The Man within My Head by Pico Iyer (review)

“Who are these figures who take residence inside our heads, to the point where we can feel them shivering inside us even when we want to ‘be ourselves’?” The man within Pico Iyer’s head turns out to be the twentieth-century English novelist Graham Greene, whose life and art are insightfully examined—and celebrated—in this remarkable book. Iyer captures many of the ironies and paradoxes of “Greeneland”: the belief that we are betrayed not by our enemies but by our friends; the conviction that the person of faith lives most of the time with doubt; the suspicion that good, not evil people do the most harm. Iyer is alert to the many contradictions surrounding his literary alter ego: “He spent his entire life searching for a haven that, were he to find it, he would only exile himself from or spoil, and then begin the search again.” Part biography, part literary analysis, and part memoir, The Man within My Head is an exhilarating study of how writing is a form of truth-telling: “It’s harder to lie to yourself on the page than in the world.”