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| Published 1973 |
In the
introduction to my Vintage edition of The Honorary
Consul, Nicholas Shakespeare reports that in conversation he held with
Graham Greene, Greene identified The
Honorary Consul as his favorite work. (He identified The Heart of the Matter as his best.) After having read the The Honorary Consul, I can understand
his selection. Greene set it in early 1970s Argentina and Paraguay, and it’s
populated with discrete, well-developed characters caught in the swirl of
revolutionary-reactionary politics, low-level diplomacy, and personal issues of
faith, betrayal, love, and redemption.
The
central characters are Dr. Eduardo Plarr, a physician and the son of a British
national and Paraguayan mother, and Charley Fortnum, the “honorary consul” of
the title. A small band of rebels kidnap Fortnum, having mistaken him for the
intended target, the American ambassador. Dr. Plarr, a sometime friend and
later rival to Fortnum, becomes drawn into the affair through his past in
Paraguay. A friend from his youth, who is a priest turned rebel, embroils Plarr
in the ill-fated scheme. The events unfold in the world of Latin American
politics that often mixes repressive reaction, doomed rebellion, and dumb
inertia. Greene, as usual, captures this stew of persons, motives, and events. He
ranges from the conversations of the rather hapless gang of rebels to the
apathy of the diplomats who discuss Fortnum’s fate. In places, Greene’s
dialogues would have made an excellent play (as his stories often converted
easily to screenplays).
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| Graham Greene (1904-1991) |
But
with Greene, unlike, for instance, Ambler or Le Carre, there’s something more.
The seventeenth century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was dubbed the
“God-intoxicated man” by later generations. If Spinoza deserves that
appellation, then we should dub Greene “the God-intoxicated author”, for once
again, issues of God, faith, betrayal, love, and justice come to the forefront
in the dialogues of his characters. As in The
Power and the Glory (another among Greene’s best works), a wayward priest
is near the center of the action and acts as a foil to his friend Dr. Plarr.
Sometimes Greene’s dialogues seem almost too much, so weighty, yet he makes
them work with his characters and their plight. Even the cynical feel compelled
to offer justifications that draw them into dialogues about issues of good and
evil. I won’t go into the content of these dialogues (which provide a stark contrast
to those of the higher-ups), but they bear the burden of their weight and yet
still allow the plot to advance to its stunning conclusion.
I
suppose that it takes a certain type of reader to enjoy Graham Greene, and I’m
not sure why I find his work so intriguing. Perhaps it’s because his works
often deal with those on the edge, such as Brits in far-flung lands, remnants
of a once mighty empire which now, by Greene’s time, has mostly fallen apart,
often mirroring the disarray in the lives of his characters. And his novels are
set in places marked by terrible economic and political injustices, such as
Paraguay and Argentine, Haiti, West Africa, and Viet Nam. Persons in these
places often can’t lead quiet, unburdened lives. Choices are real and the sins
that may seem inconsequential elsewhere take on more serious repercussions in
these liminal worlds. To venture into a Greene novel, such as this one, is to
venture into a world where good and evil do not hide from sight, but instead parade
through life in a confusing array of lives and acts.
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