Reducing all that's made . . .
Richard Ingrams
YOURS ETC by Graham Greene
Reinhardt Books, £14.95, pp.269
There are signs of barrel-scraping in the Graham Greene industry, the latest pro- duct of which is this curious book consist- ing of a selection of his letters to the press over the years. One should say at once that there is more to the book than that, as most of the letters were written in response to some particular controversy which today demands explanation. Thus almost every letter is followed (not preceded, which might have been a better solution) by a footnote from the indefatigable compiler Christopher Hawtree.
Any editor knows that 90 per cent of letters to the press emanate either from lunatics or bores of the Herbert Gusset variety. Mr Graham Greene is neither. Why then does he feel this compulsive urge to write in, often on the slimmest of pretexts. I suspect the answer is that the famous novelist is a journalist manqué who cannot keep his nose out of the newspap- ers. He has also been for much of his life an expatriate and, rather in the manner of his friend the late Kim Philby, feels a bit left out of things closeted in his Antibes flat.
Even so there is something rather per- verse on Max Reinhardt's part in wanting to republish his letters now, especially when so many of them are utterly trivial (for example a complaint to the Sunday Times in 1981 about inaccuracies in Stephen Pile's account of the closure of Greene's maga- zine Night and Day, or, again, a suggestion in The Spectator's columns that the Daim- ler offered by Algy Cluff as a competition prize is worth only £200). Not only trivial but, as is often the way with the corres- pondence columns, combative and face- tious. In the context of a paper, these letters would certainly liven up a dull page to the delight of any editor. But solemnly reprinted in chronological order with Mr Hawtrees' admirably researched footnotes the barbs fail to sting and the impression is wrongly conveyed that Greene is a bit of a prickly old bore who should have slept on it before dashing off his riposte.
Of course aficionados, of whom I am one, will find plenty to intrigue them. There is an interesting story about Stevenson's The Wrong Box, an amusing account of self-parodies submitted to com- petitions in this and other organs. It is a Pity that Greene's contributions to Pseuds Corner have not been included.
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