'They say the earth is round- my madness offends'
As many of you know, one of my very favorite movies is Carol Reed's The Third Man. In fact, in terms of my sheer love for it, it is second only to Casablanca (though Blade Runner comes terribly close). The script for The Third Man was written by a famous and widely respected novelist, Graham Greene. A while ago, I decided that given my love for The Third Man, I needed more Graham Green in my life. So I went through the selection at the nearest Barnes and Noble, and decided on Our Man in Havana, because it is a satire with spies. It was a good choice.
" 'As long as nothing happens anything is possible, you agree? It is a pity that a lottery is ever drawn. I lose a hundred and forty thousand dollars a week, and I am a poor man.' "
Our Man in Havana is Mr. Wormold, a middle-aged British ex-pat who lives in pre-revolutionary Cuba, where he sells vacuum cleaners. His wife ran off some time ago, leaving him to care for their daughter Milly. Milly is something of an odd child, very religious (though her father is not) and not quite able to understand that her father really can't afford a horse and a country club membership for her. At least, he couldn't, until a smartly dressed Brit decides to recruit Wormold as a spy. For the sake of the money, Wormold agrees. But he doesn't know how to be a spy. How does one recruit agents, how does one gather information? Well, perhaps you just make them all up and back up some of the information with things gleaned from newspapers. This seems like a sure way to defraud the government without anyone getting hurt, but the problem with the spy business is that everyone is hiding things and figuring other things out, and you never know what might be taken seriously...
As you might expect from the premise, this is in many ways a very absurd book. Characters are prone to having wonderfully eccentric conversations, often fraught with awkwardness and misunderstanding. Wormold dreams up the design for Ultra Secret Weapons he has "discovered" using the parts of a vacuum cleaner, and sends encrypted messages using a code based on a copy of Charles Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare (a book which pretty much all the characters dislike, with the exception of Milly). But there are seriously dark undertones which raise their heads more and more as the book goes on. The violence that comes with any kind of war, be it hot or cold, is real, and Greene doesn't flinch from that in the slightest.
This is one of those books where, on the one hand, you see it making an excellent film if placed in the right hands, and on the other, you feel distinctly sorry for anyone who does not read the book. There is definitely a cinematic quality to it, it's full of striking imagines and scenes which are vividly pictured. It's highly aware of how things sound, as well, and makes use of a song as a motif. That's right, the book has sound direction. But at the same time, he's doing amazing things with words. The book is littered with these brilliant absurdly macabre similes that fit the tone perfectly. And there are wonderful touches like the fact that as his life becomes more like a piece of fiction he wrote for London (or is it the other way round?), Wormold ends up thinking in Shakespeare references. The detail of Wormold's character portrait is something you can't quite manage in film.
That's not to say the writing is entirely perfect. There's a character whose tendency to outright state some of the themes does seem to be pushing it, though I felt Greene still managed to pull it off. And it does definitely show signs of the times. It was written in the fifties, and the n-word is used. (It felt to me like Greene was imitating speech patterns and that there wasn't any real racist intent, but then again it's not like there are any actual black characters. In any case, not a word that should be used.) But there's really very little I can find wrong with this book.
Conclusion: My god I need more Graham Green in my life.
Of course, I miiight have wanted to do my research before reading this, since guess what another one of the Carol Reed/Graham Green collaborations was? That's right, a film of Our Man in Havana, starring none other than Alec Guinness as Wormold. (Does that sound specifically made for me? Yes, yes it does.) It'll be a little hard to go from the book to the movie, I'm afraid. But at the same time, I can't wait come home and see how they did it.
" 'As long as nothing happens anything is possible, you agree? It is a pity that a lottery is ever drawn. I lose a hundred and forty thousand dollars a week, and I am a poor man.' "
Our Man in Havana is Mr. Wormold, a middle-aged British ex-pat who lives in pre-revolutionary Cuba, where he sells vacuum cleaners. His wife ran off some time ago, leaving him to care for their daughter Milly. Milly is something of an odd child, very religious (though her father is not) and not quite able to understand that her father really can't afford a horse and a country club membership for her. At least, he couldn't, until a smartly dressed Brit decides to recruit Wormold as a spy. For the sake of the money, Wormold agrees. But he doesn't know how to be a spy. How does one recruit agents, how does one gather information? Well, perhaps you just make them all up and back up some of the information with things gleaned from newspapers. This seems like a sure way to defraud the government without anyone getting hurt, but the problem with the spy business is that everyone is hiding things and figuring other things out, and you never know what might be taken seriously...
As you might expect from the premise, this is in many ways a very absurd book. Characters are prone to having wonderfully eccentric conversations, often fraught with awkwardness and misunderstanding. Wormold dreams up the design for Ultra Secret Weapons he has "discovered" using the parts of a vacuum cleaner, and sends encrypted messages using a code based on a copy of Charles Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare (a book which pretty much all the characters dislike, with the exception of Milly). But there are seriously dark undertones which raise their heads more and more as the book goes on. The violence that comes with any kind of war, be it hot or cold, is real, and Greene doesn't flinch from that in the slightest.
This is one of those books where, on the one hand, you see it making an excellent film if placed in the right hands, and on the other, you feel distinctly sorry for anyone who does not read the book. There is definitely a cinematic quality to it, it's full of striking imagines and scenes which are vividly pictured. It's highly aware of how things sound, as well, and makes use of a song as a motif. That's right, the book has sound direction. But at the same time, he's doing amazing things with words. The book is littered with these brilliant absurdly macabre similes that fit the tone perfectly. And there are wonderful touches like the fact that as his life becomes more like a piece of fiction he wrote for London (or is it the other way round?), Wormold ends up thinking in Shakespeare references. The detail of Wormold's character portrait is something you can't quite manage in film.
That's not to say the writing is entirely perfect. There's a character whose tendency to outright state some of the themes does seem to be pushing it, though I felt Greene still managed to pull it off. And it does definitely show signs of the times. It was written in the fifties, and the n-word is used. (It felt to me like Greene was imitating speech patterns and that there wasn't any real racist intent, but then again it's not like there are any actual black characters. In any case, not a word that should be used.) But there's really very little I can find wrong with this book.
Conclusion: My god I need more Graham Green in my life.
Of course, I miiight have wanted to do my research before reading this, since guess what another one of the Carol Reed/Graham Green collaborations was? That's right, a film of Our Man in Havana, starring none other than Alec Guinness as Wormold. (Does that sound specifically made for me? Yes, yes it does.) It'll be a little hard to go from the book to the movie, I'm afraid. But at the same time, I can't wait come home and see how they did it.