Some Reflections on Links and Contrasts Between Graham Greene

Sinyard: Links and Contrasts Between Graham Greene and George Orwell Graham Greene Studies Volume 1 122 totally untrue. Everyone has the material “All Writers Are in his memories for many books, but that is not the same thing at all.” Secondly, at Equal but Some the end of “Fielding and Sterne,” Greene Writers Are quotes T.S. Eliot: “At the moment when one writes . one is what one is, and the More Equal Than damage of a lifetime . cannot be repaired at the moment of composition.” Others:” Some In Speaking to Each Other, Volume Two (1970), Richard Hoggart said of Orwell that Reflections On “he was one of those writers who are what they write,” and I think Greene was the Links and same. He and Orwell did not just write for a Contrasts Between living; they lived to write. I think one of the reasons that both of them were resistant for Graham Greene a long time to the idea of a biography—and it is curious that they should share one biog- and George Orwell rapher, Michael Shelden—was that both felt that their books told more about them Neil Sinyard than an account of their lives would. And what made them “more equal” than most The 2011 Graham Greene other writers of the last century was their International Festival ability to cross the cultural divide: to write in a manner that commanded the attention The title of this paper is somewhat friv- and study of the academic community—for olous and of course indebted to, and a I would guess that collectively, the number variation on, one of Orwell’s immortal slo- of books written about Greene and Orwell gans in Animal Farm. Yet all writers are would total well over one hundred—but to equal in the sense that all of us are potential write also in a manner that was accessible writers with stories to tell and, at the point to a mass readership and has entered the of entry, i.e. the blank page or blank screen public consciousness. Think only of Orwel- staring at you, we are all equal. It is at that lian phrases and concepts like “Big Brother” point, though, that equality ends and qual- and “Room 101” from Nineteen Eighty-Four ity starts. There are two relevant quotations and how they have been used and abused I would like to cite here. and what they now portend. In Greene’s Firstly, from Greene’s introduction to case, hardly a week goes by without coming a book by the brother of the actor Charles across some reference to a Greene-like Laughton, Tom Laughton, called Pavilions phrase–“Our Man in somewhere-or-other,” by the Sea: The Memoirs of a Hotel-Keeper or “a quiet American.” Even Peter Mandel- (1977), where Greene writes “Rashly I son lifted the title of “The Third Man” for encouraged him to write a book—rashly, his political memoirs, presumably in the because that hackneyed phrase everyone full knowledge that the central theme of has one book inside him is deceptive and Greene’s screenplay is betrayal. Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2017 1 Graham Greene Studies, Vol. 1 [2017], Art. 18 Links and Contrasts between 123 Greene and Orwell They were born within a year or so of why: he had an unfair advantage. More fun- each other—Orwell in 1903 and Greene in damentally, piercing perception into the 1904—which meant that, when they came dark recesses of the human psyche was to be to artistic maturity more or less at the a prime characteristic of his writing. same time, the mid 1930s, they were essen- They also share biographical coincidences. tially reacting to the same set of social and Their professional names differed from their political circumstances in what was a vital birth names. George Orwell’s “real” name decade for both men personally, politically, was Eric Blair and the change of name was a and aesthetically. Orwell, of course, died at conscious determination to take on a change a much younger age than Greene, but one of identity and, as it were, reject his heri- of the reasons that their work transcends tage and upbringing. He disliked the name their times is that both were unusually pro- “Blair” and chose “Orwell” after the name of phetic writers, not simply in the sense that a river in Suffolk. He chose “George” as his they anticipated the future but that they first name because it sounded very English, were novelist/prophets: they wrote books he thought, and also he hated the name with a strong moral sense, they wrote “Eric”: he said he always had the feeling that novels of warning. people grew into their names, and, as he did I find that there are links both trivial and not want to grow into an “Eric,” he decided significant between the two writers. They to do something about it. were both very tall. Greene was well over Graham Greene was born Henry Graham six feet and Orwell was six foot three inches Greene. I am not sure at what point he with size twelve feet. How significant that became “Graham” but I have always is to their personalities as writers would thought that “Graham Greene” is a won- be difficult to say, though Orwell did actu- derful name for a novelist, because it is so ally comment that one of its consequences strong and alliterative. Intriguingly, Greene for him was that to see what was in front once slipped back into his original iden- of his nose was a constant struggle. I would tity calling himself “Henry Graham” in his say that the essence of his writing credo is cameo as an insurance executive in Fran- there: to look beyond the obvious. cois Truffaut’s film,Day for Night (1973), a They both had blue eyes. Orwell had sort of practical joke on Truffaut who didn’t sea-blue eyes; Greene’s blue eyes were, to immediately recognize him. a lot of people, his most striking physical Another odd coincidence: on different feature. Apparently they struck terror into occasions they were both treated by the Norman Sherry; they fascinated Stravinsky, same physician, Dr. Andrew Morland, a when the two men met; and in Paul Ther- consultant at University College, London, oux’s novel Picture Palace (1978), in which who was a specialist in tuberculosis and Greene makes an appearance, Greene’s eyes who had treated D.H. Lawrence in his final are said to give the impression “of a creature illness as he was also to do with George who can see in the dark . they gave away Orwell. Morland was a very cultured and nothing but this warning of indestructible highly respected man. When he died in 1957 certainty.” In his autobiography, Greene it was said of him in the British Medical says one of his favorite childhood games was Journal: “He had a strange power to unify hide-and-seek in the dark, and now we know antagonisms, to reconcile contradiction https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/ggs/vol1/iss1/18 2 Sinyard: Links and Contrasts Between Graham Greene and George Orwell Graham Greene Studies Volume 1 124 and to merge thought into action . He with Greene. In his 1939 essay “Man Made was a good physician and a good man.” Angry,” Greene quotes with approval that Substitute “writer” for “physician” and that statement of Paul Gauguin, “Life being could almost serve as an obituary for both what it is, one dreams of revenge.” Some of Orwell and Greene. his fiction serves as a means of paying off On a more serious note, one finds similar- old scores—what the psychiatrist Edmund ities of literary motivation. In 1947 George Bergler, in his book The Writer and Psycho- Orwell wrote an essay entitled “Why I analysis (1950), called “injustice collecting.” Write,” and in 1948 Graham Greene partic- Bergler’s definition of a writer was “a person ipated in a published work entitled Why Do who tries to solve an inner conflict through I Write? An Exchange of Views Between the sublimatory medium of writing.” That Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene and V.S. seems suggestive of what both Greene and Pritchett. There are certain passages in the Orwell were seeking to achieve. Orwell essay about his literary motivation Connected with this are two matters that reveal striking parallels between his that Orwell mentions and again which and Greene’s writing inspiration and per- might also apply to Greene: his childhood sonality. Early on in the essay Orwell wrote feeling of being, as Orwell put it, “isolated of his “lonely child’s habit of making up sto- and undervalued” and his reference to his ries” and sensed that his “literary ambitions unpopularity at school. In Greene’s case were mixed up with the feeling of being iso- this similarly perceived “unpopularity” lated . I knew I had a facility with words at school arose from being the son of the and . I felt this created a sort of private headmaster and the bullying he received world in which I could get my own back for at the hands of two fellow pupils whom he my failure in everyday life.” referred to in his autobiography as Carter There are two more things relevant to and Watson. As part of Greene’s avenger Greene’s motivation for writing than any- strategy when he became a writer—and thing he himself says in Why Do I Write?, he had a particular interest in Jacobean which give his thoughts on the relationship Revenge tragedy—Carter would turn up between writer and society.

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