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Graham Greene on The
End of the Affair:
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| Time magazine featured the novel in a 1951 story, with Greene on the cover and the caption "Adultery can lead to sainthood". | …The story…which now began to itch at my mind — of a man who was to be driven and overwhelmed by the accumulation of natural coincidences, until he broke and began to accept the incredible — | |
| the possibility of a God. Alas! It was an intention I betrayed.There is much that I like in the book — it seems to me more simply and clearly written than its predecessors and ingeniously constructed to avoid the tedium of the time sequence (I had learned something from my continual rereading of that remarkable novel The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford), but until I reached the final part I did not realize the formidable problem I had set myself. | ||
| Sarah, the chief character, was dead, the book should have continued at least as long after her death as before, and yet, like her lover, Bendrix, I found I had no great appetite to continue | Greene took little pains to disguise the fact that the novel was based on his own affair with Lady Catherine Walston, who also did not appear disturbed by the book. The British edition of the novel is dedicated to "C" while the American version is made out to "Catherine." | |
| now she was gone
beyond recall and only a philosophic theme was left
behind. I begin to hurry to the end, and although, in the
last part, there are scenes, especially those which
express the growth of tenderness between Bendrix and
Sarah's husband, which seem to me successful enough, I
realized too late how I had been cheating the
reader…The incident of the atheist Smythe's
strawberry mark (apparently cured by Sarah after her
death) should have had no place in the book; every
so-called miracle, like the curing of Parkis's boy, ought
to have had a completely natural explanation. The
coincidences should have continued over the years,
battering the mind of Bendrix, forcing on him a reluctant
doubt of his own atheism. The last pages would have
remained much as they were written (indeed I very much
like the last pages), but I had spurred myself too
quickly to the end. So it was that in a later edition I tried to return nearer to my original intention. Smythe's strawberry mark gave place to a disease of the skin which might have had a nervous origin and be susceptible to faith healing.
from Ways of Escape, pp.114-115 © Melody Yiu Images and quoted text on this website may be protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. They are presented here for academic interest and personal entertainment. No distribution, reproduction, re-transmission or other rights are given or implied by their appearance. If you have any copyright concerns, please notify me. |
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Many a time I regretted pursuing "I" along his
dismal road and contemplated beginning The End of the
Affair all over again with Bendrix, my leading
character, seen from outside in the third person. I had
never previously had to struggle so hard to lend the
narrative interest. For example how could I vary the
all-important "tone" when it was one character
who was always commenting? The tone had been set on the first page by Bendrix — "This
is a record of hate far more than of love" —
and I dreaded to see the whole book smoked dry like a
fish with his hatred. Dickens had somehow miraculously
varied his tone [in Great Expectations], but
when I tried to analyze his success, I felt like a
colourblind man trying intellectually to distinguish one
colour from another. For my book there were two shades of
the same colour — obsessive love and obsessive hate;
Mr. Parkis, the private detective, and his boy were my
attempt to introduce two more tones, the humorous and the
pathetic.
…The End of the Affair was a
greater success with readers than with critics. I felt
such doubt of it that I sent the typescript to my friend
Edward Sackville-West and asked his advice. Should I put
the book in a drawer and forget it? He answered me
frankly that he didn't care for the novel but nonetheless
I should publish — we ought to have the vitality of
the Victorians who never hesitated to publish the bad as
well as the good. So publish I did. I was much comforted
by words of praise from