The sky wept endlessly around him; he had the sense of wounds that never healed.

[decemberthirty]

In The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene tells the story of Henry Scobie, a police officer stationed in an unnamed British colony on the west coast of Africa during WWII. He is a lone honest man surrounded by spies, smugglers, and corrupt officials, and he defines himself by his honesty. Scobie is stuck in a loveless marriage to Louise; he pities her and feels he must do whatever he can to make her happy, but he longs only to do his work in peace. The drama of the book comes when Scobie's sense of responsibility for Louise comes into conflict with his honesty. He borrows money from questionable sources to send her to South Africa where she hopes she will be happier, and then falls into an affair with a young widow while Louise is away. Lies pile on top of lies, and Scobie begins a long spiral toward his downfall.

There were moments of absolute brilliance in The Heart of the Matter. More than once when I came to the end of a chapter, I had to close the book for a moment to absorb what I had read before going on. There were gorgeous sentences, unexplained details that were compelling in their strangeness, perfectly sketched minor characters, and insights that felt penetrating as I read them. Yet the parts, in this case, seemed greater than the whole. The book just didn't move me.

Some of that, I know, is due to me rather than to any failing of Greene's. My apathy towards all matters of religion is so strong that I can almost appreciate books that hinge on crises of faith. I found the plot totally engrossing for the first two-thirds or so of the book, but that only made it more disappointing when all of the intriguing and worldly elements of Scobie's tangled web--diamond smuggling and blackmail and Wilson the malevolent spy--fell away and were replaced with pages and pages of Scobie agonizing over his Catholicism and how he has damned himself by taking communion without making a good confession first. Sigh. Who cares? Scobie, obviously, and Greene, but not me. It didn't help that Scobie's tortured Catholicism seemed to come almost out of nowhere late in the book; I hardly knew he had a relationship with god until he was tying himself in knots over losing it.

Greene did a better job conveying Scobie's inner life in regard to Louise and Helen, the two women he is involved with over the course of the story. Scobie seems unable to feel love without it eventually congealing into pity; unlike his religious beliefs, this characteristic feels authentic and complicated. Still, I was annoyed by the treatment of the women. Scobie can't bear the thought of causing unhappiness for either Louise or Helen, but he seems to believe it's impossible that either of them might actually be happier if he left them alone to lead their own lives. It's one thing for a character to believe this; the fact that Greene seems to believe it too is a much bigger problem.

Perhaps the greatest strength of The Heart of the Matter is Greene's handling of setting. His portrayal of a narrow, gossipy colonial society reminded me of A Passage to India, but Greene's Africa is more sordid and malignant that Forster's India. The very air of the novel feels unhealthy, and certain scenes are so vivid in their strangeness that the story takes on the feeling of a malarial fever dream.

Perhaps Graham Greene is just not the author for me. The only other book of his that I've read is The End of the Affair, and though I liked The Heart of the Matter better, both books had some of the same problems: a strong beginning that lost steam in the final chapters, an artificial imposition of religion on the story, characters that I can find interesting but can't quite care about...

Comments

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I thought it was interesting despite its flaws--hope you enjoy!

[lusimeles.livejournal.com]

i'm with you, graham greene sucks. the last book i hated as much as the end of the affair was fucking atlas shrugged. i don't always even think evelyn waugh succeeds at weaving the catholic themes but graham greene just makes it super awkward for all.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say I exactly hated either this book or The End of the Affair, but yeah, Greene's approach to religion is a mess. He just brings it in like a sledgehammer out of nowhere and everything that may have been interesting about the book gets demolished.

[lusimeles.livejournal.com]

i seriously do not understand how he is so well-regarded. maybe you have to have grown up deeply catholic to get it.

[pax_athena]

I feel with you on the topic of faith/believe. I'm generally interested in religion as a phenomenon, but books which hinge on crises of faith or faith in general just do not work for me. I can understand that this is the way some people think, but I can't get into their heads. It's so ... illogical, for me.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

That's exactly it. I can only read so much of someone agonizing over religion before I want to say, "You know none of it is real, don't you?"

[lusimeles.livejournal.com]

gilead, though! i thought that was one of your favourites. although i suppose he doesn't really agonize too much exactly...

also come on, the brothers karamazov. (sorry, clearly butting in.)

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, the religious stuff in The Brothers Karamazov drove me crazy. "Come on, can't you shut up about god and get back to the murder?!!?!?"

Gilead is an interesting question though. Until this moment I don't think I had given any thought to why the religious elements of that book don't bother me. Part of it, I suppose, is that Gilead seems to be about a lot of other things in addition to being about faith: family and history and place and voice and.... Whereas The Heart of the Matter was disappointing because at first it WAS about a lot of different and interesting things, until suddenly it was just all Catholicism all the time. And of course Robinson handles it all must more subtly than Greene does. In Gilead, the character's faith feels totally organic to the narrative, as opposed to Greene's approach which basically amounts to a church falling out of the sky and crushing his characters, leaving just their feet sticking out like the wicked witch of the east.

Anyway, that's an interesting question that probably bears more thinking about, but this is already getting a bit long... :)

[lusimeles.livejournal.com]

Ha, I'm admittedly kind of a sucker for faith narratives, so that was actually one of my favourite parts of the book! The murder was super interesting too, though.

which basically amounts to a church falling out of the sky and crushing his characters, leaving just their feet sticking out like the wicked witch of the east.

I hate you, I had this yummy mouthful of vanilla almond milk and you just made me snort it out.

On the basis of instinct alone I'm inclined to agree with you about Robinson's narrative feeling organic and Greene's forced. As you said, Greene just kind of uses Catholicism as this deus ex machina (almost literally?) to make his characters do things/go places they otherwise wouldn't. But then again, I've never been a lapsed Catholic.

[salvagejob.livejournal.com]

Hm. I don't know this book and you make a very strong case against it, but I love Graham Greene. I read "The Human Factor" and "The Quiet American" and thought they were brilliant. I don't remember any religion in either of them. In fact, I Googled him to make sure we were talking about the same person. You might try The Quiet American. It's about war in Asia and it's really relevant now....

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I remember liking the movie version of The Quiet American with Michael Caine that came out about ten years ago, and I remember thinking back then that it was really relevant to the war in Afghanistan and what would soon become a war in Iraq. So I should probably give that one a try, especially if Greene manages to avoid ruining it with a lot of heavy-handed Catholicism at the end.

[salvagejob.livejournal.com]

Absolutely none of that as I recall. I do know that he's a famous Catholic -- he was important to Muriel Spark, who you may know converted to Roman Catholicism, somewhat bizarrely for a half Jewish girl from Scotland -- but it was so very much not present in the two books I loved that I did question my sanity/memory when I read your post. Maybe it was there and I missed it? I don't think so. Anyway, I did not know there was a movie of the Quiet American; I will check that out. Thanks!