The Comedians in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 01, 2010 Steve rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Several years back, after reading Robert Stone’s (underappreciated) Bay of Souls, I saw someone somewhere say that Stone had departed from his Conradian foundation, and had pulled a Delillo on readers. I puzzled over that, because even though Bay of Souls is a change in approach, I didn’t see any of the incomprehensible Falling Man in Stone’s hallucinogenic tropical nightmare book. With Graham Greene’s The Comedians, however, I believe I have found the source for Stone’s trippy foray. And it ma Several years back, after reading Robert Stone’s (underappreciated) Bay of Souls, I saw someone somewhere say that Stone had departed from his Conradian foundation, and had pulled a Delillo on readers. I puzzled over that, because even though Bay of Souls is a change in approach, I didn’t see any of the incomprehensible Falling Man in Stone’s hallucinogenic tropical nightmare book. With Graham Greene’s The Comedians, however, I believe I have found the source for Stone’s trippy foray. And it makes sense, since a jump from Conrad to Greene to Stone, is as logical as 1-2-3. One probably shouldn’t start out a review with a digression, but reading Green’s book has made me want to return to Stone’s book for more of the same.

Published in 1966, The Comedians is unlike any book I’ve yet read by Greene (I’ve not read them all, but I’ve read a lot of them). It’s funnier, raunchier, and looser than his other books. I don’t know whether it’s considered one of his “Catholic” novels or not, but you will get plenty of meditations on sin, evil, love, suicide, and death. The novel opens with a ship a ship headed to Haiti. On board are three men, with the improbable gathering of Everyman names: Smith, Jones, and Brown. Brown owns a hotel in Haiti, which is now ruled by Papa Doc Duvalier. (As it turns out, while in New York, Brown has been trying to sell his Hotel.) Smith, is a former Presidential Candidate for the Vegetarian Party (is that so far fetched anymore?); and Jones, who is always described as “ambigious,” is a confidence man – who everyone (oddly) seems to like. Given where this bunch is headed, a real Hell, it’s not hard to see Greene as setting this up as a Ship of Fools.

Brown is the main character. Educated in Jesuit schools, he has lived a lonely life, virtually parentless. Like Greene (also a color) himself, he’s pushing 60. He currently is having a pretty hot relationship with Martha, the wife of the German ambassador. And by hot, I mean they’re doing it in the car, the lawn, and wherever else they can fit some action in. However, Brown’s own self loathing cannot seem to let it move beyond more than sex. He thinks himself incapable of love, and yet he desires it. When Brown gets nasty, he faults Martha for being German (and she in fact the daughter of a Nazi war criminal – though she carries none of that evil baggage). But longing for Martha is unrealistic anyway, since she’s a devoted mother to her son, Angel (see Hawthorne’s also eagle eyed “Pearl”). Martha would never leave her husband (who is not a bad man) if it means losing her son.

Once ashore, Brown finds his hotel empty, and the body of a government official in the empty pool. He has cut his own throat out of fear of Duvalier’s thugs, the Tonton Macoutes. What follows is a series of episodes, often comic (as in the Coen Brothers sense of “comic”), as Brown tries to deal with disposing of the body, keeping the Smiths (Holy Fools) out of trouble, having more sex with Martha, and keeping track of the trajectory (Up then Down) of Major Jones – who is brewing up some scheme with the Tonton Macoutes. At times this can get a bit wearying, especially when it comes to ridiculous conversations with the Smiths about vegetarianism and good works. Brown, from the start of the novel, likes to see all the characters he meets as actors – comedians, working through their silly human roles on their silly human stage. Tragedy is a thing for young men who believe in something. Brown is at that late point in life where he doesn’t believe in much of anything anymore. But as the novel unfolds, Brown continually sells himself short. He intervenes repeatedly, and bravely, into situations that put him at great risk. Beneath the cynicism there is a lingering sense of hope. And Brown responds best when he senses the goodness of others (the Smiths in particular), and will rise to defend it. As a reader, you never really buy into the We-Are-All Comedians world view. Sure, the grin painted on the skull in a place like Haiti is brightly colored, but it’s still a skull. In one late Conradian passage, Brown, while meditating on a picture hanging in his hotel, drops his novel long pretence of life as a comedy filled with comedians. Brown does (as he always has) see the horror, the corruption of the place. Life – and Death are at the heart of this novel:

On the first landing there was a picture by Phillipe Auguste of a carnival procession, men, women, and children wearing bright masks. Of a morning, when the sunlight shone through the first-floor windows, the harsh colours gave an impression of gaiety, the drummers and the trumpeters seemed about to play a lively air. Only when you came closer you saw how ugly the masks were and how the masquers surrounded a cadaver in grave-clothes; then the primitive colours went flat as though the clouds had come down from Kenscoff and the thunder would soon follow. Wherever that picture hung, I would feel Haiti close to me.

So the tone may be different, but with Greene the moral concerns remain the same.

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