{Literary Circles [continued (8)]}[29th November 1988]

[Redbook6:46)][19881129:1512c]{Literary Circles [continued (8)]}[29th November 1988]

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[continued]

Grahame Greene:

[The text on the ms diagrams reproduced above is too complicated to be summarised in a table at present.]

The broad breakdown is:

		(Outer)	[\]	R[ight] s[emi]/c[ycle]?	[/]	1st Quarter-Cycle:	Education
Prolific; Thrillers		1st Half Cycle	[/]	L[eft] s[emi]/c[ycle]?	[\]	2nd Quarter-Cycle:	1st novels & Thrillers; Creatively prolific period
Sparing; Religious		(Inner)	[\]	L[eft] s[emi]/c[ycle]?	[/]	3rd Quarter-Cycle:	Few novels: mostly religious
Ex Cathedra		2nd Half Cycle	[/]	R[ight] s[emi]/c[ycle]?	[\]	4th Quarter-Cycle:	?Fairly detached, dry, even remote.

Interestingly, although I set this out as 4 Quarter-Cycles according to the date of Conversion, the pattern on a pair of Half-Cycles (ignoring Conversion) is not dissimilar to that of Eliot and Waugh: ie popular, secular work on left Outer (1^st)* Half-Cycle, followed by less popular, religious work on Left Inner (2^nd)* Half-Cycle, and a sort of integrating ‘ex cathedra’phase in the last phase (or quarter) of life.

Bear in mind, though that

(a) the first and last quarters of all Men’s lives are likely to be similar; and

(b) these three shared the experience, in their middle years, of the dissolution into another War. They were all three converted within five years of each other, at about the middle of this period.

Of course, it could be argued that all writers write for reputation until they have it, and then for love; but that is not nearly such a precise explanation.

*[1st & 2nd of the pair of Half-Cycles, presumably]

[cf Samuel Johnson: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”; as recorded by James Boswell, who immediately after setting down this “strange opinion” noted that: “Numerous instances to refute this will occur to all who are versed in the history of literature.” Personally the writer of these journals and the fictions [0],[1] & [2] wrote because he was driven to, once having started (broadly speaking) being unable to stop until feeling compelled to, much later & with undesirable consequences.]

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