The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society discussion

Henry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke (29 October 1905 – 13 December 1973), an English author best remembered for the novels Party Going and Loving.

Can Henry Green be defined as a Hamilton-esque authors? I don't know, however Mark brought his name up and so I thought I'd start this thread as a place where we could wax lyrical about him...

Mark wrote: "Is anyone here able to recommend -- or warn me off -- the writings of a gentleman by the name of Henry Green? I've just stumbled upon him and am curious how to proceed... or not proceed, if that's the case. Here are the two books that've got my curiosity itching...

"Caught" by Henry Green

"Loving, Living, Party Going" by Henry Green

Any and all advice quite welcome... many thanks in advance."

Here's the extent of my (fairly scant) knowledge...

In Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940 by D.J. Taylor, which I read recently, D.J. Taylor observes "that Henry Yorke (aka Henry Green) would produce perhaps the most dazzling critique of the London Society world ever written in Party Going".

In December 2013 I watched an episode of The Culture Show (a regular BBC series) entitled "Wars of the Heart". There's a couple of clips here.

Presenter James Runcie told the story of novelists Graham Greene, Henry Green and Elizabeth Bowen, and American poet Hilda Doolittle, who revelled in the creative and personal freedom they discovered even as the bombs rained down on London. The programme revealed how these writers distilled the surreal and often frightening atmosphere of the time into some of their finest work.

I came away from the programme very intrigued by...

Caught by Henry Green

The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

Graham Greene's wife and children were evacuated whilst he stayed in London. He took advantage of the situation by commencing an affair. He was not the only one. The Blitz engendered a sense of freedom and increased possibility of dying frequently made people more spontaneous and free.

One of the contributors to the programme was Lara Feigel. She has written this book...



The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War by Lara Feigel

The nightly routine of sirens, barrage, the probing raider, the unmistakable engine ... the bomb-bursts moving nearer and then moving away, hold one like a love-charm' -Graham Greene

When the first bombs fell on London in August 1940, the city was transformed overnight into a strange kind of battlefield. For most Londoners, the sirens, guns, planes, and bombs brought sleepless nights, fear and loss. But for a group of writers, the war became an incomparably vivid source of inspiration, the blazing streets scenes of exhilaration in which fear could transmute into love. In this powerful chronicle of literary life under the Blitz, Lara Feigel vividly conjures the lives of five prominent writers: Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and the novelist Henry Green. Starting with a sparklingly detailed recreation of a single night of September 1940, the narrative traces the tempestuous experiences of these five figures through five years in London and Ireland, followed by postwar Vienna and Berlin.

Volunteering to drive ambulances, patrol the streets and fight fires, the protagonists all exhibited a unified spirit of a nation under siege, but as individuals their emotions were more volatile. As the sky whistled and the ground shook, nerves were tested, loyalties examined and torrid affairs undertaken. Literary historian and journalist Feigel brilliantly and beautifully interweaves the letters, diaries, journalism and fiction of her writers with official records to chart the history of a burning world, experienced through the eyes of extraordinary individuals.

So is Henry Green any good? Alas, that is where I can offer no first hand advice.

I did see a cheap second copy "Loving / Living / Party Going by Henry Green a couple of weeks ago in a local bookshop and snapped it up. I took that as some kind of cosmic sign that I was meant to read this writer. This feeling was further enhanced because the edition I picked up was published by Picador. When I was a 14-18 years old I always perceived Picador to be a sign of quality and read loads of Picador books. It's an edition of the book that I remember seeing in the late 1970s. I'll post a cover of the photo sometime soon as some of you may also recognise it.

The only other insights I can offer, are via a discussion that from the Bright Young Things GoodReads group (that I also participate in). There a mix of responses but one reader "D" is very enthusiastic, here's one of a number of D's posts...

These are three different novels collected together, not a trilogy. They have minor thematic elements in common, primarily a comparison of how plot elements or other themes are taken by the upstairs/downstairs classes.

Loving made some of the "Best novel of the 20th century" lists. It is a lovely book.

My favorite of the three is Party Going. It is a little quirky and a lighter read.

Living is good but a bit of a downer. If that's what you want, go for it. Otherwise, of the three, I recommend the others first and moving on to Living if you want more Henry Green.

Loving / Living / Party Going by Henry Green discussion thread



Like Mark, I am also tempted by Caught by Henry Green, here's the synopsis...

When the war breaks out, Rose, a well-to-do widower with a young son, Christopher, volunteers for the Auxiliary Fire Service in London, and is trained under a professional fire officer, Pye. The two men discover that a quite different link already exists between them: it was Pye's strange, disturbed sister who once upon a time abducted Christopher and kept him in her room until Pye rescued the terrified child. In the apocalyptic atmosphere of the Blitz the relationship between the two men develops as each of them grapples with his own troubled emotional attachments, the one to his dead wife, the other to his unhappy sister. Inevitably matters come to a head when history shows signs of repeating itself. The subtle handling of relationships, the brilliance of the dialogue and description - including one of the best accounts ever written of London under the Blitz - established Caught as one of Henry Green's most powerful novels.

Other links:

Novelist Henry Green's ability to bring his characters to extraordinary life has long captivated Sebastian Faulks, who admires the way the reader is entrapped

Review of ROMANCING - The Life and Work of Henry Green.

Reading Henry Green

As I now have my own copy of "Loving / Living / Party Going by Henry Green I will read it sometime in the next few months and I will report back.

Please add you own thoughts about Henry Green as and when you have any insights, ideas, questions etc.

Sadly, don't really have much to contribute re Henry Green. I know I read both Living/Loving/Party Going and Nothing/Doting/Blindness some time back in the early 80's cause I still have the books, but really can't remember much...think I was overly awed by the 'experimental' tone that early in my reading career...

Main reason I'm posting is to point out that the fourth subject of Love Charms of Bombs is NOT Hilda Doolittle, but Austrian writer Hilde Spiel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilde_Spiel

I guess I'm one of the few readers who didn't like LCOB--never really got the point...they happened to be writers who happened to be in London doing war work during the Blitz but, eh...Obviously JMO.

Did remind me though, what absolute shits both Greene and Yorke were to the women in their lives which IMO didn't really have anything to do with the war, seemed to be common practice for most of their lives from what I've read elsewhere. Still, Greene is one of my favorite authors.

The one take-away I did have is to find out more about/read Hilde Spiel, which I hope to do.somewhere down the road...Apparently she's written both about living in exile and what it was like to return to live in Vienna--which interests me.

Many thanks for the trove of info, none of which managed to put me off the idea of giving Henry Green a go. On the surface, his 'Loving/Living/Party Going' compendium seems like it shares some parallels with Rbert Tressell's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists,' which is another favourite of mine.

Not sure what Miss M means, though, when she mentioned his "experimental" tone.... did you find that to be a good tone, or a bad tone? I'm usually quite put off by literary acrobatics.

And, speaking of Miss M, thank you for mentioning Hilde Spiel.... sounds interesting, and well worth looking into!

Ahh, I'm a crap explainer, that's why I almost never do reviews! :)
I think I was impressed at the time, but might not be now, that I've read so much more...
I'll leave it to John Updike, from his intro:

"Living...is one of his longer books and the most redolent of ambition...in this novel his mature style is invented and employed with a vengeance. Never again will there be so many dropped articles and nounless sentences. His attempt is the customary avant-garde one, to 'make it new, in Pound's phrase, to redeem language from the unfelt smoothness of usage."

Sorry, Mark, not much help...best wait for someone with some recent experience.

BTW, though I'm not very enthused about Love Charm of Bombs, one I would definitely recommend is:


Love's Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries 1941-1973 by Victoria Glendinning

To me this was a much more compelling story of their wartime experiences--i guess also added to my negative thoughts towards LCOB, since I already knew much of the story/experience...

Oh, and LCOB does have a fantastic bibliography - I set up a whole new amazon wishlist just for that.

One last note...

Got this book in the mail yesterday (and it is terrific)


Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War by Cecil Beaton

There is a short biographical note which includes this interesting bit:

"1912: Attends Heath Mount Preparatory School, where his good looks attract the attention of bullies, including Evelyn Waugh. Waugh's behaviour prompts a lasting mutual antagonism."

I guess their enmity really did run deep...

Here are the covers to the Picador edition of Loving, Living and Party Going that I mention above - bought in a charity shop a few days ago.

As you can see on the back cover, if you enlarge it, the price I paid in 2014 was 4 pence more than the price when this edition was published in 1979.

Click on the covers to see a larger image...





Who remembers these covers from the dim, dark days of the late 1970s/early 1980s? I think I must have nearly bought this book on a few occasions back then to remember it so clearly.

I have read Party Going, some time ago, and thought it was really good. There are just so many authors to read and discover.

^ Ain't that the truth Susan.

I've just started reading....





The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War by Lara Feigel

Lara Feigel vividly conjures the lives of five prominent writers: Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel, and the novelist Henry Green. Starting with a sparklingly detailed recreation of a single night of September 1940, the narrative traces the tempestuous experiences of these five figures through five years in London and Ireland, followed by postwar Vienna and Berlin. It's great stuff so far.

The section on Henry Green has already brought him to life for me. Quite an unusual man by the sounds of it. Wealthy and charming, but equally at ease with ordinary people - and he seems to gravitate to jobs and places where he can be amongst them. The Fire Service, during the Blitz, in London, being a case in point. He is also a complete hedonist - going to bed later on his rest nights than when he is at work battling the fires that rage across London nightly during the Battle Of Britain.

I'll keep you posted with any insights or interesting information.

^ Having now finished The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War by Lara Feigel, I am now even more keen to read some books by Henry Green.

Starting in early October, the NYRB will begin re-publishing Henry Green's novels starting with Back, Caught & Loving. I think they will eventually be republishing all nine of his novels, with at least three more re-launches in March next year. He's been largely out-of-print in print in the US since the original publication dates of most of his novels, so this is exciting news. http://www.nyrb.com/collections/henry...

I've never read any Green before and impatience led me to buying a used copy of Back as my introduction. I'll post a review here when finished. So far, I'm enjoying it, but it's not a "love thing" like it is for me when I read Hamilton. The main character bears some slight resemblance to George Harvey Bone in that he has psychological issues and experiences little periodic blackouts. The WWII London setting doesn't feel as strong as Hamilton's (other than for the talk of queues and buzz bombs and organizations with ALL CAPS) and it's much more a comedy of errors a la Craven House than Slaves of Solitude or Hangover Square.

One thing that has me curious as I'm reading is that I'm not noticing any brazenly "experimental" tone or obtuse "literary acrobatics" a la Woolf. Maybe this one is an anomaly? Or, maybe he's not as "out there" stylistically as I feared? Has anyone else in this group read this one?

This new group may be of interest: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Thanks Doug - and Antonomasia

I've yet to dip my toe in Henry Green Lake having got the impression (after starting this thread) that it might be a tad impenetrable. Doug's convinced me that this might not be the case. I'll give him a go though I suspect "The Year of Reading Henry Green" group might be a bridge too far.

Antonomasia wrote: "This new group may be of interest: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/..."

Thank you.

I've had a bash at Caught before but didn't get very far. I'm sure I'll go back to it at some point but at the time I wasn't feeling it at all. I'm sure the fault was mine but ever since it's leered at me from the bookshelf as though I wasn't good enough for it which seems unnecessary...

CQM, Caught sounds intimidating to me too. If it stops leering and starts pointing at you, I'd worry more. Meanwhile, I'll recommend Back. I started out feeling lukewarm toward it, but liked it more and more as it progressed. Full of regional vernacular (Yorshire, I think?) but that's the only difficulty I found and I liked the challenge. Actually, I grew used to it quickly, like watching a film with subtitles, and appreciated it particularly for that. Probably wouldn't be a challenge to British readers at all.

I'll certainly consider it, too many trustworthy people have said too many good things about Green for him to be cast aside after one leering book.