Abstract
In 1973, when the Collected Edition of Greene’s work was in the early stages of publication, Robert Murray Davis offered the following assessment of the writer’s transition ‘from standard to classic’: The continued respectful attitude towards Greene’s works stems from his contemporaneity, a journalistic virtue much admired by Peter Wolfe in his study of the entertainments and by reviewers more capable of dealing with newsworthiness than with art. This has been true of Greene’s reputation ever since he began to acquire one in the 1940s. The mixture of melodrama, theology, and what some called existentialism in novels like The Power and the Glory was one especially appealing to the readers and characteristic of the literature of the post-war decade.1
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Terry Eagleton, After Theory (London: Penguin, 2004) 80.
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (London: Abacus, 1972) 63.
Copyright information
© 2009 Brian Lindsay Thomson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Thomson, B.L. (2009). Appropriating Greene: Re-Reading The Quiet American and The End of the Affair. In: Graham Greene and the Politics of Popular Fiction and Film. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250871_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250871_15
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31010-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-25087-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)