Graham Greene, God's Journalist & Spy
A birthday shout-out to the legendary British novelist, journalist, and spiritual observer
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the great British writer (journalist, novelist, screenwriter) Graham Greene. I cite him as a key influence on my lyrics, and I’ve read his novels repeatedly—many of which have been made into films (some more than once): The End of The Affair (1955, 1999), The Human Factor, the excellent Our Man in Havana (Alec Guinnes, Ernie Kovacs), The Quiet American (1958, 2002), The Power and The Glory (Henry Fonda), and the landmark film noirs This Gun for Hire (Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake) and The Third Man (Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Wells + Anton Karas’s ironic zither music).
Greene’s 67-year long career (which included spying for MI6 during World War II) took him to leper colonies, war zones, and odd “hot spots” around the world. These provided settings for his stories, exploring ambivalent ethical and political issues of the modern world, often through a Biblical lens that offered redemption to criminals and sinners while exposing the hypocrisies of moral superiors. I can find his imprints in several of my songs, but the most overt is this one, imagining if Greene had written a script for the comedy team of Laurel & Hardy (maybe echoing Greene’s late-in-life friendship with Charlie Chaplin). Meanwhile, HB GG and thank you for your volumes of spiritually-informed writing and letting us be human.
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