The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

In The End of the Affair, Graham Greene tackles a nifty little challenge. “A story has no beginning or end.” But affairs do. How, then, does Greene tell a story (which is endless) about an affair (which is not)? Self-reflexively, of course. There’s simply no other way. And The End of the Affair is a wonderfully self-reflexive novel. Greene’s most important device is a writer-narrator who seduces a woman to gain insight into her husband in order to portray a civil servant in a novel he’s writing. A novelist employs a device who adopts a ruse that results in a great unmasking, of love of God, of hatred of God and plenty else in between. Empty words unless you’re familiar with the novel. But I’m not in the mood for a plot summary. Instead I’d like to share reflections on the novelist’s life as they’re found in The End of the Affair, bereft of context or explanation:

“I have never been able to describe even my fictitious characters except by their actions.”

“In a novel a reader should be allowed to imagine the character in any way he chooses: I do not want to supply him with ready-made illustrations.”

“So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days.”

“How can I disinter the human character from the heavy scene?”

“I liked her at once because she said she had read my books.”

“Over twenty years I have probably averaged five hundred words a day for five days a week. I can produce a novel in a year, and that allows time for revision and the correction of the typescript.”

“So much of the novelist’s writing takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on paper.”

“If I were writing a novel I would end it here: a novel, I used to think, has to end somewhere, but I’m beginning to believe my realism has been at fault all these years for nothing in life ever seems to end.”

“Did you feel it [your last novel] was a failure?” “I feel that about all my books.”

“I hate the books I write with their trivial unimportant skill, I hate the craftsman’s mind in me so greedy for copy that I set out to seduce a woman I didn’t love for the information she could give me….”

an affair with an angel

What a strange synchronicity. I recently finished The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, a book about, many other things, the appearance of coincidence, and how it’s not really a coincidence at all. At least that’s what the two or three “miracles” in the closing chapters of the novel strongly suggest. A coincidence is but a dimly perceived providence. This is Graham Greene talking. Not me. But I respect him all the same. A damn fine writer. Anyhow, I just finished his book (and will have something more to say about it in the coming days) and cast my eyes about the library to see what I might read next. Books I’ve shortlisted are pulled halfway out, ready at hand. Dalva is pulled halfway out, for instance, as are a handful of other books, by Beckett, Dickens, Eliot, P. Mathhiessen, A. Ohlin and others. My hand reached for a book and grabbed the spine of a novel not sticking halfway out. I was just as surprised as the book, Angels by Denis Johnson. Now that’s a providential-sounding title, no? Right on the heels of The End of the Affair? Where an absent God works through corrupted saints disguised as people. Angels. I opened the first few pages, even smelled them, an idiosyncrasy of mine formed in grad school when I couldn’t afford every book I wanted to possess. The next best thing, I suppose. Here’s the epigraph I found in Angels. “I accused her as though her prayers had really worked the change: What did I do to you that you had to condemn me to life?” Have you already anticipated me? The quote comes from The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. Coincidence? Probably. After all, I’m a rationalist in mystic clothing and my clothing is easily changed. But I do like how this synchronicity provides a striking confirmation of the opening line in The End of the Affair, “A story has no beginning or end.” And here I am proving Greene’s point by reading his words at the “beginning” of a story he didn’t write. Time to get my Angels on.