A new title in Palgrave Macmillan's Literary Lives series, this is a biographical narrative of Graham Greene's literary career. Among other things, it explores his motives for writing; the literary and cinematic influences that shaped his work; his writing routine and the importance of his childhood experience. Greene was elusive and enigmatic, and this book teases out the fiction from his autobiographies, the autobiography from his fictions, sharing Paul Theroux's view that you may not know Greene from his face or speech 'but from his writing, you know everything.'

Autorentext

NEIL SINYARD is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Hull. He is the author of twenty books on film, including Film and Literature: The Art of Screen Adaptation, which includes a comparison of Greene and Hitchcock; Children in the Movies, which discusses the representation of childhood in film and literature; and studies of directors such as Wilder, Hitchcock, Allan, Spielberg, Zinnemann and Roeg. He has published over a hundred articles for such publications as The Dickensian, The Critical Quarterly, Sight and Sound, The Sunday Telegraph, Positif and Cinema Papers, and he has written extensively on the relationship between literature and film.

Zusammenfassung
'Life would be impossible for me if I knew that I would never write another book' (Graham Greene). This new study offers an unusual account of the literary life of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists, revealing the kind of writer he became, and why. It considers his literary motivation, the books that influenced him, the routines he followed. It explores offbeat aspects that are often overlooked. Why does comedy emerge so strongly in the later works? In what way did his interest in the cinema help shape his writing style? What kind of coded autobiography is embedded in his teasing epigraphs and dedications? What clues to his later development are contained in his childhood? Greene was a master of selective disclosure, but he did allow his mask to occasionally slip, as if wanting confession. This book is a sympathetic and fascinating insight into the world of a remarkable author.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements The Greene Chronology: Some Major Dates and Events Introduction: Secret Sharer Why Do I Write? The Books in My Life The Greene Routine Greene on the Screen Laughter in the Shadow of the Gallows A Sort of Autobiography: Epigraphs and Dedications The Green Baize Door Poets of Criminality and Conscience Conclusion: Forgotten Memories Select Bibliography Annotated Filmography Index