"A Thinly Disguised Autobiography" (Fictitious Letters Never Sent or Written)Letter 1 (dated April 30, 1950 from CW to GG):Oh, my most desirable Godfather,I’m sorry to learn you’re suffering from writer’s block. I don't recall you mentioning this affliction before. I’m not the best one to give advice on such matters, but they say you should write about things with which you are familiar, not that there is much for you that doesn’t fit within this category. Perhaps, my love, you could write something about us? A thinly disguised autobiography? Do you think anyone outside our circles would ever guess?I have another idea. I’ve written down a list of key words for you. Perhaps you might find inspiration in them? For instance, you could build your novel around three, maybe even five, of them. They are, after all, some of our favourite things. See what you think of these (sorry for the length. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, except to place them in alphabetical order):Adultery, agnostic, anxiety, atheism, belief, bitterness, body, desire, distrust, divorce, dread, envy, exactness, faith, fornication, God, guilt, happiness, hatred, injury, insecurity, integrity, jealousy, love, lust, marriage, ownership, pain, passion, peace, possessiveness, promise, quarrel, quiet, rationalism, saintliness, self-loathing, sex, tortured, touch, trust, truth, unhappiness, vow.What do you think, my darling? Not a bad list, is it? Not that I could write a novel around such words! I could only live a life governed by them! If you were both in it and with me!I can’t wait until our next onion sandwich, whether at the table, in bed or elsewhere...Love, C.Letter 2 (dated May 12, 1950 from GG to CW):Cafryn, sometimes I marvel at my love for you. No matter what misfortune might befall either or both of us, my love never seems to wane.Your counsel to write an autobiography, albeit thinly disguised, is indeed the correct solution to my block. Of course, I can’t write the truth about us (lest I embrace pornography and write the first truly Great Sex Novel of our times, which I might just do for you!), but I can find inspiration in it. I've decided to set this work during the war, you’re married to a high-ranking public servant, not a millionaire. I’m single and dote on you. Both of us are childless and able to indulge in our every sexual whim. We’ll lie stretched across every bed we can get our bodies on, we'll fornicate in front of every fireplace, upon every rug and behind every altar we can discover on our travels. Nothing could possibly come between us, no commitment, no human, no being, except perhaps God. Even then, I haven’t quite determined how or why even He could frustrate our love, which in the manner of the greatest Love should be nothing if not eternal.I love your list. Every word turns me on like an erogenous abstraction. In fact, each one appeals so much I can’t bring myself to abandon it. So, if you will forgive me, I will use them all. All I have to do is pad them out with suitable verbs. And there aren't many verbs to describe what I have in mind!The proof is in the pudding, because since I embarked on this suggestion of yours, words have flown like that first plane trip of ours, during which a lock of your hair brushed my cheek and inflamed me below. Even now, as I await your arrival on Friday, I feel the same way. In my mind, I see you. I see myself touch you here...and here...and there...Your husband,Graham.The Vocabulary of LoveGraham Greene did eventually write his novel, using just such words. At first, I wondered whether it was a flaw in his otherwise great literary prowess that he used so many abstract words to describe his subject matter, then I came to the conclusion that it reflected a deliberate economy of both style and vocabulary. In such a short fiction, he didn’t need many words. He didn't need more words. He didn’t need different words. In the hands of a master, they were all the words that mattered, they were all the words he required to get to the heart of the matter.We are left to judge whether the people and the situations he created with them are adequate to the task of great literature.I've read the novel three times over the course of my life. While this time I was tempted to downgrade it to four stars because of stylistic issues, I decided to retain the five star rating I assigned it from my memory of the first two readings. There are not many novels that I deign to read thrice!Adulterous and Adulterated LoveWe know from the title and the beginning of the novel that there has been an affair and that it has come to an end.Greene plays around with time and subject matter to add drama and tension to a sequence of events that contains no surprise, apart from that which preoccupies the beginning and end of most affairs: the answer to the question "why?"Sarah Miles is married to a senior public servant in wartime England. The first person narrator (the first use of this perspective by Greene in a novel), Maurice Bendrix, is an unattached and highly available author, just starting to experience the first blush of artistic and commercial success.Sarah’s marriage is tantamount to both loveless and sexless, but neither spouse feels any compulsion in the religious or moral environment of the time to seek a divorce.It is only Maurice’s personal desire to legitimate his relationship that raises the question of marriage or divorce at all. Without this expectation, both relationships, the marriage and the adultery, the love triangle, give the impression they could continue in their original form until death do them part. The Denunciation of "the Slut"Both Sarah and Bendrix commit adultery. Yet, for decades, Sarah was painted as the worse adulterer in the public eye, the "slut" (perhaps the second greatest pejorative that can be attached to a woman?).While Bendrix simply coveted something that "belonged" to another man, Sarah was the one who had made a promise to love, honour and obey her husband. Her adultery, as opposed to his, involved the breach of a quasi-contractual promise, a God-sanctioned vow.In those times, and to some extent even now, that marriage vow was supposed to withstand the threat of temptation.The "incompatibility" of the wedded couple, the sexual or emotional attraction of another, neither was supposed to be enough to justify a breach of the vow. Marriage was sacrosanct and for life. Catholicism, in particular, forbade divorce, remarriage and the legitimation of a subsequent marriage. You had to make do with and in your first marriage.To Thine Own Love Be TrueNow, outside Catholicism, at least, it is difficult to see what all of the fuss was about. If they weren’t Catholics, why didn’t Sarah just get divorced? Why didn’t Bendrix and Sarah get married, bonk themselves silly, have kids, bonk themselves silly post-kids and live happily ever after? Arguably, this is what must have been going through the mind of Bendrix, who when we meet him is an agnostic, if not an outright atheist.Looking through 21st century eyes, well, mine at least, there is a tendency to forgive both Sarah and Bendrix their "sins", because they were being "true" to their love. Even though Sarah was married, it was a loveless marriage. Didn't she have the right to fall in love with somebody else and act upon that love?"The Bitch and the Fake"The novel could have been couched in these relatively simplistic, if modern, terms. However, Greene took it a step further, by ensuring that Sarah ended the affair and did not break up her marriage to Henry Miles.Given that we know that this would happen from the outset, the focus of the novel becomes the question of how Bendrix (in the first person, and therefore we too, in the plural) will deal with his loss, which resolves down to the explanation for what Sarah did or didn’t do. If Sarah wasn't a Catholic, what was her problem? Was her conduct even more culpable in our eyes, precisely because she ended the affair and didn’t leave her husband? Was she actually "the bitch and the fake" she suspected she might be?While Sarah’s real life contemporaries might have viewed her as a "slut" for engaging in the affair in the first place, when Bendrix’ narrative commences, he too is full of hate for her. Like conventional, moralistic society, he's prepared to call her every foul word under the sun ("slut", "bitch", "fake"), because she turned her back on his love.Love Gone WrongFrom Bendrix' point of view, here were two people who appeared to have everything that was needed of a long-term or permanent relationship: emotional and intellectual compatibility, material comfort, sexual attraction and love. What went wrong?Of course, every man who has ever been rejected or dumped by a woman must believe that they bring the same qualities to the table or the altar. There can’t be anything wrong with me. You, the woman, haven’t loved me as I have deserved. You have cheated me. Or, perhaps the explanation is that, there is another man involved, some other card player who has trumped me in the game of love?So it is that, when we first meet Bendrix, we find him at the end of the affair, bitter and full of hatred.The Egotism of the MaleI found it interesting that, as a non-believer throughout the whole of the novel, Bendrix fills the hole left by the absence of God with his own presence. There is no greater authority, no moral force that is higher than the individual, himself. Bendrix is his own god. Before Sarah, he has only been sexually attracted to women who make him feel superior, women who, in effect, worship him. Like God, however, Bendrix the non-believer is a jealous god. There can be room for no one else in his version of love. He must remain the sole focus of Sarah’s love. As I read on, I couldn’t even fathom how family would be accommodated in this worldview. Their love had to be able to be expressed in the form of lust and sex at a moment’s notice. Children would only get in the way of love.The Saintliness of the "Slut"In what might arguably be a clumsy plot device, Greene gives Bendrix access to Sarah’s personal journal, in order to explain her motives to both him and to us.We learn that her love for this one mortal god was true, if not undivided. Sarah found herself in a predicament where she felt obliged to honour certain "absurd vows", and she did so. Like a saint, she suffered pain, she sacrificed what she loved, in order to prove a greater love. Ultimately, she did the right thing, even if she didn’t do it exactly by the [good] book.The Paradox of HatredAt heart, Sarah’s compulsion to honour her vows had a religious foundation, one based in the belief in the existence of a God. Bendrix derives some sort of comfort from knowing that he was genuinely loved, but, having learned to hate, he transfers his hatred to this God, in whom he had not previously believed.The paradox is that, in Greene’s mind, you can’t hate what does not exist. In order to hate God and what he had caused to occur, Bendrix had to will Him, God, into existence. Once it was established that He existed, it was equally possible to hate or love Him.Thus, while "The End of the Affair" is superficially a tale of a "failed" romance, if not just an affair that "ended", it seems at the conclusion that it might actually be the beginning of another love affair, that between Bendrix and the God of Catholicism.Choosing Which Vows to Honour and ObeyIronically, both Bendrix and Greene, male protagonist and author alike, wish to approach their God on their own terms. Having felt superior and godlike, they are reluctant to surrender their earthly, carnal privileges. God is holy and they must be obedient to Him, only to the extent that He allows them/us [males?] to indulge in love, romance, desire and sex on their/our own terms. The body is the vehicle through which you both have sex and worship God, hence a slight twist on the object of worship in the the marriage vow, "With my body, I Thee worship."This compromise, this personalized version of a belief in God, your own God, remained vital in Greene and his fiction for the rest of his life. Presumably, in his own eyes, it allowed him to be "closer my God to Thee", if not necessarily closer to God’s Church, its teachings, the Sacrament of Penance or the Rite of Confession, what Bendrix calls "your bloody little box and your beads".VERSE:"They Call That Virtue and This Sin"[After a Poem by Graham Greene]Who did dare to fashionWhat rules govern passion?What arbiter of tasteOr godly person facedThe challenge to decideWhich laws we should abide?Why does some God abovePrescribe how we must love,Adultery's a sin,Marriage should lock us in?What sex should be a vice,Though it feels very nice?May I remove your mask,Allow me, please, to ask,"If it doesn't hurt you,Why's it not a virtue?""The Third Woman"My review of a book about the real-life adulterous relationship between Graham Greene and Catherine Walston, which inspired "The End of the Affair" is here:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...SOUNDTRACK:Rilo Kiley - "The Absence Of God"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bkyBp..."And Morgan says, 'Maybe love won't let you down.All of your failures are training grounds, And just as your back's turned, you'll be surprised,' She says, 'As your solitude subsides.'"Rilo Kiley - "The Absence Of God" [Live Version]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNwpm...Rilo Kiley - "More Adventurous"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfAtMA..."I'd sacrifice money and heaven all for loveLet me be loved, let me be loved...I've been trying to nod my head, But it's like I've got a broken neckWanting to say I will as my last testamentFor you to be saved and me to be brave We don't have to walk down that aisle'Cause if marriage ain't enoughWell at least we'll be loved."
English novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) published this novel in 1951 when he was 47 years old. He dedicated this book to "C" who was Catherine Walston, his real-life mistress.I have never been a cynic when it comes to love. The same question I raised when I read De Profundis by Oscar Wilde or Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proloux. Forbidden love. Be it about gay love or illicit affair of a married person to a single one or between two married people, it is love and who are we to question about it? People fall in love. Sometimes with a wrong person or at a wrong time. Sometimes, they were victims of circumstances and they did not even mean to fall in love at all. So, why judge them? As long as they are legal age and they know what they are doing, it is their life and body. So, guys have some respect.The End of the Affair is exactly like that. It is a forbidden love between a married woman, Sarah Miles and a struggling writer, Maurice Bendrix in London amidst World War II. Sarah is married to an amiable civil servant Henry Miles. Henry is very amiable that even if he knows that his wife is having an affair, he keeps mum about it. The reason? He loves Sarah very much. One night, Sarah and Maurice are having sex in Maurice's apartment. Bombs are falling from the sky. One of those hits Maurice's apartment. Scared and praying, Sarah says that if God spares Maurice, who happened to be in the adjacent room (resting from having sex probably), she will stay away from him (as a form of repentance?). With blood on his face, Maurice shows up to the naked Sarah in the bedroom. From then on, Sarah makes good of her promise despite her love for him.The writing is sad and gloomy. It reminds me of the pain C. S. Lewis poured out while he is writing his memoir, A Grief Observed. It is as if Greene opened up his heart and all the reader could find are pain and sadness. Pain of being dumped by the woman he loves. Pain of having been left alive when the woman is taken back by God to His fold and seems to be working miracles on earth now that she is in heaven. Pain that the woman did not leave her husband when he is inviting her that they runaway and be free.A man pouring his heart out is something that takes a lot of courage to do. Considering that there really was Catherine Walston in his life, my hats are off to Greene. Besides, he did it beautifully. Amidst the war-torn London, a love so beautiful, albeit forbidden, is still a feeling to behold. The prose is taut, lyrical and passionate. Sarah calling out to God while having sex with Maurice seems trite, too melodramatic and unrealistic. Again, however, doesn't loving sometimes feel that way? Come on, guys. This novel is too good for you to pass up. Recommended for all people who love to love. But not for those who are currently nursing his/her broken heart as the feeling you will get from this book can compound the pain in your heart and you might decide to stay in the rain, get pneumonia and die like Sarah Miles just to stay away from your tempting ex-lover who wants you back. I would not want that despite my encouragement for you to read this book.
What do You think about The End Of The Affair (2004)?
I am not only committing to the five stars for this review, I wish I could give it more. To say it deserves it would be rather an understatement. Reading the book was actually one of those physically memorable experiences: curling up in a ball with it, crouched over it reading behind piles of work I should have been doing, completely zoning out the world around me until it was forced to my attention, not to mention the actual physical pain I felt at the beauty of some of the language employed. Greene's writing here is just absolutely astounding. I cannot emphasize that enough. It is an obsessive love he writes of, obstensibly. That's what the back cover and the short summaries would have us believe that this book is about. But that is not all this book is about. Not even close.Greene writes about hatred, the nature of belief, the nature of God and what it means to believe in Him, the physical and emotional experience of love, the effects that that love can have on our lives.... and blends it all together so that we see that none of those things can be seperated. This is one of three novels in his "Catholic" trilogy, and the love of and need for God is as intrinsic as the love and need for our soulmates in life. Everything in the end is about God, but through love and hate and the deepest emotions that can be written out from our core. Greene manages to convey emotions and ways of thinking about life and love that we have all felt, but in such a beautifully done way perhaps we could never quite express what it meant ourselves. There were phrases in the book that brought back vivid, intense flashes out of my own experiences, little poignant moments that exactly fit just some random little sentence inserted into a two page rant. That happened over and over again. If I did such things to my books, I would have paragraphs highlighted on every page. Many times during the book a sort of stream of consciousness is evident in the narration where it is unclear whether the narrator is expressing his thoughts or those of his lover's, whether his thoughts are now or in the past, or whether he can really tell himself which it is. I found that device to be very powerful, showing the effect that even the memory of great events can have upon us, and how visceral the feelings can be even all these years later. Greene is also not afraid to lay his characters bare, perhaps get them on our bad side, to show them in all their ugliness and pettiness- which makes them all the more real. It is how we all act in love and in times of desperation and need. This was so much better done than Heart of the Matter, where I think Greene really tries to keep the reader at more of a distance. That was a mistake. /This/ is a book that gets one thinking about God and love and what it's all about. One has to get at the reader's core before such basic beliefs can really be brought out to be questioned and beaten. And the author won't do that without first going there himself through his characters and his deeply felt, naked writing.Anyway... possibly the best treatise on love and God I've ever read, and certainly the one that will stay with me the longest. Those were just some random thoughts that came to me upon finishing it, but I hope it is enough that someone else will read it. It's an experience that everyone should have.
—Kelly
"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity. The words of human love have been used by the saints to describe their vision of God, and so, I suppose, we might use the terms of prayer, meditation, contemplation to explain the intensity of the love we feel for a woman. We too surrender memory, intellect, intelligence, and we too experience the deprivation, the noche oscura, and sometimes as a reward a kind of peace. The act of love itself has been described as the little death, and lovers sometimes experience too the little peace. It is odd to find myself writing these phrases as though I loved what in fact I hate. Sometimes I don't recognize my own thoughts. What do I know of phrases like 'the dark night' or of prayer, who have only one prayer? I have inherited them, that is all, like a husband who is left by death in the useless possession of a woman's clothes, scents, pots of cream ... And yet there was this peace...That is how I think of those first months of war--was it a phoney peace as well as a phoney war? It seems now to have stretched arms of comfort and reassurance all over those months of dubiety and waiting, but the peace must, I suppose, even at that time have been punctuated by misunderstanding and suspicion. Just as I went home that first evening with no exhilaration but only a sense of sadness and resignation, so again and again I returned home on other days with the certainty that I was only one of many men--the favourite lover for the moment. This woman, whom I loved so obsessively that if I woke in the night I immediately found the thought of her in my brain and abandoned sleep, seemed to give up all her time to me. And yet I could feel no trust: in the act of love I could be arrogant, but alone I had only to look in the mirror to see doubt, in the shape of a lined face and a lame leg--why me? There were always occasions when we couldn't meet--appointments with a dentist or a hairdresser, occasions when Henry entertained, when they were alone together. It was no good telling myself that in her own home she would have no opportunity to betray me (with the egotism of a lover I was already using that word with its suggestion of a non-existent duty) while Henry worked on the widows' pensions or--for he was soon shifted from that job--on the distribution of gas-masks and the design of approved cardboard cases, for didn't I know it was possible to make love in the most dangerous circumstances, if the desire were there? Distrust grows with a lover's success."
—Edward
I’ll admit that the first time I read ‘The End of the Affair’ I wasn’t all that impressed. When I finished it then I put my copy down with a shrug thinking that it was curiously unaffecting and one of those books harmed by Greene just banging on about Catholicism.How wrong I was.Since then I’ve ventured further into Greene-land and discovered that there are other books where the author’s musings on his faith are poured on like a clumsy priest spilling the communion wine (the incredibly dull ‘Burnt Out Case’ springs to mind). But ‘The End of the Affair’ – while Catholicism is important – is far more about people and emotions and jealousy and the nature of love. And that’s what truly astounds me on re-reading this book, that I could ever have come away from it believing that it was unaffecting. This is an incredibly touching tale centring on a man whose faults come from the fact that he is just too human.Bendix is an author who had a passionate affair with a married woman named Sarah, until she abruptly dumped him. Consumed by hatred and petty jealousy, he suddenly has an opportunity to both take revenge for her betrayal and to find out why she left him (was it for another lover perhaps?) and this becomes his obsession. He is a great character, weak and fallible, but recognisably a human being. Greene is such a good writer that even when Bendix is being ridiculously petty and hateful, the reader’s sympathy does not entirely desert him – even if that hypothetical reader does wince while turning the pages.The reality of the affair and its aftermath are incredibly well conjured, and in addition Greene creates a great array of supporting characters (I particularly liked the very English private detective Parkiss). At the end issues about faith and belief have been raised, but so has the fallible and ephemeral nature of love. And even through the pettiness and meanness and the wrong-headed decisions which litter this book, it still manages to draw a wonderful, if thwarted tale of romance.
—F.R.
