Cheap A sort of life (Book) (Graham Greene) Price

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psychological non-thriller
My main complaint with this book is that a depressed author does not write a stimulating biography. When all instances in the time period covered by the book are downplayed, the reader loses a sense of what is important. Graham Greene's experimentation with Russian roulette, and a flirtation with foreign espionage are told in an attitude that makes it difficult to sense its importance. Was his spy work unimportant, or was it Greene's ho-hum attitude toward spying coming through. The tint of boredom and failure extends over every aspect of his very fortunate and privileged life. An Oxford education, career editor on the London times, courtship, marriage and a religious convert to Catholicism all seem to be performed robotically without any passion. It definitely is an apt title. The book really does stop short in his career as a successful author. I am unfamiliar with his later writings, but this book mentions the fact that he feels alive when traveling throughout the world's danger spots. In this autobiography, Greene mentioned in later years he would cover a local insurrection in Mexico, and viewed first hand the troubled years in Vietnam, Liberia and the Mau-Mau insurrection. I would rather have skipped this book and read his later works about his experiences. I would recommend this book only to someone interested in the psychological background of Graham Greene.

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Litotes
is for the empowered; the powerless use hyperbole. Aristocratic Greene understates. He promises, in his introduction, to relate the events of his life with emotions he felt at the time without irony, but his detatchment to events in his own life makes it impossible for him to keep his pledge. Irony is his lens on the world, and he must see through it, darkly, or grope blindly. Pain comes through--the pain of childhood, pain of attending school where his father was headmaster, pain of academic boredom long after he'd outgrown it, pain of rootlessness, many failures--as if he were betrayed by experience itself. His writing, in his two autobiographies, shows the craftsmanship that made him famous, but fails to sparkle like the prose in his fiction, as if he were off-duty. He seems to have embraced Catholicism for the same reason Wordsworth wrote sonnets, for form; it doesn't seem to have been a passion, but perhaps it would have been bad form to say so. Worth reading for insights into his friendships and characters.

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Understated and highly readable!
Greene is a master of understatment and restraint. This book is a lovely if self-effacing coming-of-literary-age memoir that is fun and reader friendly. It's invaluable for its precious glimpses into the vanished world of the 10's and 20's England. Full of curious detail too: I didn't know that Greene was related to R.L. Stevenson for example. The book ends just around the time of his first literary success. I don't know if there are any further memoirs but I wouldn't mind reading them.