger-nails and tossed it feebly up at them. One of them rose and flapped across the town: over the tiny plaza, over the bust of an ex-president, ex-general, ex-human being, over the two stalls which sold mineral water, towards the river and the sea. It wouldn't find anything there: the sharks looked after the carrion on that side." “The Priest With No Name” (the priest in the book is never named, he is always called “The Priest”) travels from village to village “saving” the pitiable poverty ridden villagers and drinking their alcohol much like how “The Man With No Name” went from village to village killing the bad guys and looking for money. Like “The Man with No Name” the priest is not pious (he has sinned and has a daughter) and is often selfish – in one village the Mexican police arrests an innocent farmer as hostage to smoke out the priest but the priest who is in the vicinity does not reveal himself to be the man whom they are looking for. Despite, my lack of knowledge about history and religion, I enjoyed many aspects of this book. I could appreciate some of Greene’s profound allegories (this one about a man who urges the priest to give god to him): “The priest was reminded of an oil-gusher which some prospectors had once struck near Concepcion—it wasn't a good enough field apparently to justify further operations, but there it had stood for forty-eight hours against the sky, a black fountain spouting out of the marshy useless soil and flowing away to waste—fifty thousand gallons an hour. It was like the religious sense in man, cracking suddenly upwards, a black pillar of fumes and impurity, running to waste.” These lines about the vagaries of nature could actually describe the priest’s inner landscape: “The beetles had disappeared: the rain had apparently washed them away: it came perpendicularly down, with a sort of measured intensity, as if it were driving nails into a coffin lid.” Greene’s fatalism is evident in such heart-breaking lines: “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. The hot wet riverport and the vultures lay in the waste-paper basket, and he picked them out. We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.” Who would be unable to appreciate such crystallizing reflections? Wasn't there some event that happened or a book or movie that we discovered in our childhood, that affected us profoundly and shaped the rest of our lives? "The Power and the Glory" was a book from which I felt a great distance (hence the 3 rating). The writer Manu Joseph said that most readers look for themselves in the books that they read. I could not find myself in this book. But I could appreciate Greene’s extraordinary talent as a writer. |
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Post by Morgana on Sept 8, 2018 8:36:43 GMT
10 pages into it. i already feel like i am in the hands of a master. there is so much detail packed into each page. also, so much despair. I've read a few of his books, but not that one. The books I remember reading are Travels with my Aunt and The Heart of the Matter. I might have read another one or two but I don't remember (I have memory problems). I do remember loving the books I did read. |
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Post by petrolino on Sept 9, 2018 11:45:13 GMT
Great novel. Truly terrific.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Sept 13, 2018 2:37:48 GMT
10 pages into it. i already feel like i am in the hands of a master. there is so much detail packed into each page. also, so much despair. Oddly enough, never read that book by him. I should. Huge fan of THE HEART OF THE MATTER. |
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 13, 2018 2:57:04 GMT
10 pages into it. i already feel like i am in the hands of a master. there is so much detail packed into each page. also, so much despair. Oddly enough, never read that book by him. I should. Huge fan of THE HEART OF THE MATTER. i love that one. here is my review:
A sad sad novel. I liked it even though I'm not a catholic. A lot of the catholic guilt stuff went straight over my head. I am a philistine guy who has not read the bible and knows next to nothing about Christianity. But even then, there was a lot to appreciate in the novel.
It is set in a multicultural African colony, controlled and policed by the British. Scobie is an extremely moral but broke policeman with a demanding wife Louise. He is getting old and it looks like he will not be made commissioner. It is wartime and Scobie is out to catch diamond smugglers. Temptations abound. A Syrian Muslim businessman who might be involved with diamond smuggling tries to befriend Scobie. When his wife, who is sick of living in the African colony asks for money to move to South Africa, Scobie bends over for the Syrian. But before that he tries to push his wife into the hands of an impotent and self-repressed accountant named Wilson. It only creates a deep hatred in Wilson for Scobie after Louise rejects him. Louise leaves for South Africa. Scobie has an affair with a woman who is shipwrecked and orphaned. But then Louise informs him that she is coming back. Scobie struggles with multiple moral dilemmas. And Wilson is spying on him. The only respite in this mosquito and rat infested land is the copious amounts of pink gins and whiskeys that everyone's drinking down.
The novel is divided into into three books. I found the first book (which ends with Louise leaving for South Africa) to be very sad and compelling. Scobie's feelings of inadequacy and gradual decline and the exotic rainy landscapes are vividly evoked with intensely emotional prose filled with quotable lines and almost perfect pacing. Greene knows how to tear into the hearts of his characters and reveal their deepest fears and emotions. The two other books failed to move me as much as the first book. This is almost entirely due to those two parts being awash with catholic guilt and filled with long dreary conversations between these conflicted characters.
Like in The End of the Affair and The Comedians, there is a complicated and emotionally charged love quadrangle. But unlike those books, the main character in Heart of the Matter is the cuckold. Greene was obviouslly interested in matters of fidelity and betrayal from a religious point of view. And maybe he was a bit of a perv. Or why would he have these entangled and overlapping love triangles and quadrangles in every single book?
And this bit when Scobie asks the Syrian whether his Prophet does not forbid beer and whiskey. This is the Syrian's reply: "The Prophet had no experience with bottled beer or whiskey, Major Scobie. We have to interpret his words in the modern light". I don't know what to make of this.
As someone who is not very devout, I could not really identify with Scobie's spiritual torment. But I could identify with his real life problems and uncertainties. And the novel also worked as a bit of a thriller. But those are the superficial things. And those are the only things that I could really appreciate. Maybe I should stick to crime fiction and horror.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Sept 14, 2018 16:32:29 GMT
Oddly enough, never read that book by him. I should. Huge fan of THE HEART OF THE MATTER. i love that one. here is my review:
A sad sad novel. I liked it even though I'm not a catholic. A lot of the catholic guilt stuff went straight over my head. I am a philistine guy who has not read the bible and knows next to nothing about Christianity. But even then, there was a lot to appreciate in the novel.
It is set in a multicultural African colony, controlled and policed by the British. Scobie is an extremely moral but broke policeman with a demanding wife Louise. He is getting old and it looks like he will not be made commissioner. It is wartime and Scobie is out to catch diamond smugglers. Temptations abound. A Syrian Muslim businessman who might be involved with diamond smuggling tries to befriend Scobie. When his wife, who is sick of living in the African colony asks for money to move to South Africa, Scobie bends over for the Syrian. But before that he tries to push his wife into the hands of an impotent and self-repressed accountant named Wilson. It only creates a deep hatred in Wilson for Scobie after Louise rejects him. Louise leaves for South Africa. Scobie has an affair with a woman who is shipwrecked and orphaned. But then Louise informs him that she is coming back. Scobie struggles with multiple moral dilemmas. And Wilson is spying on him. The only respite in this mosquito and rat infested land is the copious amounts of pink gins and whiskeys that everyone's drinking down.
The novel is divided into into three books. I found the first book (which ends with Louise leaving for South Africa) to be very sad and compelling. Scobie's feelings of inadequacy and gradual decline and the exotic rainy landscapes are vividly evoked with intensely emotional prose filled with quotable lines and almost perfect pacing. Greene knows how to tear into the hearts of his characters and reveal their deepest fears and emotions. The two other books failed to move me as much as the first book. This is almost entirely due to those two parts being awash with catholic guilt and filled with long dreary conversations between these conflicted characters.
Like in The End of the Affair and The Comedians, there is a complicated and emotionally charged love quadrangle. But unlike those books, the main character in Heart of the Matter is the cuckold. Greene was obviouslly interested in matters of fidelity and betrayal from a religious point of view. And maybe he was a bit of a perv. Or why would he have these entangled and overlapping love triangles and quadrangles in every single book?
And this bit when Scobie asks the Syrian whether his Prophet does not forbid beer and whiskey. This is the Syrian's reply: "The Prophet had no experience with bottled beer or whiskey, Major Scobie. We have to interpret his words in the modern light". I don't know what to make of this.
As someone who is not very devout, I could not really identify with Scobie's spiritual torment. But I could identify with his real life problems and uncertainties. And the novel also worked as a bit of a thriller. But those are the superficial things. And those are the only things that I could really appreciate. Maybe I should stick to crime fiction and horror.
Superb review! Thank you for sharing. Always wanted to try one of those pink gins---and I don't even like gin! Heard a year or so again Martin Scorsese was directing a take on it...dunno if that is true. I'd watch. |
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 15, 2018 4:11:42 GMT
same here, nutsberryfarm. i am sure some readers of graham greene became alcoholics. i was already one when i discovered him so .....
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 15, 2018 4:12:57 GMT
i am surprised that scorsese never made a film based on a graham greene novel. SILENCE was quite similar to THE POWER AND THE GLORY.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Sept 17, 2018 5:07:25 GMT
i am surprised that scorsese never made a film based on a graham greene novel. SILENCE was quite similar to THE POWER AND THE GLORY. Was Silence any good? |
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 17, 2018 5:28:37 GMT
i am surprised that scorsese never made a film based on a graham greene novel. SILENCE was quite similar to THE POWER AND THE GLORY. Was Silence any good? nutsberryfarm, it was not my kind of movie. but if you liked greene's catholic novels, i'm sure you'll love it. im not a big fan of the two lead actors either. so that hampered the film for me. |
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