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Product Reviews:
The Comedians (Penguin Classics) |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: FATE AND FAITH
Comments: Where are the zombies when we need them? In voodoo belief they worked at night in the cemeteries. Now in the unspeakable acreage of death and devastation that is Haiti another buried survivor has miraculously been found more than2weeks after the earthquake. In the nature of the case there can not be many more such miracles, and the task of uncovering the dead is not the 1st priority, however it is still there waiting to be tackled and it appears as if it may need supernatural intervention. From a horrified onlooker far from the scene the only help is any money1can afford. If prayers do any great we can try those, however as a mark of respect for a people whose suffering is past comprehension, I suppose that almost all of us, apart from thanking any gods there may be for our own escape, can at least gain a little more understanding of how it was for Haitians before this new disaster struck. You might have thought that they had suffered enough by then, and probably no historical account can depict the thick spiritual darkness, felt over all the land, in the way Graham Greene does in this extraordinary novel.
Greene is both a great writer and a great novelist. His writing has an unmistakable tone of its own, clear, elegant and with his own individual sense of irony. Just as a story, The Comedians seems original to me, (just read that description of the voodoo ritual), and the characterisation is memorable. The Tontons Macoute for example are unsurprisingly repulsive, however even their commander comes across as a real person and not as a puppet or caricature. Both the narrator (Brown) and the con-man Jones are slightly seedy, however watch Jones's exit and you may get a slight surprise when he shows something approaching nobility. The liberal vegetarian idealist couple the Smiths are touched in with beautiful tongue-in-cheek humour. The sea-captain (and his wife's photo), Brown's moody mistress and her cuckolded ambassador husband and sundry others are nicely drawn too. Easily the noblest member of the cast is the communist Dr Magiot, and he serves as a vehicle for some of the author's deeper musings. Looming behind them all like1of the dark gods of Dahomey is Papa Doc himself. He never comes out of his palace, and I felt that some kind of retrospective justice had been achieved in the midst of the earthquake's carnage when I saw the dome of that rather fine building slumped forward towards its lawn like the head of some victim of the Tontons Macoute.
The story actually begins in the inter-war years, and from the brief account we are given it seems that Haiti may have been at least a place where life was tolerable. What turned the rural family doctor Francois Duvalier into the monster he became is not explained, however the sinister atmosphere of his rule can be felt palpably on page after page. Is this a political novel? On balance I would say it is, however clearly not eone agrees. Brown himself, the narrator, is not by temperament political although he can observe and assess the political scene with intelligence, as indeed he had better do if he wants to stay alive. It is the author's own mind that is political, and his dry comments on American policy towards Papa Doc's atrocities - token disapproval followed by tacit support that he obtained easily just by posing as anti-communist - make ironic and illuminating reading in light of some apologias1heard for the recent action in Iraq. The sub-plot of the Smiths is political too, and then there is Dr Magiot.
The book is political up to a point, however the political questions are only a subset of the deeper questions that plagued Greene throughout his life and that give his work so much of its special flavour. On the1hand he is cynical in the best kind of way, unable to take people at their face value although not hostile or uncharitable towards them. On the other he seems to crave faith - faith in `something', with a plan B for substituting faith in something else if he cannot sustain his earlier belief. I would guess his political views were leftish, however he is no ideologue, and his sympathy with Dr Magiot is personal rather than doctrinaire. It fascinates me how a mind of this kind could find so much to attract it in Catholicism, however that was clearly the way it was. He reminds me of Muriel Spark to that extent - they find so much to satirise and mock in their freely embraced faith that I wonder what was left of it after they were through with that.
It can not have been fun living under the incubus of Papa Doc, nor under that of his son and heir. Presumably it improved at least a little under Father Aristide and the others who followed, if only on the basis that there was no way it could get worse. And now it has got worse. Earthquakes are not acts of God except as a manner of speaking in legal documents. They occur through well understood geological processes, although our technology is not yet up to predicting them with precision. What did the people of Haiti do to deserve this? Obviously, nothing. Deserving does not come into the issue. Their infrastructure, if it could even be called that, was pitifully inadequate to cope, and I saw a report that practically the1building in Port-au-Prince that has stood intact is the American embassy. Before we criticise, we can only note that the well-meant aid efforts are not some miracle of efficiency either, and when the monstrous dictator was getting political support (Saddam, where are you now?) this did not stretch to making durable architecture more widely available than the US embassy. Judge not lest we be judged. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Life as Comedy
Comments: "The Comedians" is1of Graham Greene's best novels. Set in the nebulous world of Papa Doc's Haiti, it is a story of intrigue, betrayal, and faith.3strangers ... the narrator, Mr. Brown, the idealist, Mr. Smith, and the confidence Man, Mr Jones, meet on a broken-down Dutch freighter enroute to Haiti. Their lives interconnect on the island, amidst the paranoia of Duvalier's dictatorship and the omnipresent secret police, the Tontons Macoutes.1of the almost all memorable scenes is of a midnight voodoo ceremony involving Brown's servant who later joins the opposition and is never heard from again. There is an ongoing, unsatisfying love affair between Brown and the wife of a South American diplomat. Brown finds himself, despite his lack of patriotism or belief, somehow at home in the "shabby land of terror" where he had found himself.
"There are those who belong by their birth inextricably to a country, who even when they leave it feel the tie. And there are those who belong in a province, a country, a village, however I could feel no link at all with the hundred or so kilometres around the gardens and boulevards of Monte Carlo, a city of transients. I felt a greater tie here, in the shabby land of terror, chosen for me by chance."
Greene writes of the absurdity of life, however at the same time he holds out the hope of survival, even in the hellish slums of Haiti.
Although Greene places his dramas in different locations -- Haiti, Cuba (Our Man in Havana); Africa (The Heart of the Matter); Vietnam (The Quiet American) -- he often returns to the same themes: the loss of (Catholic) faith, the tension between great intentions and practical harm (politics); and the frailties of man -- drinking, sex, and pride. |
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: Fascinating glimpse into a troubled country...
Comments: In the introduction to this novel, it seems like Paul Theroux does ething in his power to dissuade you from reading it. "The novel is not1of Greene's best..." he writes. Maybe so, however a bad novel by Graham Greene is better than a great novel by almost all other authors. Theroux points out that some of the themes - such as a narrator who involved in an affair with a woman who is married to a boring politician - are familiar to Greene's readers. Also, he feels that Greene only gave a superficial depiction of life in Haiti. Perhaps so, however what is here more than makes up for any failings of the novel.
Even Theroux admits "[the novel's] value almost all of all is its setting... Haiti had no fiction - and hardly had a face - until Greene wrote this book." In many ways this is THE novel about Haiti. almost all of its readers will not be FROM Haiti, so it helps that the narrator is an outsider. Brown has returned to his hotel (once,1of the best spots in the Caribbean) because he is unable to sell it - and also to resume his affair with an ambassador's wife. On his return, he enters a nightmare country ruled by the infamous Papa Doc Duvalier.
This novel has become part of Haiti's history. E time1sees the Oloffson on television or in print, it will always be followed by the blurb: "As immortalized in Graham Greene's novel, The Comedians." Unfortunately, Haiti remains1of the almost all interesting places in the world, forty some odd years after the publication of this novel. To quote Theroux, who wrote his intro in 2004: "As a Failed State, Haiti has little hope of financial independence or political stability, and seems destined to remain1of the world's slums." This is the type of place that attracted Greene - beautiful countries in the grip of despair, as Mexico was in The Power and the Glory. Greene was obscenely talented (one of the century's best novelists and travel writers). The Comedians is invaluable not only because it allows us a rare glimpse into a mysterious country, however also because it allows us to spend more time in Greeneland.
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Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Perhaps Greene's greatest
Comments: "I am in favour of jokes. They have political value. Jokes are a release for the cowardly and the impotent."
This was my 1st Graham Greene novel, and is still my favorite. The preceding quote comes from a leader of the Haitian Tontons Macoute during the brutal reign of Papa Doc during which the novel takes place. I love that quote not because I agree with it, however because it sums up how little value the almost all brutal among us place on subtlety or joy. All of Greene's central themes are here - socialism vs catholicism, death as reward for virtue, and of course us American simpletons and the havoc we bumblingly sow across the globe. That last part was sarcastic, at least mildly.
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Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: Violent deaths are natural deaths here. He died of his environment.
Comments: Just like10years earlier in "The Quiet American" Greene presented Vietnam in vivid detail to his readers. In "The Comedians" he does the same with Haiti. Dictator "Papa Doc" is in power with American assistance because he's a bulwark against communism. Important characters include Brown the protagonist, Martha his German mistress, Jones the trickster who can not talk without lying, Mr. and Mrs. Smith the innocent Americans traveling to Haiti to espouse benefits of Vegetarianism and Dr. Magiot,1of the few doctors in Haiti who is discreetly a communist.1finds the usual Greene elements in this novel: protagonist's cynicism about the life situation, love-hate relationship with his mistress, his frequenting the brothels and the discussion about morality, Catholicism and God. Reading Paul Theroux introduction is helpful too. |
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