Graham Greene: The Enemy Within

by Michael Shelden

An intimate portrait of acclaimed novelist Graham Greene reveals previously hidden facts about his mysterious double life as a spy and his complex sex life and provides a radical reinterpretation of some of his major works. 30,000 first printing.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literature, History, Biography Memoir, Espionage

454 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

When you realise that you loathe the biographer even more than you loathe the guy being biographed it's time to ditch the biography.

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew Greene was a bit of a kook going into this book but man...I think maybe I shouldn't have read this book. The author tries to make suppositions about what he was actually thinking and what his motivations were while he was involved in subversive work for everyone from Noriega to Pol Pot to Papa Doc Duvalier. Greene's loyalty shifting like blowing sand - assuming he had any loyalties besides his dick and his money. My summation of the guy is he's just a right pervert rat bastard and someone should have capped his ass. I do love his stories though. And actually the author of this biography says that at the end...the work stands on its own despite the personal peccadilloes and lascivious and often treasonous desires of this creep...and yes I'm still going to read Brighton Rock.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an entirely satisfying biography of the fascinating Greene. Shelden doesn't seem to like Greene much, as man, or writer. He relishes Greene's every flaw (admittedly there are many) and he really only likes a handful of his novels. So...why write a bio of him? That being said there is much here to enjoy and think about.

[Pip · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think I made it half way through this book before I put it away. There is plenty of interesting information in it, to be sure, but unfortunately it just became too much work filtering out Sheldon's opinions. I don't have doubt that Greene was driven by a lot of complex and abnormal motives, and that deception plays a major part in everything he did, but I don't find this fact, and the great lengths at which Sheldon goes to prove it, that important. To me, as a reader and great admirer of Greene's fiction and a person who wants to understand it better, I don't really care to pass judgement. In fact, it is my opinion that the translation of unusual psychology (Greene's mind) into stories is what makes his writing worth reading. Condemn and remove from Greene's guilty mind that which Sheldon apparently wants so desperately to and you are left with just another writer. And that is my opinion.

[Geo Forman · Rating 4 out of 5]

quite, quite good. so good, in fact, I had to order an inexpensive used copy to have on hand. Not only a good biography but also a review of all his books, putting them into the context of his life. Greene was quite a prolific writer and often used his books as codes to divulge parts of his private life. as I read more of Greene, it will be nice to be able to refer back to this biography to better understand the hidden meanings and the context in which it was written.

[Larry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do you ever get that feeling of unease when you begin reading a biography and by the bottom of page one get the feeling that the author really doesn’t like his subject? Well, this is one of those biographies that begs the question of the author; why did you even bother? What did you expect to accomplish apart from making yourself look foolish? You didn’t expose anything we didn’t already know about Greene. Your publicist in his flap comments “This is the first complete biography of Graham Greene” Oh really?? So let me correct what I just said even before I read page one of this effort I had a queasy feeling from the flap, page one simply confirmed it.
The biography seems to want to focus on Greene the adulterer, the heavy drinker, his dalliance with espionage but most of all his crime above of all crimes, (especially if you are a blue-blooded American), he was a communist? The excellence of his writing in all of this is simply secondary in this entire book (and that lack is so obvious) and for a while I thought I was reading about Byron not Graham Greene. The other major strike against Greene was his anti-Vietnam War stance but funny his recognised reporting and exposure of the CIAs illegal activities and murders in Saigon and throughout the country are not recorded here. Probably because Shelden would not or could not challenge his undoubted reports of the CIA terrorist network.
How better to encapsulate Shelden’s antipathy to his subject in the final page with this childish observation: (speaking of Greene's friends at his passing) "trying to find moral excellence in his life is not a helpful way to honor him. There is too much evidence to the contrary” WOW!! Such banality, get out the broom from creative writing 101 closet. I could see this coming from page 1 and it simply confirmed what I had read, that this is not a serious biography, it is a 500 page moral chastisement from a talentless someone who is not fit to sharpen the quill of the late Mr. Greene.
I see Mr. Shelden has written a biography on Orwell, if this rag is anything to go by he will have a field day with poor George but I think I will pass. Half star and I am being most generous.

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dåså, då var den färdigläst, den första Greene-biografin parallellt med hans tio viktigaste böcker.
Detaljerad historia, följer Graham kronologiskt, om än med en del utvikningar här o var.
Utan att vara alltför källkritisk, presenteras en mängd detaljer, som höjer upp bredvidläsningen av själva böckerna. Kul kuriosa, även om det också finns en hel del av författarens egna åsikter insprängda här o var.

Greene skriver o reser o träffar kvinnor, diktatorer, dricker whisky o strular runt. Ett hektiskt liv, o svårt att pussla ihop allt till en koherent livshistoria - vilket säkert är fallet, med denne engelsman.
En hel del anekdoter är väldigt anmärkningsvärda, även om källhänvisning är lite oklart.

Men en helt klart läsvärd kompanjon, till GG:s författarskap.

(( Skriven runt 1995, ett par år efter Grahams död; Nu väntar som avrundning, en senare variant - Richard Greenes ”Russian Roullette”, skriven 2020.))

[Don Dealga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scurrilious and mischevious, nasty and disingenuous. It's the opposite of a hagiography, an obloquy perhaps? Or how about the much more colloquial and illustrative: 'a hatchet job'. Shelden's stated intention was to compose a 'favourable' biography of Greene, however, as the NYT's review so pithily stated: "Graham Greene: The Enemy Within" remains a calculated act of malice. It is difficult to murder a corpse but Michael Shelden does his best.
I kinda enjoyed reading it the same way I enjoy gorging out on milk chocolate: initial delight and guilty pleasure, turning to vague nausea and guilty self-loathing.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.

[Constantine]

Paperback

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

No good at all.

[Brad Erickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

That Greene fella was a rather sordid character, the way this biography portrays him...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography is a lively and irreverent one of the controversial writer and author of such modern classics as ‘The Third Man’, ‘Brighton Rock’ and ‘The Human Factor’, who died in 1991. Greene spent many years in building up a carefully controlled public persona, in which the many skeletons in his cupboard did not figure. Norman Sherry’s exhaustive, three-volume biography is the standard, authorised one, but Shelden’s is much more exciting and amusing, not to say digestible, and is informative enough.

Shelden ‘digs up the dirt’ on his subject: Greene was disloyal, duplicitous, and unfaithful; he was addicted to prostitutes, a heavy drinker and plagued by depressions. He was also an uncaring father and an anti-Semite who worked as a spy for the Secret Intelligence Service during and after the war.

He learnt all about spy’s trade at Berkhamstead, the boys' school where his father was headmaster. Greene senior expected his son to report any misconduct of his fellow students, effectively turning him into a double agent before the age of ten. He was made aware early on of the profound pleasures of spying as well as its dangers – ‘life on the edge’ was a recurring theme in his life and work.

Despite his abiding reputation as a ‘Catholic writer’, Greene himself admitted to an interviewer that he was not a religious man, and Catholicism was for him more valuable as a literary device than as a personal commitment. It is true that he converted to Catholicism, but this was done at least in part to win the love of Vivian Dayrell-Browning, whom he married soon afterwards.

Shelden analyses the plots of the major novels to illustrate his contentions about the more sordid aspects of Greene’s personal affairs, but when he informs us that Greene's genius was ‘marred by a wide streak of malice' we are tempted to reply, ‘so what?’ Wagner was a complete bastard, and Beethoven must have been hell to live with, but the work is the thing, and Greene certainly delivered the goods in that respect.

I would be inclined to suspect anyone who claimed to have been down a mine if he didn’t have some dirt on him.

[Gary]

Graham Greene a spy??? Read the book! I plan to. This same author did a new bio on Twain ,which I am reading right now. It's been excellent. Very engaging,and of course it the big anniversary of Twain's this year. So, great book to be reading right now due to the anniversaries.

http://www.twain2010.org/index.html


I sooo look forward to this one about Greene. This is for all you big Greene fans out there!

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting bio of Greene. I am definitely going to read "Brighton Rock." Sheldon describes him as "passionately disloyal."

[Paul Curd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Something of a character assassination with little documented evidence to back up some of the more extreme postulations.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

review to come