A Sort of Life: A Memoir

A Sort of Life is a short and episodic memoir of Graham Greene’s life from his childhood through his early years as a novelist (stopping just before the publication of Stamboul Train, later retitled Orient Express). Greene is a lucid and perceptive writer, more direct than in his novels:

The conditions of writing change absolutely between the first novel and the second: the first is an adventure, the second is a duty. The first is like a sprint which leaves you exhausted and triumphant beside the track. With the second the writer has been transformed into a long-distance runner - the finishing tape is out of sight, at the end of life. He must guard his energies and plan ahead. A long endurance is more exhausting than a sprint, and less heroic.

[…]

The influence of early books is profound. So much of the future lies on the shelves. Early reading has more influence than any religious teaching.

[…]

I particularly resented my father’s interest. How could a grown man, I argued, feel any concern for what happened on a child’s walk?... Only when I had children of my own did I realize how his interest in my doings had been genuine and only then I discovered a buried love and sorrow for him which emerges from time to time in dreams.

There are many such moments of candor and thoughtfulness that make the book a valuable read, even for those who are not familiar with Greene’s fiction.