penwithlit

• Author: Graham Greene (1904 – 1991)
  
• Title:  The Quiet American (210 pg)
• Genre: novel
• Published: 1955
• Trivia: 2019 BBC News lists The Quiet American
• ….as on of the 100 most influential novels
• List of Challenges 2020
• Monthly plan

Conclusion:

1. This was an excellent book. (reading time: 4 hrs)
   
2. I needed to detach myself for one day
3. from the political turmoil on TV #Election2020 USA.
4. Novels are a means to escape reality…
5. yet they describe in ‘fiction’ what many don’t want to acknowledge.
6. I wanted discover Graham Greene’s view of U.S. foreign policy.
7. USA –>  ill-advised and ill-informed
8. …sounds still very relevant in 21st C!
9. Greene portrays the French colonialism and American involvement in the
10. Vietnam War ….as a love triangle: Fowler – Phoung – Pyle
11. Central issue: the politics of intervention in a foreign nation.
12. Strong point:   characters
13. …Britain (Fowler), America (Pyle), France (Vigot) Vietnam (Phoung)
14. Fowler:…..repeating “I’m…

If only I could drink like Maigret. Rum for his colds, beer for his thirsts, plum brandy when he feels a bout of the flu coming on. And he eats like a horse. A thoroughbred horse with his own private chef, that is. Madame Maigret sounds like a wonderful chef.

This novel is about work and how we compensate ourselves for the time we spend at the office. The murder is all about the company run by the victim, the solution is to do with the way the business was run and most of the red herrings come from employees. People often say these books are excellent at describing ordinary melancholy, but Simenon is also sharp to the daily grind and the petty reality of office politics. It’s a very #metoo novel.

Maigret is always at work, in a way few literary characters are. He dreams about his case. He…

Sometimes, it’s just a case of being in the right place at the right time…

The Spouse and I went to a book launch today at the Victorian Artists’ Society in East Melbourne.  The book is called Pictures and Prose, Existentialists and Atheists Speak, and the reason we were interested in this somewhat esoteric publication was because The Spouse is included in it.  As I’m sure readers have gathered by now, he is a man of many interests and from time to time he has given a talk at the Existentialists’ Society (even though he isn’t one of them).  And he was giving a talk there when Melbourne painter, printmaker and photographer Raffaella Torresan was there sketching the presenters and that is why he is in the book which is a collection of talks given at the society.

His talk was titled ‘Skepticism, Science and Scientism, and I don’t…

I stop sketching for a month and I felt miserable about it. Today even the weather is not bright I took the train to the Lisbon old Aquarium just to sketch.

Buried for Pleasure is a pastoral murder mystery, with elements of literary criticism, political satire and a good old-fashioned love story to boot. This book must have been part of the inspiration for the TV genre of murders in the village. The ending ties up neatly and predictably for a pastoral story, and if you are not overly worried about the characterisation of consciousness it is wonderful.

The solution is obvious about a third of the way in, but you cannot be sure exactly and there is the vexing question of how it was done. And the murder is committed (and hence the real mystery only kicks in) after it’s obvious who the murderer is.

Crispin gives us the best of both: a plotting ability that squares up to the Golden Age of mystery novels and a prose style derived from Waugh, Wodehouse, Forster. He is most similar to Michael…