Yiyun Li at the Paris Review:
Two moments in Graham Greene’s published life have often returned to me in the past twenty years. This may sound strange: an ideal reader should refrain from crossing the boundary between a writer’s work and his life. And yet it is inevitable: rarely does an author have the luxury of having no known biography. Greene, having written about his life and having had his life extensively written about by others, remains near when one reads his work—not insistently dominating or distracting, as some writers may prove to be, but as a presence often felt and at times caught by a side glance.
The first moment appears in Greene’s memoir Ways of Escape. In a chapter about Brighton Rock, which Greene called a labour of love, he explains the original inspiration for the novel with a reminiscence about the first film he saw at age six—a silent film about a kitchen maid turned queen, with live music played offscreen—he writes, “Her march was accompanied by an old lady on a piano, but the tock-tock-tock of untuned wires stayed in my memory when other melodies faded … That was the kind of book I always wanted to write: the high romantic tale, capturing us in youth with hopes that prove illusions, to which we return again in age in order to escape the sad reality.”
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