I had decided to reread some Grahame Greene. I'd devoured his books in my early twenties, and wondered how they'd hold up now. I picked "Stamboul Train" to begin with, as I barely remembered it. Wow! Talk about noir! The language is so dense and insidious, and the many points of view of the chararcters make it anxious and claustrophobic as the train itself. The anti-Semitism is blatant, and objectification of women rampant. No one ends up looking innocent, and the use the characters make of each other is like a preview of the atmosphere before World War II in Europe. Class and ethnicity and arbitrary power show the reader why another conflagration occurred. Then my husband and I watched Part II of Ken Burns' The War, about World War II and I felt I had read the lead up to the ugliness and inhumanity of that conflict. I believe I'll hunt out another of Greene's books. He was a master of language and the complexity of human motivation. He never makes it simple for us.
One of the joys of growing older is this rereading of books. Jump ahead a few decades, and my take on the same book is transformed. It's almost magic!
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