- Paperback
- Publisher: Pocket Books (Mm); Reissue edition (May 1982)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0671451987
- ISBN-13: 978-0671451981
- Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 10.4 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 91 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
"Writing A Sort of Life...was in the nature of a psychoanalysis. I made a long journey through time, and I was one of my characters." - Graham Greene in conversation with Marie-Francoise Allain
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and was later employed by the Foreign Office. He died in April 1991.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
psychological non-thriller,
By
This review is from: Sort Of Life (Hardcover)
My main complaint with this book is that a depressed author does not write a stimulating biography. When all instances in the time period covered by the book are downplayed, the reader loses a sense of what is important. Graham Greene's experimentation with Russian roulette, and a flirtation with foreign espionage are told in an attitude that makes it difficult to sense its importance. Was his spy work unimportant, or was it Greene's ho-hum attitude toward spying coming through. The tint of boredom and failure extends over every aspect of his very fortunate and privileged life. An Oxford education, career editor on the London times, courtship, marriage and a religious convert to Catholicism all seem to be performed robotically without any passion. It definitely is an apt title. The book really does stop short in his career as a successful author. I am unfamiliar with his later writings, but this book mentions the fact that he feels alive when traveling throughout the world's danger spots. In this autobiography, Greene mentioned in later years he would cover a local insurrection in Mexico, and viewed first hand the troubled years in Vietnam, Liberia and the Mau-Mau insurrection. I would rather have skipped this book and read his later works about his experiences. I would recommend this book only to someone interested in the psychological background of Graham Greene.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.3 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews) 9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Understated and highly readable!,
By Uncle Borges - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Sort of Life (Paperback)
Greene is a master of understatment and restraint. This book is a lovely if self-effacing coming-of-literary-age memoir that is fun and reader friendly. It's invaluable for its precious glimpses into the vanished world of the 10's and 20's England. Full of curious detail too: I didn't know that Greene was related to R.L. Stevenson for example. The book ends just around the time of his first literary success. I don't know if there are any further memoirs but I wouldn't mind reading them.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Litotes,
By James Hercules Sutton - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Sort of Life. (Hardcover)
is for the empowered; the powerless use hyperbole. Aristocratic Greene understates. He promises, in his introduction, to relate the events of his life with emotions he felt at the time without irony, but his detatchment to events in his own life makes it impossible for him to keep his pledge. Irony is his lens on the world, and he must see through it, darkly, or grope blindly. Pain comes through--the pain of childhood, pain of attending school where his father was headmaster, pain of academic boredom long after he'd outgrown it, pain of rootlessness, many failures--as if he were betrayed by experience itself. His writing, in his two autobiographies, shows the craftsmanship that made him famous, but fails to sparkle like the prose in his fiction, as if he were off-duty. He seems to have embraced Catholicism for the same reason Wordsworth wrote sonnets, for form; it doesn't seem to have been a passion, but perhaps it would have been bad form to say so. Worth reading for insights into his friendships and characters.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
psychological non-thriller,
By J. head - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sort Of Life (Hardcover)
My main complaint with this book is that a depressed author does not write a stimulating biography. When all instances in the time period covered by the book are downplayed, the reader loses a sense of what is important. Graham Greene's experimentation with Russian roulette, and a flirtation with foreign espionage are told in an attitude that makes it difficult to sense its importance. Was his spy work unimportant, or was it Greene's ho-hum attitude toward spying coming through. The tint of boredom and failure extends over every aspect of his very fortunate and privileged life. An Oxford education, career editor on the London times, courtship, marriage and a religious convert to Catholicism all seem to be performed robotically without any passion. It definitely is an apt title. The book really does stop short in his career as a successful author. I am unfamiliar with his later writings, but this book mentions the fact that he feels alive when traveling throughout the world's danger spots. In this autobiography, Greene mentioned in later years he would cover a local insurrection in Mexico, and viewed first hand the troubled years in Vietnam, Liberia and the Mau-Mau insurrection. I would rather have skipped this book and read his later works about his experiences. I would recommend this book only to someone interested in the psychological background of Graham Greene.
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