Swinburne's Lesson: "Noumenon" by Marina J. Lostetter

I would encourage you to consider the potential for speculative fiction to help us all drop our lazy assumptions about Realism, mimesis, and how any writing made up of words upon a page ever really relates to or captures some discernible, locatable "real world."

As someone who prefers poetry over novels, I turn to speculative fiction, weird fiction, science fiction for the same sort of liberation from the tyrannous fantasy of the Real. Forget the mirror; look to the Lamp. Every piece of fiction is just that, fiction, and for those who read attentively and with appreciation of the power of the imagination Dickens's London in Bleak House and Eliot's Middlemarch are just as artificial and speculative and weird as Carroll's Looking Glass world or Stoker's Transylvania or Barrie's Neverland or Mirrlees Lud-in-the-Mist or Jack Vance's Dying Earth or Peake's Gormenghast or China Mieville's New Crobuzon. All of these fantastic places are projections of the imagination. All of them hold prime value in the way they transport us away from our easy assumptions about what is real and then return us, much changed.

In his Lectures on Literature, Nabokov is quite good at pointing out the need to redraw our maps and drop our assumptions. The gist of what he says is that every time we open a novel we are visiting a new potential world, very different from our own ideas about our own world, and we will be sorely misguided unless we redraw our maps and learn to see difference everywhere.

Finally, I must admit that I am drawn to speculative fiction for its decadent, art-for-art's sake aspects. Because I studied Victorian poetry, it reminds of me of Swinburne's urgent lesson. It matters not whether the art deals with Past or Present or Future or something apparently unknown. Instead, what matters is the excellence of the writing, the breadth of the imagination.

You might think what does a Generation Spaceship Novel Using Almost All of the Tropes of Vintage SF has got to do with locating the “real world”? Ah. That’s the beauty of Lostetter’s approach. Who would have thought we would get SF like this in 2018 (the year I read it)? For starters, the Generation Spaceship Novels of Old I read them all. Off the top of my head:  “Book of the Long Sun”, “The Ballad of Beta-2”, “Tau Zero”, “Orphans of the Sky”, “Eon”, “Eternity”, “Cities in Flight”, “Rendezvous with Rama”, etc. What does “Noumenon” bring to the table? It tells the story through several vignettes; their use was a clever idea, because Lostetter didn’t go for the easy way out by using a Sleeper G-Ship. By using the AI I.C.C. in all of the vignettes we’ve got a continuity between them. Strangely, no religion and no ethical considerations which in terms of world-building diminished the returns of the novel. Also and unfortunately, the Physics of space travel (“subdimensional spacetime”) had a fluffy feeling. I’d like to have had a bit of substance when it came to exploring the SD device. I could see what Lostetter was doing by concentrating on the human aspects rather than on the more hard stuff. I just like my SF with more meat…the cloning idea was also superb, but was not fully explored. I hear there’s a sequel. Maybe Lostetter is saving digging deeper for later. I’m not sure whether Lostetter can deliver the goods.

In a SFional milieu it’s much more difficult to come up with an independent source of ethical behaviour (humans vs clones). The ethical bodies simply reflect society rather than a scientific basis for ethical behaviour. Science says “How”. Philosophy and Religion say “Why”. “How does this work?” and “Therefore how shall I behave?” are not in the same field. You have to be outside of the system to understand the system. A human clone would be a perfect subject for notions about humans having a divine spirit which, according to some, materializes at conception. Of course, no one has proved that regular humans have this attribute, but what fun it would have been if Lostetter had gone down that particular road. We as part of the Hominid spectrum, are especially inventive and intuitive. What if, possibly, just envisage...that potentially humankind, might be the first wave of intelligence in the galaxy. Or potentially, we may be the remnants of a far more ancient intellect. The point being, cloning is just another jewel in our crown. Nothing, upsets me, astonishes me, adores me, hates me, tantalises me more...than the human condition in a SF novel. We admonish ourselves too heartily, we should really focus on our extreme and very poetic brilliance. The tapestry of mankind, is forever the Cosmos, we exist to explore it, to be beguiled by it, hopefully one day to come to a relative understanding of it. Do not fear cloning, embrace it, as just another beautiful aspect of our species genius.

Alas, we can’t have everything…3 stars for the mighty effort.

The SF Lamp was Broken: "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo

After having finished “Six of Crows”, I would encourage anyone to consider the potential for SF to help us all drop our lazy assumptions about Realism, mimesis, and how any writing made up of words upon a page ever really relates to or captures some discernible, locatable "real world." As someone who prefers poetry over novels (Yep. I know I'm built that way), I turn to SF (science-fiction, weird fiction, fantasy) for the same sort of liberation from the tyrannous fantasy of the Real. Forget the mirror; look to the Lamp. Every piece of fiction is just that, fiction, and for those who read attentively and with appreciation of the power of the imagination. Dickens's London in “Bleak House” and Eliot's “Middlemarch” are just as artificial and speculative and weird as Carroll's “Looking Glass” world or Stoker's “Transylvania” or Barrie's “Neverland” or Mirrlees “Lud-in-the-Mist” or Jack Vance's “Dying Earth” or Peake's “Gormenghast” or China Mieville's “New Crobuzon”. All of these fantastic places are projections of the imagination. All of them hold prime value in the way they transport us away from our easy assumptions about what is real and then return us, much changed.

In his Lectures on Literature, Nabokov is quite good at pointing out the need to redraw our maps and drop our assumptions. The gist of what he says is that every time we open a novel we are visiting a new potential world, very different from our own ideas about our own world, and we will be sorely misguided unless we redraw our maps and learn to see difference everywhere.

Finally, I must admit that I am drawn to SF for its decadent, art-for-art's sake aspects. Because I was taught Victorian poetry at the British Council, it reminds of me of Swinburne's urgent lesson. It matters not whether the art deals with Past or Present or Future or something apparently unknown. Instead, what matters is the excellence of the writing, the breadth of the imagination.

Love and the idea of love aren't so different. Like cheese on the farm and processed cheese, those who've experienced one and not the other have no way of knowing the difference. Yet the distance between the word and the thing is infinite. Either suffices because like everything else in this world, we have what we have and we only know what we lack (beyond flesh's necessities) because others tell us so. With proper programming, at least a spouse-bot won't remind us of what we lack. If I want to read "romancy SF", I’ll choose it myself. I don’t want to read a romance novel disguised as SF.

At the end of “Six of Crows”, I felt the Real was not kept at bay because the Lamp was broken.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Progressive Rock SF: "Devices and Desires" by K. J. Parker

When Tom Holt uses his K. J. Parker heteronym, at his best, is a very good genre writer: which is not to say that genre writers can't be as good as (if not better than) their literary counterparts - but they have not been taken as seriously, which is true even now. I must admit I found Gene Wolfe's work to be good too, rather than something to be proselytised for, or raved about. Moorcock's essay "Epic Pooh" is a good analysis in some respects (though perhaps influenced by Terry Eagleton et al, and Marxist Lit-Crit in general) and admits the fact the LOTR writing is at least accomplished. Of Moorcock's work "The Dancers at the End of Time" series is both funny and readable and "The Condition of Muzak" to me seems still his best. Folk finding Peake to be overwritten just proves what sort of literary world we now inhabit: Orwell's plain English has come back to bite us on our collective arse, and we can no longer cope with sentences with sub clauses, or paragraphs full of metaphor via elision. Oh, well. It's just that when folk write stuff like "The Book of the New Sun" is the best fantasy ever written, I must assume that they haven't read much to compare it to, genre fantasy or otherwise.  No doubt all shall be well in the ground of our beseeching, if that's the phrase I'm stretching for. 

Much modern fantasy suffers from a need to be perceived as dark, and combined with a desire to out-epic the competition it's led to something of a sameness in the huge-number-of-mutilated-dead count, tougher-than-the-last-tough-guy hyperinflation, and characters flawed by their amorality or brutality (Staveley comes to mind). Parker maintains a personal scale, even though world-changing events (though his worlds always have a sparseness to them - rarely any heaving multitudes), and his characters are flawed by their vulnerabilities. There's darkness aplenty - I find more horror in his themes of erasure or corruption of identity than in how many hundreds of thousands of anonymous bodies line roads to cities (Baker, Staveley, Ryan, Cameron, etc.). This approach pays dividends in his mastery of character development. His books follow anything but an expected path - unexpected events shape characters in entirely unforeseen ways, and while that can lead to great emotional investment on the part of the reader, Parker can be bruisingly unsentimental. That’s why I say fantasy is the progressive rock of literature. It has its ardent fans who champion its cause in the face of utter derision from critics. It has its fair share of pretentious tosh but there are nuggets of excellence to be found if you look hard enough with an open enough mind, a bit like its sister, science fiction. Another factor in fantasy's 'rehabilitation' that might be worth exploring is the prevalence of fantasy in computer and video games. Why does that work so much better than, say political fiction? Anyway, from someone who has read SF (science Fiction and Fantasy) for over 30 years, I’m still surprised we can still find writers writing non-magic fantasy. I like prog rock too, naturally, but that's another story... Parker is a peerless creator of genuinely unearthly mindscapes.

The other great thing about K. J. Parker is that even with his fantasy potboilers he still entertains me with his florid use of language, the weird and wonderful names, and the little details he drops into his stories, products of his wild imagination that elevate even the most mundane tales.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Intertextual SF: "The Grace of Kings" by Ken Liu

“Lord Garu, you compare yourself to a weed?” Cogo Yelu frowned.

“Not just any weed, Cogzy. A dandelion is a strong but misunderstood flower.” Remembering his courtship with Jia, Kuni felt his eyes grow warm. “It cannot be defeated: Just when a gardener thinks he has won and eradicated it from his lawn, a rain would bring the yellow florets right back. Yet it’s never arrogant: Its color and fragrance never overwhelm those of another. Immensely practical, its leaves are delicious and medicinal, while its roots loosen hard soils, so that it acts as a pioneer for other more delicate flowers. But best of all, it’s a flower that lives in the soil but dreams of the skies. When its seeds take to the wind, it will go farther and see more than any pampered rose, tulip, or marigold.”

“An exceedingly good comparison,” Cogo said, and drained his cup. “My vision was too limited to not have understood it.”

Mata nodded in agreement and drained his cup as well, suffering silently as the burning liquor numbed his throat.

“Your turn, General Zyndu,” Than prompted.

Mata hesitated. He was not witty or quick on his feet, and he was never good at games like this. But he glanced down and saw the Zyndu coat of arms on his boots, and suddenly he knew what he should say.

He stood up. Though he had been drinking all night, he was steady as an oak. He began to clap his hands steadily to generate a beat, and sang to the tune of an old song of Tunoa:

The ninth day in the ninth month of the year:

By the time I bloom, all others have died.

Cold winds rise in Pan’s streets, wide and austere:

A tempest of gold, an aureal tide.

My glorious fragrance punctures the sky.

Bright-yellow armor surrounds every eye.

With disdainful pride, ten thousand swords spin

To secure the grace of kings, to cleanse sin.

A noble brotherhood, loyal and true.

Who would fear winter when wearing this hue?

“The King of Flowers,” Cogo Yelu said.

Mata nodded.

Kuni had been tapping his finger on the table to follow the beat. He stopped now, reluctantly, as if still savoring the music. “By the time I bloom, all others have died.’ Though lonely and spare, this is a grand and heroic sentiment, befitting the heir of the Marshal of Cocru. The song praises the chrysanthemum without ever mentioning the flower by name. It’s beautiful.”

“The Zyndus have always compared themselves to the chrysanthemum,” Mata said.

Kuni bowed to Mata and drained his cup. The others followed suit.

“But, Kuni,” said Mata, “you have not understood the song completely.”

Kuni looked at him, confused.

“Who says it praises only the chrysanthemum? Does the dandelion not bloom in the same hue, my brother?”

Kuni laughed and clasped arms with Mata. “Brother! Together, who knows how far we will go?”

The eyes of both men glistened in the dim light of the Splendid Urn.

Mata thanked everyone and drank himself. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel alone in a crowd. He belonged—an unfamiliar but welcome sensation. It surprised him that he found it here, in this dark and sleazy bar, drinking cheap wine and eating bad food, among a group of people he would have considered peasants playing at being lords—like Krima and Shigin—just a few weeks ago.”

In “The Grace of Kings” by Ken Liu.

Goodkind is responsible for the worst thing ever written by a human being; the now legendary evil chicken scene. I still have his books at home. Mea Culpa. That reminds me. I must give them away the next chance I’ve got… the following passage is underlined in my book. To wit:

"Hissing, hackles lifting, the chicken's head rose. Kahlan pulled back. Its claws digging into stiff dead flesh, the chicken slowly turned to face her. It cocked its head, making its comb flop, its wattles sway. "Shoo," Kahlan heard herself whisper. There wasn't enough light, and besides, the side of its beak was covered with gore, so she couldn't tell if it had the dark spot, but she didn't need to see it. "Dear spirits, help me," she prayed under her breath. The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart, she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest."

In “Soul of the Fire” by Terry Goodkind.

He really wrote this. Seriously. Yep, I'm afraid that's a direct quote. Terry Goodkind literally wrote those words. They spewed forth from his brain and onto the page. I still remember throwing book against the wall. For a long time, I stopped reading Fantasy altogether. Recently I’ve been trying to get back to the genre, but I still shudder at the thought I might find stuff akin to Goodkind’s writing. It was with some trepidation I tackled Liu’s epic fantasy starting with the first volume of his Dandelion Saga. I’m a huge fan of Liu’s short fiction. That’s why I dipped my toes in the fantasy genre once again.

Terry Pratchett's withering response to J K Rowling's assertion that she wasn't writing fantasy is worth mentioning as well. The problem with Rowling is that she's so leaden: the children's response to the discovery of a dragon is not “wow! A dragon!”, but “dragons are against school rules”. Magic as coursework. They are fantasy in that they're as thick as doorstops and chock full of chosen ones and dark lords, but compared to “A Wizard of Earthsea”, they never take flight. Philip Pullman was lucky, marketing-wise, to get what is clearly a “fantasy” series listed as a children's book and thus allowed into the hallowed ground of serious proper books at the front of the bookshop. That reminds me. What Philip Pullman writes is also crap.

I'm not that keen on pure fantasy (all that dragonrider crap), but China Mieville's excellent, when he remembers to give characters a character, M. John Harrison's Viriconium series (some call it anti-fantasy) extraordinary, Mervyn Peake's one of my favourite writers in any genre, and Terry Pratchett's 'Going Postal' was the most enjoyable thing I read last year (when I also finally read 'War and Peace', which was agony).

Has no-one mentioned comics? I used to like Cerebus the Aardaark, until I realised it wasn't taking the piss out of the fantasy genre's macho right-wing misogyny, it was macho, right-wing and misogynistic.

Yes, there are different ways of reading. Some people are clearly only interested in the surface narrative of a novel. Others read more deeply into a text, seeking its poetics. The person who taught me to read beneath the surface began by saying it would be like learning to drive a car - at first we would wonder how anyone could be on the lookout for so many linguistic possibilities at once, but that it would soon become a natural process - and she was right. I'll admit that it was one of the more important discoveries of my life, but it doesn't bother me that some people find it boring.

Those unwilling to let others be themselves are, I suspect, insecure in their own opinions. Do I really have to pose the rhetorical question, "What would life be like if we all had identical tastes?" I read a lot of SF in my teens, for the ideas, not the poetics, of which I then knew nothing. The potential weakness in the genre (which it shares with all fantasy, including "magic realism") is that without any given constraints a writer can be extremely lazy. Not all fantasy authors are lazy writers, but it takes a greater skill to write creatively when there are no boundaries.

At the bottom of all this is the need some people have to label and categorise everything, without which many of these arts blogs would not exist. It's the labeling and ranking I find boring.

As I said, Goodkind is highly irritating, like Donaldson. Both cannot write. I shudder to remember I read them, knowing time is so precious. There is something wrong with the linked series format. It hooks into the collector dysfunction in us. We cannot pick up book six and understand a thing, apart from the language and the action. We must get them all. It is consumerism. We are not supposed to consume books. We read books because we love them, or because we must, but we should not read books because we must love them. It is slavery of a strange kind. In Imperial Rome, a man could sell himself into slavery. With these books, we pay to be enslaved. That is the source, for me, of the discontent that may ground the question raised by the Fantasy genre nowadays. Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series like the above-mentioned Malloreon saga drove me away from fantasy. I just disliked being played for a fool, really.

This long preamble is just to say I’m glad I tackled Liu’s “The Grace of Kings”. Is it a perfect epic fantasy example? Nope. Is it better than most of the fodder out there? Undoubtedly yes. Does it have problems narrative-wise? Sure. But it’s still one hell of a romp, and I didn’t feel I was wasting my precious time reading dross. What did I bring home after having finished this 1^st volume? Intertextual SF.  The Odyssey. It might be because I started on this novel after doing a quick skim of Homer’s duology, but I kept seeing shades of both “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” in the novel. Sometimes it was in the language. Other times it was the characters: Mata’s Achilles vs. Kuni’s Odysseus, for example. Plus, the fact that they influenced the mortals the same way the gods did in Homer’s work. I know that if this novel might be said to have any antecedents in the classics it’s in these two examples. I can’t help see Homer in it. Of course, I could be over-reading it too, but I tend to do stuff like this all the time.

Minor beef: “I know a mother from Xana who was willing to bear a corvée administrator’s lash to save her son. I know a wife from Cocru who hiked miles through mountains filled with bandits even while she was pregnant and managed to save the man who was sent to save her.” This impassioned speech Kuni Garu gave about women, while standing atop the walls of Zudi, in the middle of a siege seemed forced, out of place and unnecessary. There were plenty of times that character could have lectured his comrades about the role of women in society (including all the times they had visited local bars where women acted as hostesses), but the author chose the middle of a battle, when tensions are high, to have Kuni give that speech. It took me out of the story for a few heartbeats…I shrugged and moved on.

NB: To push my personal agenda a little bit more SF-wise, I''d recommend Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series. Plausible, (well, kind of; Reynolds was an astrophysicist), well-written and hugely entertaining. Beats watching television. The problem with SF was that it is about the impossible, space travel and such. Doubtless, the same criticisms were leveled at Jules Verne with all his crazy talk about 'flying machines'.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Ser Duncan the Tall: "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" by George R. R. Martin

Published October 6th 2015.

The Knight has three novellas. To wit:

The Hedge Knight

The Sworn Sword

The Mystery Knight

I’ve read these three novellas previously when they came out in the three different anthologies: Legends I, Legends II, and Warriors. Having read these stories separately before, I was interested to see them put together as one whole piece, where Martin’s suspicious tendency for excellent storytelling could flow freely from one chapter to the next, without having to wait for a new novella’s release.

I’m not a big fantasy fan. I have nothing at all against it – it’s just that I enjoy good science fiction more than I enjoy good fantasy. I’ve read and enjoyed Middlearth, The Magician, Tigana, etc. But then came George R.R. Martin. Several people told me to read the first book in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" saga, "A Game of Thrones". I finally succumbed to the thousand-pager, and I'm now hooked, impatiently waiting for Martin to finish the sixth and seventh books in the series to finally read the fifth, "A Dance with Dragons" (it awaits the publication of the "The Winds of Winter" and "A Dream of Spring" to be tackled...).

"The Hedge Knight", "The Sworn Sword" and "The Mystery Knight" are set one hundred years before "A Game of Thrones". As is usual in his books, although the plot is good, it pales before his ability to tell a story. Storytelling in high gear... Better yet, one notices people, events and places which will become key in the future. Details and major story lines are equally weaved into "The Hedge Knight" and I've discovered why the Fossoways had a red and a green apple in their shield, and the start of the chain of events which will put the Mad King in the throne...

There’s nothing very noticeable about this simple story, a fact that serves to accentuate Martin’s talent. Seldom do I experience the magic of a rapid page-turner these days. My interior imagery is loaded with too many books to feel as excited anymore (sometimes it happens...).

But this man issues words from his fingers that are pure genre nirvana.

I can’t quite determine what it's that makes his writing so addictive. Sentences, paragraphs and pages collude to urge you to read on and on and on. One begins his books as reader and consumer and one ends them as slave... I love how George R.R. Martin mixes an element of mystery into his knight’s tale.

With all the characters that Martin invents I've noticed Lord Gorman Peake of Starpike. Is it is an homage to Mervyn Peake, who wrote the Gormenghast books, who had a main character named Steerpike?

All told, these 3 novellas still lack the mythological depth of Ice and Fire. 

Gary Gianni, who is best known for his work on the comic strip Prince Valiant is also a very fine addition to the book. As a lifelong bibliophile I began my love affair with books as a child with picture books, often a favorite illustrated compilation of fairy tales. Gianni’s artwork brings back the magic of childhood story time and completes the enchantment woven from George R. R. Martin’s enthralling tales.

Illustrations by Gary Gianni.

Shit, This Thing Is Selling Millions: "Persuader" by Lee Child

Published 2004.

I’m taking two risks here by writing this review. The first risk sounds repetitive. I have the distinct impression that I’ve written about this in several of my previous texts. The second risk might be because you might incur a waste of my (and your) time by reading this diatribe. After reading one more Reacher book, I just had to write (again) about this.

Imagine the following dialogue with the author of this text: “Shit, this thing is selling millions. Anyone of us could have written it. I don’t believe we can put Lee Child on the same shelf along with some of Mervyn Peake's books, sadly being eaten away by moths.”

I agree that Peake's prose is much more enticing than Child’s or Meyer’s. Peake's reflections have much more inner depth. This would tempt us to say that Peake “has” more inherent quality than Child or Stephanie Meyer. Nothing could be farther than the truth. I don’t understand the inability of the so-called bunch of intellectuals to reconcile the two extremes. I confess I’m neither a fan of Child nor Meyer (the latter is much, much worse than the former, I must also add). By listening to this bunch it doesn’t seem possible to have a world where readers cannot have joy in reading about fluorescent vampires, and others prefer Peake's words… Entertainment and sobriety are not mutually exclusive. What gives Peake his geniality is his ability to subvert literature. Both literature, and art give us a wide spectrum on which anyone can fulfil his or her dreams. That’s what makes it so special.

“Persuader” is not great literature but I don’t think Child's is worried about that...I can see him laughing all the way to the bank… Lee Child’s menu has lots of fast-paced, smart, and well written stuff that is surely implausible but they are still lots of fun to read. The action always starts slowly as Child needs to set everything up before firing on all thrusters. Once the pieces are all there, the pace starts picking up, the plot gets more intricate by the page/minute and something that originally looked watertight starts to unravel before our very eyes. Jack Reacher too is one hell of a character. In a genre full of bozos, divorced, and world-estranged crime fighting figures, he's also a breath of fresh air. He rides into a new building/town/setup, analyses the hell out of everything, kicks everyone's butt and rides off into the sunset with a clear conscience. Some of the stuff he gets to is downright farfetched but he does make enough mistakes to prevent him appearing all too powerful. This time around, Child gets a little carried away with his exaggerations in the fight scenes between Reacher and Paulie. First-person narrative doesn’t help here. We keep getting bombarded with stuff like “where every punch or kick would have killed a lesser man”…It gets pretty boring where fighting is concerned. Third-person would have served this scene much better, but then Child would have to have written the all thing in third-person. I’m never quite sure why Child keeps changing his narrative voice from book to book. It’s something worth digging into.

I’ll take advantage of the silly season, to catch up with a few more Reachers, because I can’t keep it together during these few months…

Screw Your Brains Out: "Graham Greene: A Life in Letters" by Graham Greene

(Original Review, 2007-05-15)

There some odd little insights: about how people used to travel by sea and get horribly ill, but then air travel came along and changed all that; Greene's very Catholic attitude to extramarital sex - screw your brains out, go to Confession, go to Mass, go to Communion, come home, screw your brains out with partner not your wife, go to Confession ... (I'm Catholic so I think I can say these things); [2018 EDIT: “The Power and the Glory” was nearly put on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books, but saved by intervention of Cardinal who later became Pope Paul VI]. I’ve always been fascinated by Greene's “strangeness”: long and curious friendship with Kim Philby, who he visited in Russia several times, Greene's visa problems with US in the McCarthy era, Greene's amazing journeys of research for his novels - I suspect he would have put most of his contemporaries to shame - would I be right or wrong here, Greene's long friendship with Evelyn Waugh, which has caused me to reconsider the bad press Waugh usually gets as a nasty personality, and Greene's failure to win the Nobel Prize because he was Catholic, etc., etc.

As with all “Life in Letters” brought out by Penguin I've read so far, this is a collection of great richness, and I would suggest, a must for all Greene admirers.

I remember reading, I think in a Colin Wilson book, that Greene once played Russian roulette. I was wondering whether this was true or some sort of fake story. Also weren’t Greene and Waugh both Catholic converts?

More stuff on Greene from “A Life in Letters.” The Greene family was quite remarkable - diplomats, spies, explorers - all sorts of interconnections with Britain's ruling elite. Greene himself became very influential in the publishing industry. Greene almost financed Muriel Spark in her early career, regularly sending her 20 pounds when 20 pounds meant something. She repaid him by sending him copies of her books right up to when he died. He persuaded Mervyn Peake to edit Titus Groan, thus he helped bring the world the Gormenghast Trilogy. When Peake was wheel-chair bound and virtually paralysed he tried to make arrangements to get his expensive care paid for, but sadly didn't succeed.

He was always doing those sort of things for fellow writers. Though he wouldn't have a bar of J. B. Priestley, who claimed he was in one of Greene's early novels and tried to have the novel pulped.