green with greene

finally got around to seeing The Quiet American which was seriously good. Michael Caine was wonderful as always, and Brendan Fraser really makes me question why he troubles with Looney Tunes movies when he's such a great actor and can carry off a part like Pyle. And then, just yesterday, I caught a couple minutes of The End of the Affair which I had seen years ago when it came out and was only luke-warm receptive to it (religion in movies tends to do that to me). Then I remembered belatedly that I have been telling myself to read the bloody originals of Graham Greene.

I have gone through this phase ever since I fell in love with one of (IMHO) the greatest movies of all time, The Third Man. I have had this sneaking suspicion ever since that I will become addicted to the man's books (and a similar suspicion that once I buy the things I will be let down). But I am confimed in the desire to give them a try. Ever since the Great Unemployment Debacle (which is still ongoing, thanks for asking), I have been adding more things to wishlists instead of my bookshelves, so maybe that'll be the full-time employment treat... though Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is really, really, REALLY tempting.

Back to Greene, however, Bookforum recently posted an article on his life and works, which makes for some interesting reading:

In A Sort of Life, Greene writes that if he had to choose an epigraph for all his novels, it would be these lines from Robert Browning's Bishop Blougram's Apology:

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demi-rep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books–
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway...