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134 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 expectations, to be rather alarmingly aesthetic in his understanding of history, and to assume too readily (and restrictively) a theory ofgenre. He may, indeed, find it strange that anyone should question the generic determinants that seem so obvious to him. His overriding valorization of, and assumptions about, artistic unity are also very questionable in the context of the polyphonies of O'Casey's autobiographies, the pervasiveness of parody in them, and the Lawrentian delight in mood and inconsistency. And maybe Kenneally himself is a little uneasy about the theoretical 'proofs' that he rather earnestly undertakes in the earlier part of the book, for in the later chapters he makes no bones about the literary flaws that rather enhance than detract from our moral sympathy with the autobiographer. (MICHAEL J. SIDNELL) Brian Thomas. An Underground Fate: The Idiom of Romance in the Later Novels of Graham Greene University of Georgia Press. xix, 232. us $28.00 An anonymous TLS reviewer once used the metaphor of a dark lantern to describe Graham Greene's critical perceptions in the collection of essays The Lost Childhood. A dark lantern is one whose light source is screened exceptfor a thin slitwhich permits an intense if narrow beam to play upon a subject. As readers of Greene know, that image describes not only his brilliant, idiosyncratic criticism but also much of his creative work. In Greene novels a lurid light shines fitfully on chosen characters, settings, and events, picking them out from the surrounding gloom. The image hints that Greene is a writer of fantasy as much as a realist; that he provides an intense, highly personal vision of his life and times; that the beam of his insight heightens shadows as well as illuminates whatit dwells on; that whether by choice or compulsion Greene is quite at home in this chiaroscuro world. These hypotheses are explored in Brian Thomas's An Underground Fate. The book is focused on seven novels and a collection of short stories from what is, in fact, the middle period in Greene's long career, an interesting slot to investigate because of the variety of genres and subjects involved. The Third Man (1950) recalls the thrillers of the thirties; The End of the Affair (1951) is the last in his cycle of Catholic novels; A Sense ofReality (1962) is fantasy, Travels with My Aunt (1969) picaresque comedy, and The Quiet American (1955), The Comedians (1966), and The Honorary Consul (1973) represent his political fiction. The problem is to discover the consistency in this variegated sample. The key is romance. Taking a cue from Greene's early reading of Victorian adventure stories (the title essay of The Lost Childhood was originally 'Heroes Are Made in Childhood') and with help in definition from Frye's HUMANITIES 135 The Secular Scripture, Thomas sets out to find the motifs, themes, and dynamics of archetypal romance in Greene's work. The quest succeeds. He skilfully turns up many fictionally disguised voyages to the underworld , clashes with rivals, visits to dark towers and chapels perilous, combats with dragons, difficult self-discoveries, ascensions and rebirths. It is a convincing performance. His style is graceful and quite free of . jargon. He avoids current critical shibboleths and concentrates on close reading. The evidence accumulates impressively. He is insistent, but does not strain to advance his argument. He moves us easily from rudimentary notions of romance to more and more sophisticated, interconnected discoveries and applications, ending with an apotheosis celebrating in romantic fashion the power of Greene's word and story-making act. Of course, the argument works better for some novels than for others. I found it particularly persuasive for The Third Man and Travels with My Aunt, less so for The Quiet American and The Honorary Consul, and so on. But every examination contains surprising revelations ingeniously worked out, and one would like to see the analysis applied in full to other novels, earlier and later, if only to show these romance elements subverted to irony, as Thomas claims. There remains a problem with this kind of research, however. In the long run its narrowness of focus and singleness of purpose become hypnotic, the...

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