... is a novel that's obviously a work of exceptional literary craft but that you don't like. I don't like this novel, though I read it avidly. I'm far more comfortable with Graham Greene's "entertainments" -- the satirical novels that Greene himself considered lesser works -- than with his fictional expressions of his "Catholic Communist" conscience. That's what my aversion amounts to -- a distaste for Greene's philosophical message. I have the same problem with the novels of Vargas Llosa; the comic works like "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" please me immensely, but the political/ideological works like "Death in the Andes" repel me intellectually.
"The Power and the Glory" is set in Latin America, as is "Our Man in Havana". Both novels portray societies burdened by corruption and violence under elitist tyrannies, the former a tyranny of ideology and the latter a tyranny of wealth. A huge gap separated the writing of the two books, that is, Green's experience of World War 2 and his partial disillusionment with 'quietist' Catholicism. The protagonist of "The Power and the Glory" is a fugitive priest, a 'wanted man' under the regime of would-be purifiers and saviors of the peasantry. These ideologues could just as easily be fascist as communist; the closest reality to their extremism might be the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot. The Priest -- a drinker, a "whiskey priest -- evades capture for years, until he is possibly the last priest still at large in a particularly vindictive anti-clerical state of southern Mexico. His only hope is to slip across the mountains into another state where anti-clericism isn't as extreme. He isn't entirely clear, however, whether his 'vocation' isn't martyrdom -- though he considers himself unworthy of such a beatification -- or else survival to be of service to parishioners. For a small, weak, drunkard of a man, the Priest shows incredible endurance and tenacity; in the end, he accepts betrayal as his fulfillment of his sacerdotal role. The obvious association of his inevitable sacrifice with that of Jesus Christ is the core message of the book. Unless the reader is willing to 'privilege' the Priest's commitment to Christian sanctity over the commitment to a religion of social engineering -- the ideology of the Lieutenant who pursues the Priest inexorably -- one wrong-headedness seems more or less as bad as another.
There's a comparison to be made -- one that seems almost inevitable -- between "The Power and the Glory" and Malcolm Lowry's novel "Under the Volcano". Both novels are set in Mexico in the 1930s, under one of the most brutal 'caudillo' regimes. The central characters are both novels are drunkards and self-haters. Both 'heroes' are like moths attracted to their own obliteration, and both novels depict the core corruption of Power that ineluctably results in 'fascism' broadly understood. But Lowry's novel is 'orders of magnitude' superior to Greene's -- more vivid, more viscerally disturbing, more honest. In Lowry's book, every character, however briefly present, is intensely encountered psychologically. Next to Lowry, Greene seems conventional and verbose. But "Under the Volcano" is one of the "ten best" novels of the 20th C, in another league from anything Greene wrote or could have written.
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A classic in our times! It is very engaging!
Obviously, this is a classic in our times. It has been in print over 70 years now. There have been dozens of hardcover and paperback reprint editions since the author first wrote it. I just bought the third audiobook edition. No wonder that Graham Greene and others have held this to be his greatest work.Like we find in many classics, this is a book that causes us more than a bit of self-reflection. Maybe it reflects the meaning of C. S. Lewis' saying, "We read to know that we are not alone." Is it the author's intention to make this known to us? It's quite possible, if you agree with my feeble attempt to summarize the main point is that it forces us to ask ourselves, "Do a few mistakes, or our faults, wipe out the good we have done in our lives and make us unworthy of a happy eternity we want others, especially our loved ones, to find and attain?" Also, "If so, how do we live out the remainder of our lives?" This is the struggle of the "whisky priest" being hunted as a wanted man as he searches for his own peace. This is an underlying concern that has to be resolved before he is caught and executed before a firing squad. In the intervening time, his goodness is seen to unfold and to be revealed to everyone but himself. It is filled with suspense that does more than keep our interest. It is very engaging. The ending is surprising.In the audiobook version, the superb narration by Bernard Mayes introduces an element of sluggishness to the telling of the story that seems to prevent the reader from moving too quickly through the book as the suspense builds. This infuses an aspect of dread that adds to the effectiveness of the telling of the story.
