Last Steps in Africa
In Search of a Character. By Graham Greene. (Bodley Head, 10s. 6d.)
IN the tropics, it must be easier for typists; for those who, like Mr. Graham Greene, write with pen and ink the physical difficulties of composi- tion are almost insuperable. During the five weeks in the Congo which provided the splendid scenery of A Burnt-Out Case, his notes contain only fragmentary hints of the final version. In Search 01 a Character, the transcription, with comments, of these notes, is of value, not as a literary exercise, but as a study of the motions of a literary imagination, and is of very high value indeed.
Mr. Greene was already familiar with parts of Africa. His first steps there, taken in 1934, were in one of its darkest regions, the hinterland of Liberia. Later he found war-time employment in neighbouring Freetown. His interest in the continent was neither political nor anthropo- logical. He thought himself nearer to innocence, he told us, among both the savages and the seedy expatriates than in contemporary Europe; he felt closer to the supernatural both in the devil- dances and in the dedicated lives of the missions than in the parish church.
Leprosy has always been part of the furniture of his mind; the image of the leper's bell occurs more than once in his novels. In 1959 he set out to see for himself whether there was a theme for him in the lazaretto. Nothing, it seemed, could be more remote from the world of inter- national culture and he had the vague idea of introducing into it a refugee from that world and seeing what would happen. He knew nothing of the intruder except that he was driven by some mysterious revulsion from civilisation.
Many of his notes are concerned with the de- tails which gave the setting of the novel he was to write—the huts, the river, the colonial town, the routine of the hospital and of the priests' lives, spent, on a superficial view, in practical affairs of navigation and construction; more especially the disease itself, its various symp- toms, developments and treatments. These in- terests were predictable. Every conscientious novelist is at pains to set his stage correctly. It is a duty he owes to himself as much as to his reader. He must believe in the authenticity of his own scene.
Readers of A Burnt-Out Case will remember the impressive and economical 'composition of place.' No writer knows, until the paragraph is actually taking shape, what particular detail will be needed. A failing memory demands verifica- tion that cannot be supplied from books of reference. So here, to obviate a second or third journey, Mr. Greene recorded what seemed sig- nificant, not all of which was subsequently needed. It is fascinating to see what was used and what was discarded.
Other, copious notes describe the conversa- tion of chance acquaintances who cross his path, the anecdotes they relate and the words they use. Now and then there are echoes of these in the novel, but never of the characters themselves. It is impossible to persuade the few novel-readers who are not themselves writers that novelists do not 'put people into their books.' Here is first-hand evidence, but I have no doubt that Belgium is full of repatriated colonists who are at the moment busy identifying Mr. Greene's characters.
The most idiosyncratic passages are those which reveal the hesitations and speculations in the novelist's mind. One may be familiar with his work and have some personal acquaintance with him and yet remain totally ignorant of the mechanics of his imagination. It is interesting to learn of the pre-eminent importance he attaches to the opening sentences of a book. It is arresting to find him asking: 'Am I beginning to succumb to that abiding temptation to tell a good story?' It is puzzling to find him fretting about the choice of a name, indeed reluctant to name his characters at all, and recording dreams, which have always seemed one of the flaws in his almost flawless narratives.
His title came as a gift. It is (in English and untranslatable in French) part of the jargon of the hospital, meaning a leper in whom the disease is no longer active, who is no longer contagious but is left permanently disabled in a less or a greater degree, for whom some sort of employment can often be found. The expres- sion caught Mr. Greene's attention, but it seems that it was not until he had ceased to observe, in the period of gestation before he began writing, that he conceived of transferring this physical mutilation to the spiritual plane.
His quest for a character did not find its quarry in the Congo. His plot began to take form there—the dramatic incidents of the in- fatuated woman and the jealous husband—but the character still eluded him. He knew that the mysterious stranger was important and embit- tered. At one time he considered making him a fugitive from the police. The final version makes him a fugitive from success—from
women, from fame and, in particular, from the reputation, which he has forfeited, of being a faithful Catholic. Querry, the character whom Mr. Greene eventually ran to earth in a tern- Perate climate, had excommunicated himself and was suffering the premonitions of damnation. It may be doubted whether there is any spiritual state precisely analogous to that of the 'burnt- out' leper; whether any mutilations are incurable. But this is a review of the notes, not of the novel. Querry was still a very shadowy figure when Mr. Greene flew oil for Europe.
Appended to the Congo journal are twenty- five pages of a diary kept in 1941 in convoy to West Africa. All admirers of Mr. Greene's work will be delighted to have this. vivid evocation of the war. Any admirers there may be of Professor Whittimore will bes pleased to see him so kindly treated. He incurred more ridicule than he deserved.
The publishers describe the book as being bound in Elephanthide. Prospective purchasers should be warned that this term is figurative.
Mr. Greene says of A Burnt-Out Case: `It seemed to me when I wrote the last words that I had reached an age when another full-length novel was probably beyond my powers.' Fellow- writers will recognise this sense of effeteness as normal and transient. Readers need not be dis- mayed. Mr. Greene is not himself a burnt-out case. It is possible that in his last .book he came to the end of his long exploration of the dark fever-country on the unmapped borders of superstition and apostasy. If • that is so, we may look forward to a new creative period of serene maturity.
EVELYN WAUGH
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