A World of My Own: A Dream Diary

by Graham Greene

Graham Greene was always deeply interested in the role played by the subconscious in his writing, and the private world of his dreams was one that he nurtured carefully, recording it almost daily in his dream diaries.  Selecting from these dream diaries, he prepared this small treasure for publication just before his death in 1991—
a last gift from a great writer to delight and entertain his readers.

Graham Greene regarded dreams as central to his life and creativity, and between 1965 and 1989 he kept a dream diary. In this book, which contains his own selections from that diary, Greene gives us access to the private world of his dreams, a fascinating record of another 'sort of life'.

'His life, his dreams and his fiction are equally exciting... These privileged experiences make his dreams paradoxically accessible: his portraits of the great, whether they offer strange pyschological insights (Andropov's withered right hand), vengeful irony ( W.H. Auden as a guerrilla fighter) or mere defacement (T. S. Eliot with a moustache), have the unusual effect of a sort of impartial satire' - Mick Imlah in the Independent on Sunday

'This little book . . . honours what in so many other ways Greene honoured in his long lifetime of writing: the value of mystery. It is that . . . that lifts it from the personal and the particular to a universal level of interest' - William Trevor in the Spectator

'Greene's dream-world is recognizably a version of the world of his novels or, to put it another way, this book might be seen as his last exercise, slight but graceful and fetching, in the art of fiction - which is not to suggest that as a record it is the least untruthful' - C. K. Stead in the London Review of Books

'Enchanting, moving, touched by the remains of a faith that had pretty well vanished, but pervaded throughout by a compelling sense of fun' - John Preston in the Sunday Telegraph

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literature, Autobiography, Memoir

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A World Of My Own: A Dream Diary is just that: a list of dreams that author Graham Greene had, mostly in the 1960s. He would wake up as many as five times a night and quickly take notes of what he had dreamt. This book is the result of his editing of his dream notebook.

Included are dreams involving death, famous writers, statesmen, his activity as a spy for M.I.6, war, religion, and travel. The strangest entry is the last one, in which Greene composes a poem about his own death:

From the room next door
The TV talks to me
Of sickness, nettlerash, and herbal tea.
My breath is folded up
Like sheets in lavender.
The end for me
Arrives like nursery tea.

The interesting thing is that, not surprisingly, many of the dreams he tells are very much of a piece with his writing. One could see scenes actually occurring in his novels and stories.

In all, this is a fascinating little item.

[Zoeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

To open and read yet another book written by the one and only Graham Greene would be like opening the door to a world like the one we live in, rendered with even more realism than we could possibly imagine. For what really distinguished Greene as arguably the greatest and most consistently striking voice of the twentieth century was the peerless, probing skill with which he took us deep into this world of our own that we all could see but never quite fathom - the world of geopolitical strife and sexual duplicity, the terrain of religious conundrums and moral ambiguities, navigated through with stories crammed with suspense and danger. The world of our own, the real, troubling truths of our existence, were what he always brought sharply in focus with the lean, lithe flexibility of his prose.

Little has been said and written, however, of his subconscious mind, the immense importance of dreams and fantasies in his body of work, as significant as it was in his life as well. As a boy, already bruised by the harsh world of schooling, Greene underwent psychoanalysis and in his customary blithe fashion, one of the dreams that he recorded was an erotic fantasy of his analyst' beautiful and becoming wife. Much of his fiction is always an attempt to reconcile himself to the tumult of his world and the incongruities of his life. In this slim and eclectic diary, Greene tested his skill of remembering and recording the workings of his subconscious mind but also infused his effort with enough light-footed energy and lively wit to make it most entertaining.

"A World of My Own" then is a compelling little journal that throws up many vivid and entertaining, if not always, happy, memories of dreams, nightmares and fantasies that took root in his mind and flourished in his fertile imagination. True to his pendulum-like oscillations between manic enthusiasm and brooding depression, the journal is divided neatly into categories and the most surreal dreams are enlivened by a rich streak of absurd humour. And so, in "Some Famous Writers I Have Known", Evelyn Waugh and W.H Auden become rival guerillas and Henry James insists on finishing a river trip in Bogota to its bitter end. And in "Animals Who Talk", cats and dogs talk like human beings while in "Moments of Danger and Fear", Greene records strange and even nightmarish experiences, two of which also take place in the regions of Haiti and Mexico, already faithfully charted in his fiction.

Despite the Kafkaesque quality of these dreams, "A World Of My Own" also reads excellently as a sort of a memoir as well as a cartwheeling portrait of the world, recorded in the mind of one of its greatest observers. When Greene meets the likes of Khrushchev and Andropov, Wilson and Heath, Castro and Ho Chi Minh, these encounters gain the fascinating shade of political satire. Later on, his encounters with Queen Elizabeth and Ibn Saud are too laced with bemused wonder. In his dreams of Stage and Screen, he renders absorbing impressions - of Paul Scofield's mercurial dramatic intensity and Ralph Richardson's all too recognizable streak of belligerence.

Likewise, other sections too illuminate Greene's most enduring interests. "Travel" sees him trotting across continents, from finding his car sinking in a stream in Australia to witnessing a massacre of children in Syria (a powerful, prescient image). These, along with his fantasies of war and adventures in the Secret Service, bristle with a thrilling mix of excitement and disquiet, while his reading adventures reveal his love for second-hand books and old volumes all too well.

Entertaining as this collection is, it is also, in a classic autobiographical tradition, touchingly, almost achingly human. It is telling that there is only one dream of "Happiness", fleetingly brief and unrelated with his real life and he feels most vulnerable and tormented in the dreams of "A Touch of Religion"; these reveal his struggle to believe in his chosen faith even as he clings to its precepts in a quixotic fashion. And it is also telling that the only romantic dream in this volume is titled "Love?" and recounts a painful story in which he suffers from a possible failure of love. In one section of the journal, the frustration and despair of the writing profession has seeped into his dreams too.

"It is a comfort sometimes to know that there is a world which is purely one's own..." writes Greene in his illuminating introduction, along with Yvonne Cloetta's warm and affectionate foreword. While the author was indeed assured of his prized privacy, free from salacious gossip, in his experiences of travel, danger and adventure, happiness did elude him even in this world of his own. It is fittingly poignant then that the journal ends with "Death", an end which comes for him "like nursery tea".

[Margaret Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book demands specific mental adjustments of the reader.Explanation: it's not a novel and it's not'set' in concensus reality. It really is a DREAM diary, with all the raw quirkiness of the stuff of dreams - those bits of plot and scenery washed in by the tides of Greene's unconscious mind.That being said, it's a treasure of a book for precisely that reason. It's the dream nature of the brilliantly polished content - juxtaposition of oddly matched images in unlikely settings - that makes it a fascinating look at a great writer's recurrent preoccupations.

[Aloysiusi Lionel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fever and body pain cannot hinder me from indulging on the pages of every book that had seduced me upon initial encounter. This is my first time to read a "dream diary" which helps me see the inspiration behind the author's great works. Graham Greene, whose book I yearn to read, is one of the indisputable hallmarks of contemporary English literature, and this book, which he gently denied as a sort of autobiography, gives his readers a glimpse of what rigor, vigor and ardor the feats of imagination could render the auteur. Statesmen, monarchs, legendary writers, historical sites, cannons, and escapades abound in these fragments of a dreamy life, classified into chapters. With an expository and enticing introduction by his dear friend, Yvonne Cloetta, A World of My Own was written in a language comprehensible even in the surrealism of our subconscious

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's said that our dreams are never as interesting to others as they are to ourselves, the dreamers. I suspect this is true, except perhaps for those we are in love or obsessed with...
Greene kept dream diaries for most of his life, and this slim volume was published posthumously and edited by his companion Yvonne Cloetta, as he'd asked her to.
The dreams are grouped thematically, and the chapter titles themselves are fascinating: Happiness; War; Moments of Danger and Fear; A Small Revenge; My Life of Crime; Animals Who Talk; Death and Disease,, etc. Each section also has a charming note of introduction by Graham.

Two of his dreams then; one first from the chapter titled "Unpleasant Experiences:"

I had a very unpleasant experience. I found crevettes were coming out of my penis with my urine. There were about twelve in the lavatory bowl, and one langoustine. (p.109)

Another from "Stage and Screen:"
I was asked to play the part of a priest who committed suicide at Mass, in a play to be performed in a small theatre in North Africa, but I was given no dialogue and the script gave no explanation of my actions.
I decided to extemporize.
A priest was preaching when I came on the scene. He told the audience that not only were the consecrated water and wine holy, but also the 'implements' of the Mass, the chalice and paten. I called out that I didn't care a damn about these objects. 'I am a priest and I am killing myself, God, because you have ceased to love me.'
Next day I went into town and asked two Africans if I had succeeded in shocking the audience. They assured me that the people were very shocked indeed, and were still talking about it. Incidentally, they told me that Saint Augustine had lived in this town.'
(p.81).

[Melanti · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's some really fascinating tidbits in this but most are typical dream logic nonsense.

I wonder if Greene's real life was even a quarter as fascinating and adventurous as his dream life? I need to read some of his non-fiction one of these days and find out.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was the last one that Greene personally worked on before his death. In fact, according to the lovely introduction by Yvonne Cloetta, Greene’s love and caretaker for the last 30 years, just before his death he entrusted the publication to her care.
I have an irrational but clear dislike of hearing other people’s reams. When someone says to me, “I had the most interesting dream last night - let me tell you about it,” I want to run away shouting, “No, I don’t want to hear your silly dream that makes no sense – and you can’t make me.” Instead, of course, I listen as they pour out the weirdnesses they have dreamt and search for some intense meaning in their present life from these midnight scraps.
Thus, I did not look forward to this book at all – and my lack of interest was not allayed in the reading.
The dreams themselves were selected by Greene in his last months. He had kept volumes of dream notes for the past 25 years, 800 pages according to his own introduction (which is worth reading).
The most interesting thing to me was the difficulty I had at times between Greene’s dream and his own lucid commentary. There were some times a fine line, a comment that Cloetta made as well. The trouble is caused by Greene’s insertion of the date of his dream into the recitation of the dream itself (i.e. “I met Solzhenitsyn one day in 1976…”) It struck me that anyone who wanted to libel Greene could quote one of these dreams from this book as if it were true – and then turn him into a complete liar. Or, at the very least, one of these dreams could be mistaken as a true incident in this “common world” and perpetuated without malice.
Indeed, this is what apparently happened, in at least one case. It seems that Greene’s official biographer, Norman Sherry, either misunderstood or was mischievously mislead by Greene. The story in this dream book is about his friend, Kim Philby, the spy. Greene writes: “In January 1980 Kim Philby came to see me secretly in London. He was not as I remembered him – he was furtive and sharp-featured, and I was disappointed…He had come from Havana by an English boat and I asked him whether he wasn’t afraid of being arrested on the boat – but he gave me vaguely to understand that he was safe now. All the same, when he came to leave he readily accepted my offer to walk in front of him. There was one man in particular he had seen come out of a room into the corridor who was dangerous.”
In Volume II of the biography, The Life of Graham Greene, Sherry spends at least ten pages on the relationship between Greene and Philby. He writes: “in the last year of Philby’s life, Greene showed himself to be a genuine friend by urging the authorities to relent and let Philby visit England with impunity and again spoke of the purity of Philby’s motives. Did Philby ever secretly visit England? Probably only in a dream of Greene’s” – and then Sherry quotes the dream as if it were, indeed, fact.
Well, enough of that. But while we’re on the subject, let me tell you a dream I had the other night. On May 23, 1984, I was waiting on a corner for a certain girl I knew in college and when she arrived, she was wearing…….blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe I've stated in a previous review that the correct number of dream sequences in a novel should be Zero. Well, wouldn't you know that this book is one long collection of dream sequences. I would only read something like this for someone of the stature of Graham Greene.

From 1964 til his death in the late eighties, Greene kept a diary of all of his dreams. He was working on this until the end, editing out the more personal ones. I believe this was his last published work.

It does give some insight into his psyche and his personal likes and dislikes (he didn't like birds, etc) and for that, I give it 3 stars. But I could see how it would have limited appeal.

[Ilkka · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Graham Greene (I've heard he's an accomplished author) text, published posthumously, was also his last. Some quotes that I think underline why some people might not want to share their inner world:

"In this last book of his, he gives us a glimpse of the strenuous inner life, his elusive source of creativity, that lay beyond that door which he always kept firmly closed, for fear an intruder might destroy 'the pattern in the carpet'."

"Loneliness is not shared with another--it is multiplied."

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

vivid travel, relationship and danger. recall for details is extraordinary for dreams. knowing the relationships between people and how they're connected is an interesting level to a dream, besides plot (don't know how to describe) and characters, but the innate sense of who people are and how they're connected, especially if they're reconnected in a dream in a way that's out of the ordinary (common world to borrow Greene) sense.

[Anthony Bracciante · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book consists of excerpts from the dream diaries that Graham Greene kept for the last 25 years of his life. Some are more interesting than others. The dreams are broken up by type into chapters. Some are downright bizarre such as urinating crevettes which is a type of shrimp. On a whole, not as interesting as his novels but still worth a read.

[R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I Dreamt I Was Rolling in a Big Donut, And This Snake With a Vest...

Predictably, the best sections were the much-too-short "Some Famous Writers I Have Known", "The Job of Writing", "Reading" and "Animals Who Talk".

[Dora · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dream Diary

This book proved to me something that I had always suspected—dreams are only interesting to the dreamer. I did not enjoy reading this book.

[Krisz · Rating 1 out of 5]

As interesting and well thought out as GG's stories are, this collection is annoyingly uninteresting. It made me nervous.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a nice quick read. It is interesting to read his dreams and its interesting the different political figures that pop up in his dreams.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Katie Jackman · Rating 1 out of 5]

So different to his usual writing! Quite indulgent and pretentious and lazy in my opinion. I finished it because it was a quick read.

[David]

I used to keep a diary of jokes and poems I dreamed of, but when I read side-splitting jokes in the morning that had made me wake up crying with laughter they made no sense. I dreamed I’d written a poem that was the creepiest thing ever and wrote it down shivering with fright before going back to sleep:

The Skeletons
As I passed a stairwell on the stair
I saw the Lord St Auburn there
writing in his diary.
‘I always write in my diary,’ he said.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just finished reading this. While most people, if they remember their dreams at all, tend to dream about having sex with their favorite celebrities, giving a speech before a large crowd while naked, or flying through the air on their own power, Graham Greene's dreams, judiciously edited from three decades of diaries, read like short stories or mini-essays, filled with all the amazing people and places he encountered in his long life.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book can claim to be one of the more unique books in my collection – in it, Graham Greene writes about his dreams, making it the only book that I own that’s a log of somebody else’s dreams. If that doesn’t pique your curiosity, you’re crazy – I’m a vivid dreamer myself, and it’s fascinating to see how Greene’s dreams differ from (and, in some cases, resemble) mine.

It’s a short and sweet read, and one that you could easily read in a weekend. So why aren’t you reading it right now?

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

an interesting little book of graham greene's dreams. it wasn't exactly what i hoped it would be though and was filled with brief accounts of his encounters with famous figures (within his dreams), which sort of bored me.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

An experiment in keeping a diary turns into an odd form of memoir...an assembly of recorded entries dealing simply with dreams, a form of autobiography as Greene himself describes it. It is an intriguing take on a life that he guarded fiercely.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes intriguing but the tone - sure, it's a diary/notebook - bugged me a bit. And it just seemed to have this pompousness about it. But I'm curious about Greene currently, so it was worth it for that.