A dream of Greeneland

Last night's dreams included this great jumble (sources are noted): I was in Malaysia (talk yesterday of a relative living there) on a really dark night in a bar, warning some bloke that I had overheard that his girlfriend was working for the CIA and had a large role in the recent overthrow of the government (Graham Greene). One of the other characters in the dream, of uncertain role, was Elliot from Scrubs (I've been enjoying a recent series run on Comedy Channel - where JD got his new girlfriend pregnant). After issuing my warning, I caught a taxi which I had to share with a woman who wanted to be driven to Calcutta (that ABC series "The Story of India", of which I keep only seeing snippets, but it makes India look very pretty.)

Anyhow, back to Graham Greene, there is yet another book out about him, reviewed here at Weekly Standard, about his correspondence. The review sums up Greene's thoughts about fiction, which probably explain why he is of interest to me:

After the death of Henry James, according to Greene, "the religious sense was lost to the English novel, and with the religious sense went the sense of the importance of the human act." Consequently, Greene's own work--especially the major books of what one might call his middle period: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair--sought to reinvest contemporary fiction with moral seriousness, to depict solid and real people trapped in life-or-death ethical dilemmas and racked by guilt and despair.