Paul Theroux
What the Hell is Going on?
In his long and distinguished career as a novelist Graham Greene has often flirted with the simple adventure story (‘There is a great deal of Boys’ Own Paper in Greene,’ V S Pritchett once told me). But he has shied away from explicit outward bounding and he has always chosen to thicken his plots with theology or politics – he is practically the innovator of what is now known as ‘liberation theology,’ the bane of archbishops everywhere. On the other hand, one of the strongest appeals of Greene novels and travel books is their treatment of adventure: the brothel, the binge, the back-street, the misfit in a far-off place. It is Greene’s RLS side, and it must be said that Greene himself has frequently mentioned with pride his family relationship to Stevenson (Greene is also related to Christopher Isherwood, but we don’t hear much about that). Greene shares with RLS a love of pirates, remittance men and freebooters – men who live on the dangerous edge of things; of distant places, and of the sentiment in the Kipling verse,
God bless the friendly islands
here warrants never come,
God bless the just republics
That give a man a home.
This verse was quoted in Greene’s
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Where now for active asset-management in the wake of the Woodford Equity Income collapse? My review of @davidricketts's When the Fund Stops and @OwenWalker0's Built On A Lie in @Lit_Review https://literaryreview.co.uk/stock-horror-2
'What if the 1492 "discovery" of America had been a fiasco, the major effect of which was to alert the Incas to the existence of a land to the east that might be ripe for conquest?'
@lieutenantkije on Laurent Binet's new novel, 'Civilisations'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/1492-and-all-that
'Humans may be the supremely musical animal, but, with or without us, this is a musical planet.'
@MathewJLyons on how music on earth began.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/symphony-of-a-thousand-millennia