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3.0 out of 5 stars
A Clever Thought Experiment, Jun 15 2002
Graham Greene's 1955 novella, "Loser Takes All," is a clever thought experiment in which love, morality, and ethics are all brought to bear on the early days of a married relationship. One of Greene's most appealing moves in the book is his delineation of character. The people who populate the novella are character types struggling to become characters - to find individuality and meaning in a world whose sole virtue seems to be money."Loser Takes All" begins in Monte Carlo. An English couple, Bertram, a fortyish accountant with a dead end career; and Cary, his twentyish fiance are on the verge of marriage - but they've been sidetracked. Initially planning on a small church service, Bertram is called into a meeting with his abstracted and unapproachable boss, Dreuther. Although Bertram isn't well-off, Dreuther talks him into moving his marriage plans to Monte Carlo, where Dreuther will rendezvous with them, and bring them back to England on his yacht. The action of the novella shows how this change of plans affects absolutely everything in Bertram and Cary's lives. This is a short work, but it is packed with important and compelling themes. Greene was an absolute craftsman of language and situation, and the major themes that his longer works explore are found even in this short entertainment. Human relationships are central to the novella - the central relationship between Bertram and Cary is affected by Bertram's relationship with Dreuther, Dreuther's with 'another' of the firm's shareholders, Blixon. Greene asks how sympathies are constructed and maintained in good times and in bad. Money and chance are also extremely important to the overarching theme of gambling and roulette. Characters like Bertram and character types like Phillippe and Bird's Nest illustrate the tensions in viewing life's progression as a matter of necessity or one of chance. Again, "Loser Takes All" is a short work, and is valuable as a kind of synopsis of the issues Greene's impressive literary corpus consistently engages with. The three star rating is because, in the context of Greene's body of work alone, "Loser Takes All" is a good piece, but not a great one.
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