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Making Sense of Greene's Panama: a Fuliginous Process

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Making Sense of Greene's Panama: a Fuliginous Process Mansfield and Gessell: Greene's Panama inhabitant of Greeneland. “Fuliginous” Making Sense of can also be applied to the works that eventually took shape: Greene’s memoir Greene’s Panama: A and final novel. Not only does neither Fuliginous Process fulfil the expectations of its genre, they also suffer from the complex and opaque issues that Greene faced transforming Creina Mansfield his experiences in Panama into fact and Donna A. Gessell fiction. The difficulties occurred despite the promise to tell the story as recorded “Whom the gods wish to destroy,” faithfully in the diary, rendered from wrote Cyril Connolly, “they first call experiences made possible by his promising.”1 A promising idea is in privileged position, having been invited similar peril, as evident in Graham to the country by its ruler and provided Greene’s writing about his various trips with a driver and guide, flown when to Panama from 1976 to 1983. His necessary across the difficult terrain, “promising idea” started out as a diary, and able to speak to anyone he chose, which among its copious details includes from those in the administration to the plans for a novel to be entitled On the inhabitants of remote villages. Way Back. However, despite his So what went wrong with the aborted numerous plans, the novel proved so novel, On the Way Back? What imperiled that it was never written. prevented the completion of the novel Instead, Greene eventually published that he announced would be set in two books based on his experiences in Panama, when he already had the Panama, both of which defy generic skeleton plot and the title in mind? The expectations: a memoir, Getting to title came early, as he was taken on a Know the General, and his final novel, journey through Panama; when a The Captain and the Enemy, a work that famous haunted house was closed, he Michael Shelden described as “a and his guide resolved to see it on the confused story that tries to combine the way back. There was title and theme—a world of Berkhamsted with that of return that would be a discovery, a re- violent Panama.”2 examination—a triumphal return or a The reasons for his failure to regretful one. Words and phrases, whole complete On the Way Back are complex snatches of conversation, even an and opaque—“fuliginous” one might say, appropriate epigraph, were coming to to use the word that “The Captain,” the him readily—and recorded in his usual hero of Greene’s final novel, would have fashion, in note form to be written up used. Incarcerated with only the first later. Even the tone of the novel seemed half of a dictionary to read, the Captain to be established when Greene, having acquired a wide vocabulary of words finally allowed himself to read Conrad beginning from A to G. Known by a again, found an epigraph in Heart of series of aliases and a master of disguise, Darkness: “It seems I am trying to tell the ethically challenged Captain is you a dream—making a vain attempt, somewhat fuliginous himself, a typical because no relation of a dream can 1 Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise (London: 2 Michael Shelden, The Enemy Within Macmillan, 1938), 109. (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995), 395. 271 Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2020 1 Graham Greene Studies, Vol. 2 [2020], Art. 20 convey the dream’s sensation, that bizarre and beautiful little country,” it commingling of absurdity, surprise, and was the danger that enticed him. Earlier bewilderment and a tremor of struggling in 1976 he had “skipped off to Belfast for revolt, that notion of being captured by a cold whiff of fear.”6 Greene’s friend, the incredible.”3 With this comparison Life magazine journalist Bernard Greene indicates his awareness of the Diederich, knew that Panama’s volatile perils he faced in creating his ideas, even political situation would appeal and had though when he began visiting Panama spent some time acquainting its head of in 1976, he had already successfully state with the English writer’s literary completed twenty-three novels. reputation and political sympathies. He Indeed, the perils to promising ideas had also kept Greene informed of events abound. Enemies of Promise, Connolly’s in Panama. It was Diederich who led masterly examination of the writing Greene to write his novel The process first published in 1938, catalogs Comedians, set in Haiti; and ultimately the various preoccupations, distractions, it was Diederich who introduced experiences, and dilemmas that General Torrijos and Greene.7 Quickly endanger creativity: politics, “day assessing the Panamanian leader as dreams, conversations, drink and other complex—a benign dictator intent on a narcotics, … the clarion call of form of direct democracy, an autocrat journalism, worldly success, escapism, who dreamed of relinquishing power— … sex with its obsessions, … the ties of Greene found a paradoxical character duty and domesticity.”4 Yet this list ideal for his fiction. After all, the sounds like a synopsis of Graham epigraph he chose for all of his writing Greene’s existence. After all, his second was a quotation from Robert Browning: autobiographical work was called Ways “our interest’s on the dangerous edge of of Escape. Domesticity he had things. The honest thief, the tender abandoned thirty years before. murderer, the superstitious atheist.”8 He Describing himself to his wife as having had found just such a man. No wonder “a character profoundly antagonistic to he liked him. ordinary domestic life,”5 he left her and Politics was central to Greene’s their two children, but the other interest in Panama and the notes reveal “enemies” persisted: journalism, the extension of his concerns for success, drinks, and another—politics— Nicaragua. The reference to the torture became a growing preoccupation. of a Sandinista female points to his wish In fact, Greene had long established to include the conflict there in his a pattern of visiting far-flung places and writing. Like Fowler in The Quiet finding literary inspiration there. American, Greene became involved both Though he described Panama as “this in Panama and back in Antibes. There 3 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness [1902] 1955-1991, vol. 3 (London: Jonathan Cape, (New York: Dover Publications, 1990), 24. 2004), 604. 4 Connolly, 85-86. 7 However, Greene did not acknowledge this in 5 Graham Greene, Letter to Vivian Greene, 3 Getting to Know the General to protect June 1948, Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, Diederich’s role as a journalist. ed. Richard Greene (New York: W. W. Norton & 8 Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (New York: Co., 2007). Simon & Schuster, 1971), 85. 6 As fellow writer V. S. Pritchett described it, qtd. in Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene, 272 https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/ggs/vol2/iss1/20 2 Mansfield and Gessell: Greene's Panama was no safe way of doing this that could captured by his fixed look and then have protected his creative process. As admitting that “through the next four Connolly argues in Enemies of Promise, years I got to know those eyes well; they the wrong turns and bitter traps that came to express sometimes an almost seem to endanger the literary are also— manic humour, an affection, an simultaneously—the very conditions inscrutable inward thought and more through which art thrives. Writing will than all other moods.”12 It is in the early never fully outstrip or elude its enemies; moments of their meeting that Greene it doesn’t succeed by transporting itself becomes aware of his own vulnerability into the realm in which difficulties and as stereotype in the nascent friendship dilemmas have disappeared. The writing as he recounts their first conversation: process exists “on the dangerous edge of “Perhaps he was painting a self-portrait things.” to the stranger whom he had been rash The Panama diaries enjoy a richness enough to invite to his country—for of details of the political, yet they have what reason he may well have been issues in their recording of Greene’s wondering now himself—as a plain “day dreams, conversations, drink and simple man of action, which was very far other narcotics.” He relates how the from the truth. With a sidelong look at diaries began early on during his first me he attacked intellectuals. trip: “I felt again a certain sense of “Intellectuals,’ he remarked ‘are like fine adventure. Why otherwise would I have glass, crystal glass, which can be cracked made trivial notes in a diary from the by a sound. Panama is made of rock and moment I arrived in Amsterdam?”9 As earth.’” I won the first smile out of him “the sense of excitement grew,” he when I said that he had probably saved compares “a sense of fun” to the himself from being an intellectual only emotions he experienced leaving by running away from school in time.13 Vietnam, Malaya, Kenya, and the Congo: Likewise, he records the “These had been serious journeys—this contradictions of the driver and guide one was not. I thought of it as only a supplied to him; with the innocent- rather comic adventure, inspired by an sounding nickname of Chuchu, invitation from a complete stranger Professor Jose de Jesus Martinez is no which had come to me out of the blue.”10 normal soldier. “A poet and a linguist Greene then admits that “the sense of who spoke English, French, Italian and fun, however, faded on arrival” before he German as well as Spanish,” Chuchu is a meets with others.11 former professor of philosophy who had That all changes as new feelings set returned to Panama as a professor of in upon meeting others.
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