A century after his birth, Graham Greene's works fondly celebrated

JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) - One hundred years after his birth, Graham Greene's writings still excite discussion. But what excites even more is talk about his sex life.

As scholars gather this week to mark the centenary of the novelist's birth on Oct. 2, 1904, an explicit new biography has overshadowed consideration of Greene's literary legacy and renewed interest in the author's tempestuous personal life and voracious sexual appetite.

Thirteen years after his death, his 100th birthday is being marked by events mapping the treacherous topography of "Greeneland" - the seedy, piquant landscape of compromised spies, troubled priests and everyday sinners created by Greene in his works.

There's an exhibition of Greeneabilia at the British Library and a weeklong conference in his hometown of Berkhamstead, northwest of London, featuring discussions of Greene's contribution to cinema, his Catholicism, his debt to Joseph Conrad and his relationship with Charlie Chaplin.

There's even a stage musical of Greene's seaside thriller, Brighton Rock, opening Oct. 5 at London's Almeida Theatre. The show is directed by Michael Attenborough, whose father, Richard, starred in the 1947 film of the novel.

And there's the final volume of Norman Sherry's monumental biography, The Life of Graham Greene, covering the years from 1955 until Greene's death in 1991 at age 86. (The book is published in Britain by Jonathan Cape and in the United States by Viking Books.)

Sherry, Greene's authorized biographer, spent more than 20 years retracing the writer's journeys and plowing through his papers for the exhaustive three-volume work that was first published in 1989.

Greene's family, however, is not impressed.

"I wouldn't take what Sherry says as gospel. He didn't do very much research," Greene's daughter, Caroline Bourget, said. "There are lots of errors, lots of mistakes. He's just put pages and pages of Graham's writing and some fairly banal comment. I don't think it's a biography as such."

Sherry, a professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, explores Greene's large literary output, bouts of depression, struggles with faith and formidable sex drive. It is those intimate sections that have attracted the most interest. Sherry calls Greene "a sexual raider" who "continued to cross the line, to break taboos" throughout his life.

"Brothels fascinated Greene," notes the biographer, who reproduces Greene's list of 47 favourite prostitutes; Greene gave the women such nicknames as Russian Boots and Bond Street French.

A committed Roman Catholic following his conversion at age 22, Greene had many flings and several long-term affairs while married to his wife of more than 60 years, Vivien. His intense relationship with a married American woman, Catherine Walston, is echoed in the love triangle that shapes the centre of his novel, The End of the Affair.

Greene once said that his mission was to depict "a dangerous edge of things psychologically and sometimes politically." Many of his two dozen novels explore the conflict between faith and desire and the uneasy intersection of politics and morality.

He was a very English writer whose books put outwardly restrained Brits in extreme situations and exotic locations. Greene himself led a roving, adventurous life; he worked as a British secret agent in West Africa during World War II and was a friend of fellow agent Kim Philby, later exposed as a Soviet spy.

His constant travels are reflected in the settings of his books, from the colonial Indochina of The Quiet American - which foreshadowed the United States' disastrous involvement in Vietnam - to Haiti under the Duvalier dictatorship in The Comedians and revolutionary Mexico in The Power and the Glory.

"He was witness to all kinds of trouble spots of the 20th century," Greene's nephew, Nick Dennys, said. "Journalist John Pilger once said that journalists in Vietnam, who were quite overwhelmed by how to describe the situation, used to pass around a tattered copy of The Quiet American."

Many consider it criminal that Greene did not receive the Nobel Prize for literature, despite several nominations by colleagues. Some have blamed pressure from the United States, whose foreign policy he often criticized. Bourget said her father's failure to get the Nobel "was purely political. I don't think Graham bothered about it."

Dennys said readers seeking a true picture of Greene should read his books, rather than Sherry's biography.

"He was a very empathetic and perceptive person," Dennys said. "That quality - the ability to empathize across boundaries - will last. That's something all the stuff in the biographies, the salacious details, misses.

"There are the books. Anyone who reads them will find the man."

On the Net:

Graham Greene Birthplace Trust: www.grahamgreenebt.org