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Yours Etc.: Letters to the Press, 1945 - 89
Out of print. In a Mylar cover.
- GenresBiography
269 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1989
About the author
Graham Greene
691 books6,457 followersHenry 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".
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".
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 21, 2022
Where does one begin, really? It is already well-known that Graham Greene was one of the most important, influential and prolific (or should we agree and say, the most significant and skilled as well?) storytellers but nobody, not even me, a self-declared admirer (or should I say, ardent lover?) of his work, would have expected that his letters written to the press would have been such an incredible reading experience. Usually, we do not find anything of remarkable interest in an author's letters collected throughout his or her lifetime; indeed, if we are slavishly devoted as readers interested to know their innermost thoughts and feelings, like how I am already for Greene, we would be delighted at digging out some letter in which the writer would mention, in passing, the work in progress for a beloved novel or letters that would indicate the development of a mindset, or an opinion to be found in his works as well.
And yet, in "Yours Etc", a superbly compiled and annotated edition brought to us a mere couple of years before the tragic demise of Greene himself by Christopher Hawtree, the letters are a marvel to behold. They not only chart Greene's life through the five decades in which he wrote these letters, commenting, remarking and even opining stridently on a dazzling and eclectic range of subjects but they also, most crucially, take the reader on a whirlwind tour of the years and decades after the Second World War, with all its puzzling, befuddling conundrums, its political travesties and its tumultuous moments of revolution and violence - in a nutshell, the overwhelming forces from which Greene was never far away.
Starting from 1945 and ending in 1989, this collection of letters is indeed a vast reservoir of almost compulsive, prolific correspondence. One knows that Greene frequently cast journalists and correspondents, not always idealistic or even honest, in his novels; one might even know that at a particular period of his youth, before embarking on an illustrious career that would define him, he was himself all poised to become an editor at The Times. What a different world it would have been without him to tell us those extraordinary stories, though. And one was always aware, too, of his electric interest and enthusiasm about international political affairs, espionage, intrigue and geopolitical conflicts and conundrums. And still one would be unprepared for just how much fun these letters are in reading.
The range of subjects on which Greene wrote to the leading newspapers of the day, be it to voice his agreement, dissent, poke fun or lament, is frankly too vast to be put down here. It is hard to ignore the omnipresent image of Greene as a man abreast of things happening in all spheres in his time and it is even harder to ignore or, in hindsight, disagree with his own opinions on these. As I leaf through my edition (a daintily jacketed hardbound which I bought at a good price in a book sale), I find myself going through the excerpts of the letters that I had marked and I find myself in a dilemma - where does one begin? There are his elegantly barbed letters of protest and dissent at some policy or the other of the British Government, be it decrying their sales of arms to American-sponsored dictators such as Batista and Pinochet; there are his letters concerned with smaller and more domestic issues, such as fair pay for the postmen and even for school teachers.
There are his letters that expose the ugly and brutal realities of America's disastrous foreign policy at work in Indo-China and Latin America and there are his other letters that question and reveal the materialistic corruption of publishing companies at the expense of authors. He is as critical of the removal of a monkey from a Catholic statue as he is of the corruption and crime in Nice. He wields his pen against Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and he even takes a jab at the more pretentious writers, revealing their lapses of honesty and credibility with his poison pen.
And yet, not all of it is merely written to confront or to debate; there are letters that are filled with a delightful feeling of candour, as when defending H. Rider Haggard's novels of Africa and even Arthur Conan Doyle or when publicly challenging censorship in favour of "Ulysses" and "Lolita" . There are many droll letters too, including those which feature long-running practical jokes, like when he would submit entries for writing competitions named for him under pseudonyms and would then write a letter to claim his prize or when he and his friends would get together to establish an Anglo-Texan Society. Some of these jokes are even intentionally elaborate so as to attack the establishment and many of his letters are not only droll but also controversial, including one in which he states his preference for USSR over USA, thus earning himself the wrath of many of his fellow intellectuals.
And yet, Greene being Greene, there are no fixed absolutes in opinions or views in these letters. "Yours Etc" is truly unique in how, like all his other works, it represents Greene at his customary best - the most recognisable facet of his personality was his mutability and his flexibility as an utterly secular observer of humanity and its lapses. His criticism of American foreign policy, which continues right till the 1980s, is not merely a strain of anti-Americanism - it is more of an objective critique of the failure of a superpower to exercise its widely touted ideals of democracy in the world. It is also skilfully balanced by his attacks on Soviet Russia on its paranoid censorship of its leading intellectuals and an honest appraisal of his own country's failings in the political sphere. And even as the years and decades pass as we leaf through these letters, one is aware at all times of how modern and astute and even radical he was for his time. He challenged not only governments but also religious organisations, exposing the illegal dealings of the Papal Bank in one letter and then fighting passionately in favour of contraception in another.
Indeed, where does one begin to fathom it all? We like to give so many names to Greene - the restless refugee, the manic-depressive drinker, the writer of serious "entertainments" and solemn romances, the agnostic Catholic, the adulterer and the ardent believer, the journalist and the theologian, the rationalist and the fanatic, all wrapped up into one extraordinary person. But as "Yours Etc", like the entire breadth of his work, proves with its incredible collection of correspondence - witty, urgent, even scathing yet also tender, humane and compassionate - proves, Greene was again much, much more than all these names. He was, above all, the most precise, prophetic and profound observer of the twentieth century and indeed a writer like nobody else.
And yet, in "Yours Etc", a superbly compiled and annotated edition brought to us a mere couple of years before the tragic demise of Greene himself by Christopher Hawtree, the letters are a marvel to behold. They not only chart Greene's life through the five decades in which he wrote these letters, commenting, remarking and even opining stridently on a dazzling and eclectic range of subjects but they also, most crucially, take the reader on a whirlwind tour of the years and decades after the Second World War, with all its puzzling, befuddling conundrums, its political travesties and its tumultuous moments of revolution and violence - in a nutshell, the overwhelming forces from which Greene was never far away.
Starting from 1945 and ending in 1989, this collection of letters is indeed a vast reservoir of almost compulsive, prolific correspondence. One knows that Greene frequently cast journalists and correspondents, not always idealistic or even honest, in his novels; one might even know that at a particular period of his youth, before embarking on an illustrious career that would define him, he was himself all poised to become an editor at The Times. What a different world it would have been without him to tell us those extraordinary stories, though. And one was always aware, too, of his electric interest and enthusiasm about international political affairs, espionage, intrigue and geopolitical conflicts and conundrums. And still one would be unprepared for just how much fun these letters are in reading.
The range of subjects on which Greene wrote to the leading newspapers of the day, be it to voice his agreement, dissent, poke fun or lament, is frankly too vast to be put down here. It is hard to ignore the omnipresent image of Greene as a man abreast of things happening in all spheres in his time and it is even harder to ignore or, in hindsight, disagree with his own opinions on these. As I leaf through my edition (a daintily jacketed hardbound which I bought at a good price in a book sale), I find myself going through the excerpts of the letters that I had marked and I find myself in a dilemma - where does one begin? There are his elegantly barbed letters of protest and dissent at some policy or the other of the British Government, be it decrying their sales of arms to American-sponsored dictators such as Batista and Pinochet; there are his letters concerned with smaller and more domestic issues, such as fair pay for the postmen and even for school teachers.
There are his letters that expose the ugly and brutal realities of America's disastrous foreign policy at work in Indo-China and Latin America and there are his other letters that question and reveal the materialistic corruption of publishing companies at the expense of authors. He is as critical of the removal of a monkey from a Catholic statue as he is of the corruption and crime in Nice. He wields his pen against Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and he even takes a jab at the more pretentious writers, revealing their lapses of honesty and credibility with his poison pen.
And yet, not all of it is merely written to confront or to debate; there are letters that are filled with a delightful feeling of candour, as when defending H. Rider Haggard's novels of Africa and even Arthur Conan Doyle or when publicly challenging censorship in favour of "Ulysses" and "Lolita" . There are many droll letters too, including those which feature long-running practical jokes, like when he would submit entries for writing competitions named for him under pseudonyms and would then write a letter to claim his prize or when he and his friends would get together to establish an Anglo-Texan Society. Some of these jokes are even intentionally elaborate so as to attack the establishment and many of his letters are not only droll but also controversial, including one in which he states his preference for USSR over USA, thus earning himself the wrath of many of his fellow intellectuals.
And yet, Greene being Greene, there are no fixed absolutes in opinions or views in these letters. "Yours Etc" is truly unique in how, like all his other works, it represents Greene at his customary best - the most recognisable facet of his personality was his mutability and his flexibility as an utterly secular observer of humanity and its lapses. His criticism of American foreign policy, which continues right till the 1980s, is not merely a strain of anti-Americanism - it is more of an objective critique of the failure of a superpower to exercise its widely touted ideals of democracy in the world. It is also skilfully balanced by his attacks on Soviet Russia on its paranoid censorship of its leading intellectuals and an honest appraisal of his own country's failings in the political sphere. And even as the years and decades pass as we leaf through these letters, one is aware at all times of how modern and astute and even radical he was for his time. He challenged not only governments but also religious organisations, exposing the illegal dealings of the Papal Bank in one letter and then fighting passionately in favour of contraception in another.
Indeed, where does one begin to fathom it all? We like to give so many names to Greene - the restless refugee, the manic-depressive drinker, the writer of serious "entertainments" and solemn romances, the agnostic Catholic, the adulterer and the ardent believer, the journalist and the theologian, the rationalist and the fanatic, all wrapped up into one extraordinary person. But as "Yours Etc", like the entire breadth of his work, proves with its incredible collection of correspondence - witty, urgent, even scathing yet also tender, humane and compassionate - proves, Greene was again much, much more than all these names. He was, above all, the most precise, prophetic and profound observer of the twentieth century and indeed a writer like nobody else.
May 5, 2018
I’m not really too sure what I expected from this book because it is just a collection of Greene’s letters to the press. I guess I expected to understand what he was talking about a little more. That’s because the letters are pretty much just printed in chronological order without any real context.
Actually, that’s not true. You occasionally get what happened after the letter was published because it wasn’t unusual for someone else to then write in to make a reply. The problem is that it doesn’t really help if you don’t know what they’re talking about in the first place, as is often the case when he starts talking about global politics in the 1950s and 1960s.
Still, I mean this book is billed as Greene’s letters to the press and it’s exactly that, I just didn’t enjoy reading them as much as I thought I would. I’ve been a Graham Greene fan for years now and I’ve read a whole bunch of his books, so I ought to have loved this. Not the case, though. I think it would have been better if it had included footnotes or some other short introductions and information to expand upon what was there in the actual letters.
All in all, you’re not going to enjoy this unless you’re a serious Graham Greene fan, and even then it’s not that great. It might come in useful if you’re looking for citations for an essay or something like that but otherwise, it’s only so so. Read it at your peril and in chunks.
Actually, that’s not true. You occasionally get what happened after the letter was published because it wasn’t unusual for someone else to then write in to make a reply. The problem is that it doesn’t really help if you don’t know what they’re talking about in the first place, as is often the case when he starts talking about global politics in the 1950s and 1960s.
Still, I mean this book is billed as Greene’s letters to the press and it’s exactly that, I just didn’t enjoy reading them as much as I thought I would. I’ve been a Graham Greene fan for years now and I’ve read a whole bunch of his books, so I ought to have loved this. Not the case, though. I think it would have been better if it had included footnotes or some other short introductions and information to expand upon what was there in the actual letters.
All in all, you’re not going to enjoy this unless you’re a serious Graham Greene fan, and even then it’s not that great. It might come in useful if you’re looking for citations for an essay or something like that but otherwise, it’s only so so. Read it at your peril and in chunks.
April 4, 2016
i very much enjoyed this book. It consists of letters to newspapers from Graham Greene, together with some background information giving the context for each letter.
I found it fascinating. Topics in the first half include competitions that Greene entered using pseudonyms, Charlie Chaplin, the MauMau, Vietnam, censorship.
Available to read on Openlibrary.
April 17, 2021
I had put off reading this late book by Graham Greene. Who wants to read a book of letters to the press? It sounds worthless and boring.
NOT! It turned out to be quite a joyous and interesting read. It gives a better sense of the mind of Graham Greene in 267 pages that does the wildly boring authorized biography of Greene by Norman Sherry in 2,200 pages.
Here is Graham Greene in his most unadorned: humorous, bitchy, thoughtful, sarcastic, full of righteous anger, pissed off, picky, argumentative, supportive of his friends, in pitched battle with his foes.
The most surprising part of this book is the excellent work done by Christopher Hawtree, who selected and introduced these letters. If they had been left without context, we would have missed the significance of most of them, with the subjects being lost in historical mists. But, Hawtree has not only given the context for each of the letters, he has given the subsequent actions (or lack of action) caused by the letters, and, in many case, has given us the rebuttal letters from those attacked or criticized by Greene.
We have lost today that wonderful repartee that used to take place in the newspapers of the day – especially in England I think. People would actually buy a newspaper to see the fight between politicians or literary scholars being carried on in the daily pages.
Reading Graham Greene’s novels is one thing. Getting to know and see Greene’s multi-faceted mind at work is quite another. Read this book. You will – surprisingly – enjoy it.
NOT! It turned out to be quite a joyous and interesting read. It gives a better sense of the mind of Graham Greene in 267 pages that does the wildly boring authorized biography of Greene by Norman Sherry in 2,200 pages.
Here is Graham Greene in his most unadorned: humorous, bitchy, thoughtful, sarcastic, full of righteous anger, pissed off, picky, argumentative, supportive of his friends, in pitched battle with his foes.
The most surprising part of this book is the excellent work done by Christopher Hawtree, who selected and introduced these letters. If they had been left without context, we would have missed the significance of most of them, with the subjects being lost in historical mists. But, Hawtree has not only given the context for each of the letters, he has given the subsequent actions (or lack of action) caused by the letters, and, in many case, has given us the rebuttal letters from those attacked or criticized by Greene.
We have lost today that wonderful repartee that used to take place in the newspapers of the day – especially in England I think. People would actually buy a newspaper to see the fight between politicians or literary scholars being carried on in the daily pages.
Reading Graham Greene’s novels is one thing. Getting to know and see Greene’s multi-faceted mind at work is quite another. Read this book. You will – surprisingly – enjoy it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews