Flawed Like All Of Us
Graham Greene, for me, will be forever intriguing. A true writer, his mind and life are as intriguing as his own literature. This work attempts to shed light on a tiny cameo of that life - on Catherine -, the third woman of the title( more like 63rd) as well as the dark tangle of Green's Catholicism.
The two are intertwined. Catherine engineers a lesson with Greene by asking him to be her Godfather in converting to Catholicism - then becomes his lover. It is a fraught relationship, not less so because she is married and an insatiable collector, it seems, of other lovers many of them priests.
It is part of Greene's twisted ethos that he apparently found a consistency in bedding married women and staunch Catholicism.
It is interesting, in fact, it's what his books are about - how to be a bad catholic yet still be a catholic. The trick apparently lies in confession. As an atheist , that is a closed book for me. I simply don't understand, but i still like reading Greene.
I found this an odd little work, well researched. It is the tortured relationship that gave rise to Greene's "The End of the Affair", (which made a good film staring Jeremy Irons.)
But reading i felt a little grubby. It is not written with lascivious purpose and there are no grubby details in it. But it is a look through the keyhole at a part of Greene's life that he would have preferred remained hidden. You don't have to read it to understand Greene or or appreciate any of his books.
So, I don't know, a fine movie was made out of it and that's what counts. But don't read this book for edification. Greene was a writer first and foremost rather than a flawed individual and that is how I'd like to remember him.
The two are intertwined. Catherine engineers a lesson with Greene by asking him to be her Godfather in converting to Catholicism - then becomes his lover. It is a fraught relationship, not less so because she is married and an insatiable collector, it seems, of other lovers many of them priests.
It is part of Greene's twisted ethos that he apparently found a consistency in bedding married women and staunch Catholicism.
It is interesting, in fact, it's what his books are about - how to be a bad catholic yet still be a catholic. The trick apparently lies in confession. As an atheist , that is a closed book for me. I simply don't understand, but i still like reading Greene.
I found this an odd little work, well researched. It is the tortured relationship that gave rise to Greene's "The End of the Affair", (which made a good film staring Jeremy Irons.)
But reading i felt a little grubby. It is not written with lascivious purpose and there are no grubby details in it. But it is a look through the keyhole at a part of Greene's life that he would have preferred remained hidden. You don't have to read it to understand Greene or or appreciate any of his books.
So, I don't know, a fine movie was made out of it and that's what counts. But don't read this book for edification. Greene was a writer first and foremost rather than a flawed individual and that is how I'd like to remember him.
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