2024-03-10 11:57:03
Literature action scenes from world literature
When Graham Greene was once the third man
As of: 2:10 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes
Multifaceted: Graham Greene (1904 to 1991)
Quelle: picture-alliance / Mary Evans Pi/Mary Evans Picture Library
Graham Greene was older and still needed the money when he entered a literary competition. You should submit novel beginnings in the style of Graham Greene. Greene submitted three under three pseudonyms. The result is still surprising today.
When writers are bored, they come up with the stupidest ideas. Graham Greene (1904 to 1991), for example, whose life probably consisted of more action scenes than that of any other literary figure, it occurred to him in a state of boredom as a teenager that Russian Roulette could be just as interesting a thing as – years later – to be a British-Soviet double agent alongside Kim Philby.
“I was ready,” the bipolar master inventor of at least ambivalent characters in the minefield of at least ambivalent political systems once wrote, “to wear any mask in order to escape myself.”
They just had to be held up to Greene, whose first novel was called “The Conflict of the Soul” and whose last was “A Man with Many Names.” The British weekly New Statesman did this in 1949, for example.
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Action scenes from world literature
Then she wrote a competition for her readers, a not uncommon fringe sport in literature at the time. They should please come up with novel beginnings in the style of Graham Greene or Henry Green. Two chapters maybe.
You could win money for this literary mimicry, which any halfway talented chatbot can do today. The winner of the silver medal alone received six guineas. Graham Greene, the masked man who was already famous at the time and liked to make films, of course took part.
And – as a man with many names, he didn’t let himself be spoiled – threefold. He sent texts as N. Wilkinson, as M. Wilkinson and as Dr. Look one. And actually won. As N. Wilkinson. He won a guinea because he had to share second place with five other Graham Greene similarists.
Nothing won, anywhere
However, Greene insisted on the payment, even though he didn’t actually need it, because prize money was exempt from income tax. Maybe he should have tried being a Henry Green impersonator.
In any case, he must have had so much fun competing with other Graham Greene mimics that he later often took part in similar competitions. He later won just as little as he did at the Stockholm Nobel Prize Commission.
None of his self-parodies became a real Graham Greene novel. His silver medal text later went on to have a film career. The story of the son of a British MI5 spy, who was kidnapped by Yugoslav agents in Venice as the espionage war grew colder, fell into the hands of Italian director Mario Soldieri. He carefully asked Greene whether he might want to do something bigger with the beginning.
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Action scenes from world literature
Greene hesitated a bit. And then got carried away with “The Stranger’s Hand”, a “film story” of thirty pages. Soldieri took what he got. The young Guy Elmes, an expert in spy dramas, and the no longer very young Giorgio Bassani, who would only become world famous outside Italy years later with his debut, the “Ferrareser Stories”, made a script from the novella. Trevor Howard starred opposite the always gorgeous Alida Valli.
Five years after competing in the New Statesman, The Stranger’s Hand was released in cinemas. It didn’t necessarily become a milestone in film history. Mario Soldieri was still pretty proud of it.
Especially because of one scene. You’re sitting in a gondola. And sees Graham Greene in a film for the first time. That means: you can’t see him completely. You only see the hand. A stranger’s hand.
It is said that all writers’ lives are paper. In this series we provide evidence to the contrary.
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