Greene's Saints: The Whiskey Priest, Scobie, and Sarah

Introduction: Greene's Life

I AM NOT a Graham Greene scholar, but I have read enough of his work to discover that, for once, my own literary predilections accord with the "received view"; namely, that in The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair, Greene achieves something worth writing about. My theme is the heroes of those works, Greene's "peculiar saints." ¹

Let me say at the outset that I will not approach Greene as a literary critic. ² Neither do I have anything to add to his biography. ³ Michael Sheldon has the merit of writing a bracing prose and has much of interest to ferret out about Greene. I find his black account very convincing, even if a little too black. Yet, when it comes to my own interest, Sheldon has little to offer. He can only see Greene as a religious fake, someone "posing" as a Catholic and attempting subtly to use or subvert religion for art. ⁴ Whatever truth there is here, and I suspect there is some, it not only is one-sided, but also simply fails to explain the power of Greene's greatest works, at least as I read them.

Before attending to his work, however, it does seem that some reference to the man is in order, both to recall several salient facts and to set his works in their proper context.

As Sheldon presents him to us, Greene appears to be a thoroughly unpleasant man: dishonest, mean, obsessed with sex, and totally self-involved. It is not so much that he is going to prostitutes while courting his wife and becoming a Catholic, it is that he really does not seem to mind. There is something cold about Greene the man, something both unloving and unlovable. He appears to be one of those writers ambitious in the extreme and ready to sacrifice the people in his life to his career. Sheldon may be right; he finds Greene to be a man consumed by hatred, with much love for the devil and very little for God. Or, in a slightly more forgiving mood, Sheldon offers us Douglas Jerrold's view of Greene as "a brilliant child, nursing obscure hurts and ridiculing the adults as they pursue their solemn activities." ⁵ The warning is salutary.

But, to jump in, let me recall several significant details of Greene's life. He was born in 1904 and was one of six children. (He lived to be almost eighty-seven years old, dying in 1991.) His father was a headmaster and strict, his mother distant. Although raised an Anglican, and confirmed, it didn't take. As the headmaster's son, he came in for serious ribbing and was miserable as an adolescent. Indeed, he was cruelly persecuted by a classmate, and, in his words, betrayed by another boy who had been his friend but later joined sides against him. There is something striking in the depth of Greene's hurt, as he later remembers this "great betrayal." ⁶ Sheldon speculates that a homosexual love was involved (even if nonphysical), and provides convincing evidence that his sexual appetite was omnivorous and, later, included young men (as well as adolescent women) at times. ⁷ Certainly, betrayal is a theme that marks almost all his work.

The depth of his anguish can be measured by the fact that he toyed with suicide and developed a dangerous habit of playing a solitary game of Russian roulette. How serious was he? Sheldon thinks he probably was using a starter's pistol with a blank and not a real revolver with a live round. ⁸ It does seem that Greene was seeking a thrill—an obsession he had all his life, which led him into spying and going on dangerous journeys abroad, as well as using opium...