| Greene was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England in 1904. Being
the son of a headmaster was probably what pushed him towards a literary
career, but perhaps the push was a little too hard... He was educated at
the University of Oxford, and suffered a nervous breakdown in his late
teens. |
| After college, Greene spent time hustling his talents for the London
Times for three years, beginning in 1926. A man not totally enamored with
deadlines (and what writer is, really?), he became a freelance writer
in 1930. In 1935 he became the house film critic for the British newspaper
The Spectator and was promoted to literary editor in 1940. |
| His work for the British Foreign Office in western Africa (beginning
in 1942) during World War Two saw him accused of collusion and traitorous
activities, although these accusations were never substantiated. Still,
he did resign unexpectedly in 1943 and spent the rest of the war traveling
widely. |
| Greene's earliest novels were The Man Within (1929), The Name
of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1930), but his popularity was
sealed with the publishing in 1932 of Stamboul Train, otherwise known as
Orient Express. He characterized his early works as "entertainments", and
his later works concentrated on the struggle between good and evil within
man. These works were filled with moral, religious and social themes, and
were inspired, no doubt, by his earlier (1926) conversion to Roman Catholicism.
He termed these works his "novels", and they were filled with exotic locales,
vivid imagery and a unique, detached portayal of characters that would
become his trademark. Greene seemed to be obsessed with evil; indeed,
his last few novels added a strange mix of moral doubt and psychological
conflict which enhanced the terror of the works. Whether these elements
were present in his personal life has been open to debate for quite sometime,
and he began to dabble in later years in mysticism and Native American
spirituality. |
| Greene died in 1991, but his last work wasn't published until 1994.
Called A World of My Own: A Dream Diary, it was culled from over 800 pages
of diaries and journals he kept over a 24 year span and was a partly fictitious,
partly autobiographical accounting (perhaps his attempt at New Journalism?)
of his life and travels. |
|
By John D. Hamilton
|