User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Graham Greene is known as a “Catholic novelist” even though he objected to that description. I mention that because this book is one of his four novels, which, according to Wiki, source of all wisdom, “are the gold standard of the Catholic novel.” The other three are Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair.
Like many other Greene novels, this one is set in a down-and-out environment in a Third World country. (Third World at least at the time Greene visited: Mexico and Africa in the 1930’s and 1940’s; Haiti, Cuba and the Congo in the 1950’s.) Greene’s travels around the world (including a stint as a British spy in WW II) informed many of his novels. This one, The Power and the Glory, was based on his travels in Mexico in 1938; The Comedians, Haiti; A Burnt Out Case, the Congo; Our Man in Havana, Cuba, and The Heart of the Matter, Sierra Leone.
Greene hit his literary stride in writing set in these destitute countries marked by starvation, disease, political tyranny, graft and corruption.
In this novel the focus is on anti-clericalism in Mexico in the 1930’s. Greene’s publisher specifically paid for his trip to Mexico for this purpose in 1938. Anti-clericalism has a long history in Mexico related to the Revolutions in 1860 and 1910 and the Constitution of 1917 which seized church land, outlawed monastic orders, banned public worship outside of churches, took away political rights from clergy and prohibited primary education by churches.
By the 1930’s the persecution of clergy had reached new heights, varying in each Mexican state depending upon the political inclinations of the governors. In Tabasco state, on the southernmost curve of the Gulf of Mexico, persecution was the worst and it’s likely the geographical setting of the story. We’re in a place of subsistence farming and banana plantations, days from any city by walking, mule or water. Churches here were closed and many destroyed. Priests were forbidden to wear garb or even conduct masses and many were forced to marry. The persecution escalated to the point where priests were hunted down by police and executed without trial.
On to the story: Our main character is a priest on the run because there is a reward on his head. He's not dressed as a priest but his diction and decorum as an educated man give him away. Just about everyone he meets assumes he’s a priest on the run.
But he’s a “whiskey priest,” addicted to his wine. He has also fathered an illegitimate child. At one point he meets his 7-year old daughter for the first time. Everywhere he goes crowds of peasants beseech him to perform a mass, conduct weddings and baptisms. Depending on his level of fear, sometimes, in despair, he ignores them and moves on; other times he conducts the sacraments. Sometimes he calculates how much he will charge for baptisms and how many bottles of wine the receipts will buy him. Because of his drinking, his illicit liaison, and his fear of death by firing squad, he feels unworthy of his role. He’s human.
We have other characters of course. A dentist, cut off by WW II from contact with his family in Europe, despairs of ever seeing them again. A precocious 13-year old runs the family plantation for her incapacitated parents. She hides the priest for a time. We have good cops/bad cops in pursuit of the priest; some want to see him killed and some try to help him. The priest can’t trust anyone --- an offer of help may be a trap to get the reward on his head --- a huge sum in this backwards, destitute world.
A few quotes:
He walked slowly; happiness drained out of him more quickly and completely than out of an unhappy man: an unhappy man is always prepared.
[A man talking to his wife] It’s not such a bad life…But he could feel her stiffen: the word “life” was taboo: it reminded you of death.
The woman began to cry – dryly, without tears, the trapped noise of something wanting to be released…
Of course, a classic.
Photo from runyon.lib.utexas.edu
Anti-clerical logo from newworldencyclopedia.org
Rating: really liked it
You can never go wrong with this guy—most definitely dude's on my Top Ten of All-Time favorite novelists. You cannot ask for crisper prose: the dialogue is practically in audio, the descriptions themselves cause impressive bouts with synesthesia. I cannot think of a single writer that is without flaw—the closest to that super-man would be Graham Greene.
That being said, this is my least favorite novel of his thus far; and it is interesting to note that this one is widely hailed as his masterpiece. No sir, that title goes to “The Quiet American", a thunderbolt of supreme genius. But I even preferred “Brighton Rock”, too. Here, like in that one, Greene creates his own orb around a very fickle, very risque topic: religion (and, most specifically [not, of course, my favorite at all:] Catholicism). It is a very hard thesis to substantiate (that the search for God transcends the church) and yet the different facets in the tests and shortcomings of a very human, very counter-effective “whisky” priest proves just how false the whole enterprise is… and yet religion, it seems, is a must. I really did not side with any particular point of view, just enjoyed the ride—and it’s sort of like Cather’s “Death Comes to the Archbishop,” only better (an accomplishment without a doubt). It is ambitious and harsh, beautiful and devastating--Mexico is there, & yet not. It is cinematic and simultaneously personal. I will read ALL his others, for here's a novel to discover, & after some time naturally, to rediscover.
Rating: really liked it
THE BLESSED WILL NOT CARE WHAT ANGLE THEY ARE REGARDED FROM,
HAVING NOTHING TO HIDE...
WHEN I TRY TO IMAGINE A FAULTLESS LIFE,
OR THE LIFE TO COME, WHAT I HEAR IS THE MURMUR OF UNDERGROUND STREAMS,
WHAT I SEE IS A LIMESTONE LANDSCAPE.
W.H. Auden, In Praise of Limestone.
The Whiskey Priest is a Limestone Priest. Scrape him abrasively, and he chips and crumbles. But he is quite beyond caring about appearances.
Me too. Tonight, during a long talk with an old friend about the various total moral disasters that privilege and depravity have left us with in old age, I let all my nervously impatient reactions to her long tale of woe drop. Totally.
I, like Greene, am a Christian but have grown weary of shoring up my dogma against such sorrowful devastation as my friend feels. Instead, I just listened in absolute poverty of spirit. As Greene must have sorrowfully held his tongue during his trip to the horrendously repressive Mexico of the thirties.
And as my own conflicts with challenges to my faith dropped off, I then felt the totalising warmth of peace envelop my inner spirit.
The Whiskey Priest no longer judges, either. Forget about our modern glitzy cinematic treatment of the Christeros - the failed Whiskey Priest is the Real Rôle Model for our broken humanity.
For he represents sacred compassion’s Last Stand.
The inconveniently embarrassing martyrdom.
Now, the Christeros were Christian vigilantes among the Mexican faithful during the bloody early twentieth century governmental crackdown on clerics who confessed the Catholic Faith.
And the little, mercilessly-hounded Whiskey Priest also represents the last stand of all faithful humanitarians in this current stark, uncaring global crackdown on the too-human poor: a blunt, crass gentrification.
A gentrification that seeks to make of this paltry fallen world an oasis for the well-to-do.
And these poor lost souls?
Let them eat cake!
Yes, Graham Greene back in the 1930’s was describing a scenario that is still very much a part of our lives.
And we “bleeding heart liberals” are the New Christeros.
We must never let our resolve falter - and we must aim carefully when we fire off our bitter aperçus!
For the Rich just don’t care.
Their armour is thick.
But they cringe at our attacks.
And we won’t quit...
So, for their sake I loved ere I go hence
And the high cause of love’s magnificence
We carry on, carrying the Cross of the Christeros.
Rating: really liked it
(Book 589 from 1001 books) - The Labyrinthine Ways = The Power and The Glory, Graham GreeneThe Power and the Glory (1940) is a novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often recited at the end of the Lord's Prayer:
"For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen." It was initially published in the United States under the title The Labyrinthine Ways.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «جلال و قدرت»؛ «قدرت و جلال»؛ «قدرت و افتخار»؛ «مسیحای دیگر یهودای دیگر»؛ نویسنده: گراهام گرین؛ انتشاذاتیها: (وزارت فرهنگ و ارشاد اسلامی، امیرکبیر؛ طرح نو، چشمه) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم ماه دسامبر سال1996میلادی
عنوان: قدرت و افتخار؛ نویسنده: گراهام گرین؛ مترجم: عبدالله آزادیان؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، سال1342؛ در312ص؛ چاپ دیگر سال1393؛ شابک9789640016664؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده20م
عنوان: جلال و قدرت؛ نویسنده: گراهام گرین؛ مترجم: هرمز عبداللهی؛ تهران، طرح نو، سال1373؛ در325ص؛ چاپ سوم سال1387؛
عنوان: مسیحای دیگر یهودای دیگر (قدرت و جلال)؛ نویسنده: گراهام گرین؛ مترجم: هرمز عبداللهی؛ تهران، چشمه، سال1376؛ در325ص؛
جلال و قدرت را انتشارات طرح نو منتشر کرده، همین کتاب با نام «قدرت و جلال» در انتشارات چشمه چاپ شده است
گراهام گرین، این کتاب خویش را، پس از سفر به «مکزیک» در سال1938میلادی، بنوشتند، و در آن به سر و سامان اسفبار مردمان کشور «مکزیک»، در زمان اجرای قوانین ضدمذهبی دولت آن کشور، پرداخته اند؛ این اثر که هم در موضوع، و هم در درونمایه، به پشتیبانی از ایمان مسیحی میپردازد، در زمره ی شاهکارهای ادبیات مذهبی غرب قرار میگیرد، هر چند که تشبیه کشیش میخواره، و متزلزل داستان به «حضرت مسیح»، موجب زشت شمردن این اثر، از سوی کلیسای کاتولیک نیز شده بود
نقل از ص183: (وقتی انسان بتواند چهره ی زن یا مردی را به دقت در نظر مجسم کند، همیشه میتواند به او احساس ترحم نیز داشته باشد، این صفتی است که با تصویر خدا قرین و همراه است؛ وقتی انسان خطهای گوشه ی چشمها و شکل دهان کسی را ببیند، و ببیند که موهایش چگونه رشد میکنند، دیگر محال است بتواند به او نفرت داشته باشد؛ نفرت تنها از کمبود و درماندگی نیروی تخیل سرچشمه میگیرد؛ امید غریزه ای است که تنها ذهن استدلالی و معقول بشر میتواند آن را از بین ببرد)؛
از ص198: (غریزه مانند حس وظیفه است – آدم آن را براحتی با وفاداری اشتباه میکند)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/03/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/02/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
This little gem turned out to be quite a surprise. It is indeed powerful and it is glorious. Greene's writing seems really simple and is easy to read, and yet is so full of meaning. I am still soaking it all in.
As the lead character, the 'whiskey-priest', moves from one place to another, Greene takes us along on a journey taut with suspense and tension. However, it is really his moral journey which is the most captivating. We not only witness the priest's struggle to escape, we also get to look into his tormented soul and his ambivalence. He is constantly torn between following what his religious faith has taught him while his worldly sense seems to make more practical sense. He feels guilty for his sins, but he loves the fruit of his sin. He almost wishes that he be caught so that he could be rid of the fear and the misery. But doesn't his faith teach him that it is his duty to save his soul? He has sinned and is immoral, but he is also full of compassion and love for fellow human beings.
A question that haunts the priest and the reader throughout is whether he will find redemption and if his soul will achieve salvation? Or do immoralities and sins always overshadow a man's goodness? Greene makes it so easy for one to understand his characters. The priest, with his virtues and his flaws, feels like a very real person. It is not at all difficult to imagine such a person walking some part of this earth in flesh.
While we read the thoughts and the convictions of the priest, the lieutenant serves as the opposing voice. Both have some ideals which I do not completely agree with, but I also don't consider either of them to be totally wrong. I also liked that the priest and the lieutenant, though rivals, are able to see the good in each other and have mutual respect. Through these two characters, Greene brings forth the impermanence of beliefs through which one defines what is "right". Life can always take such turns that one's firmly believed ideals cease to make sense anymore.
As the journey proceeds and we encounter various places and characters, Greene also reveals the misery, poverty, disease and utter desolation that has engulfed these wastelands. He captures the feeling of the place and the moment with just the right words. Through his words, you can almost feel the oppressive heat or the thundering rainstorm or the tranquility and freshness of an early morning. Different characters that we meet give a sense of how bleak and despairing their life is. There is a person who cannot shirk off the idea of death, there is another with a desperate cheerfulness who has to constantly remind himself that he is happy. There are several instances where we see the difference between the world-view of adults and children. Adults who have known better times and have only those memories to draw any happiness from. While the only world their children have seen is this world of misery. These children haven't known what happiness, hope or faith means. They have matured before they have aged. All the playfulness and innocence of childhood has been drained away.
Another frequently encountered theme is that of abandonment. The words 'abandoned', 'abandonment' crop up very often..be it a man who has abandoned his family, a child abandoned by her father, a man deserted in the forest. However, what Greene is really hinting at is the abandonment of this land and its people. They are cut-off from the rest of the world to rot in suffering, while the world and civilization outside progress. The future holds no promises, all hope and faith has vanished. Life has ceased to have any meaning, God himself has ceased to exist. Death is an everyday affair for them and life is just a duty to be performed from day-to-day without ever knowing its joy and charm.
She said: "I would rather die."
"Oh," he said, "of course. That goes without saying. But we have to go on living."
"She was one of those garrulous women who show to strangers the photographs of their children: but all she had to show was coffin."
For the most part the novel is bleak and grim, but it speaks of hope as well.
"It is one of the strange discoveries a man makes that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration: there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times:even in danger and misery the pendulum swings."
Greene also reminds us of how peace and beauty can exist in the smallest of moments, which people often fail to notice until it has been left far behind.
"It was nearly like peace, but not quite. For peace you needed human company-his alone-ness was like a threat of things to come. Suddenly he remembered - for no apparent reason - a day of rain at the American seminary, the glass windows of the library steamed over with central heating, the tall shelves of sedate books, and a young man - a stranger from Tucson - drawing his initials on the pane with his finger - that was peace. He looked at it from outside: he couldn't believe he would ever again get in."
There is so much more I have to say about this novel, I could never cover it all in a review. Let me just say it is so very human.
Rating: really liked it
The Power and the Glory was indeed
an Awe Greene!
[Graham Greene, britannica.com.]
It was so engaging and vivid, at times so intense and very deep, and overall a difficult (
"Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be") and thought-provoking read.
"He woke with the sense of complete despair that a man might feel finding the only money he possessed was counterfeit."The Power and the Glory read like a struggle - a continuous conflict, a marathon to achieve superiority and a contest to stay relevant, between faith and authority. Here, ‘faith’ is not just about the belief in the religion (Christianity and Catholicism) but also about confidence in self and trust in humanity.
Set in Mexico during the times after the revolution in the 1930s, and when those in power opposed and did not believe in God and Religion,
The Power and the Glory is primarily the story of a priest who is on the run. The priest, now known as the ‘whisky priest’, is being searched rigorously by the authorities led by a lieutenant. This lieutenant is not a ruthless barbarian who is just intending to eliminate religion and priests, but his purpose is to do what is good for his nation (Mexico) and its people. The lieutenant, very similar to the priest, also has a strong faith, but this is in his purpose and he believes that a Catholicism-free Mexico will be prosperous. Thus, starts this journey of struggle. Greene`s masterful and beautiful writing makes this story fascinating, challenging and thought-provoking.
From the notes:
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
==========
The glittering worlds lay there in space like a promise-the world was not the universe.
==========
To those you love you do not always say good-bye beside a deathbed, in an atmosphere of leisure and incense.
==========
"You must take care of yourself because you are so-necessary. The President up in the capital goes guarded by men with guns-but, my child, you have all the angels of heaven-"
==========
One mustn't have human affections-or rather one must love every soul as if it were one's own child.
==========
What was the good of confession when you loved the result of your crime?
==========
Perhaps all life was like that-dull and then a heroic flurry at the end.==========
Rating: really liked it
Greene had an unerring eye for the sanctity of human weakness and the ominousness of human strength.
I am re-reading this book now and am amazed all over again by how Greene makes such poetry out of such mundane horror. The hunted and haunted "whiskey priest" is a compellingly tragic figure, and the idealistic fanatic policeman prefigures not only Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridien but also so much modern wartime folly. "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it," is a line that seems to come straight from this tale.
There is a certain inevitability to this story as it unfolds. Nothing is hidden, there are no surprises, the man you think will turn in the priest does, and the priest's fate is what he always assumed it would be. Still the sheer humanity of the tale makes it a compelling page-turner. While you know what will happen, you desperately don't want it to. But the priest himself has no hope, and therein lies both his tragedy and his salvation.
Rating: really liked it
Here we have a novel which takes faith at face value which for an atheist reader is a bit of a thwack round the fizzog with a wet towel. This novel is all about the confession and all about the Mass. (And a little bit about the baptism too.) And the reality behind these rituals is that if they aren’t done properly (by a priest) YOU yes YOU could end up going to HELL because you might then die in a state of mortal sin, i.e. outside the reach of the grace of God, these are the rules, don’t look at me like that, it’s tough I know, because Hell means infinite pain for all eternity and God will be okay with that because He created Hell and created these complicated rules so you better get a priest over right NOW since you’re looking a bit green and your eyes are puffy. You could keel over at any minute.
So babies will get roasted in Hell if they don’t get baptized? So when the priest blesses the bread it then TRANSUBSTANTIATES into the actual body of Christ which is God although it still looks like bread, so that when the priest puts it in the mouths of his faithful flock he is putting God into their mouths literally? (this is what the priest in this novel says).
The first thing I think when confronted with these concepts, which millions have believed and still believe, is that I’m glad I don’t believe this kind of stuff because it seems to be very bad for your mental health which Graham Greene amply demonstrates. And it’s this exact kind of stuff which so outraged the guys who made the Mexican revolution in the 1920s that they set about crushing and destroying the Catholic Church, to the extent of hunting down and shooting priests. And I was completely unaware of that! So when I was reading Graham Greene’s novel and I found it was about a priest being hunted down by the military not because he’s a criminal but because he’s a priest I was like….. wow. Heavy. And this really happened? Yes, it really did, in Mexico, between 1926 and 1934.
Two things about this particular priest – he’s not got a name. Now why do authors do this – have their protagonist being all nameless? It just makes it a bit portentous. That wasn’t good. The other thing is that he’s a whisky priest, the definition of which is that he’s a bad one, an alcoholic, he’s fathered a child, he’s not very pious. He spends many pages desperately trying to get his hands on a bottle of brandy or two.
The whole novel is about him being hunted up mountain and down canyon often on the back of a mule (just like Jesus!) by the also-nameless lieutenant. He’s now the last priest in the state, all others having been shot or they’ve vamoosed or they’ve been forced to marry a woman (no! – fate worse than death to a priest!) and so been de-fanged. But our Father Nameless has ducked and dived for eight years but now he’s getting to the end of his tether. As Martha and the Vandellas sang in 1964, there’s nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide. No village will give him shelter, every man could be his Judas Iscariot.
So why didn’t this very bad priest just take a slow boat to China or give up and get married? After all, this isn’t some brave wanna-be martyr for the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church. He’s a sniveling whining self-loathing reptile most of the time. But he himself provides a great explanation. When he realized he was the last priest in his state, he was filled with euphoria. Now at last there were no fellow priests to sneer at his drunken lacksadaisical ways. He could make his own rules up! He could be exactly the kind of priest he damn well wanted to be and no one to give him a hard time any more!
I think that the novel wants in the end to show that martyrdom for the true faith can happen even in the squalor of this unpleasant man’s life, and that the power and the glory may sometimes be located in the filth and the vileness. Something along those lines, I wasn’t too sure of the moral of it all. What it meant to me was something quite different
This was is a surprisingly savage nasty grim miseryfest, a real feel-bad book for Catholics, atheists and Mexicans alike.
Rating: really liked it
This is the first Greene I have read in years and it is a powerful novel. It is set in Mexico and Greene has spent some time there in research. The novel is about a priest; a whisky priest in a province of Mexico where the Catholic Church is banned and priests are shot. The unnamed protagonist is a bad priest and a drunkard who has also fathered a child. He is also a coward.
The title is taken from the end of The Lord's Prayer and there is religious imagery all over the place. The priest rides a donkey to his inevitable capture (having been given a chance to escape), the peasant who betrays him is Judas. Most of the other characters can be seen to represent someone in the gospel narratives; Maria, padre Jose, Tench etc. The priest is a very imperfect Christ and the Lieutenant a very implacable reperesentative of authority who is ultimately moved by the priest. The Lieutenant plays a much larger role than Pilate does in the gospels, but there is a "What is truth" Moment.
The book represents Greene's own struggles with faith and the Church. There are also themes relating to abandonment, desolation, hope and the bleakness of everyday life for the poor. Greene's descriptive powers are very powerful and you can feel the stifling heat.
This is a thought provoking piece and managed to offend Catholics and atheists in equal measure; quite a neat trick. I've known a few whisky priests in my time and remember one particular church and rectory which was locally christened St Glenfiddich's because of the drinking habits of the incumbent. He didn't seem to do a great deal apart from drink, but when the alcohol finally got him everyone turned out for the funeral and he was rather fondly remembered. The whisky priest here doesn't do a great deal apart from move around and perform any religious duties he was forced to by the locals. There is something here perhaps about being rather than doing.
While I don't share Greene's faith it is an interesting and powerful novel with more hidden layers than I first perhaps realised
Rating: really liked it
Classic Parable, 1930s Mexico, Paramount Importance Today"
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him." George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant," 1950.
Greene was driven to write this sympathetic novel about persecution of Mexican priests after visiting the Mexican province of Tabasco in 1938 at the height of the Mexican anti-clerical purge of Marxist revolutionaries. Upon returning home, Greene called it the "fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth." [Note: obviously this was before the Nazis' slaughter of millions of Jews during WW II.]
The Power and the Glory is Greene's nearly flawless parable of dualities in society and within us: good vs. evil, spirituality vs. materialism, love vs. hate, and the freedom of the individual versus the intrusive and paternalistic state.
Greene based the novel on the life of a real-life whiskey priest who "existed for ten years in the forest and swamps, venturing out only at night." It is structured as a game of cat and mouse between the priest and an unnamed Communist police lieutenant as part of an attempt to eradicate the country of Catholicism.
The lieutenant despises the church and is obsessed with capturing the priest to execute him for the greater good of the state. The communists' attempts backfired, turning the priest into a martyr in the eyes of the people.
To me, the novel's focus on hope and redemption and the lessons of Greene's realistic parable make it a classic. The whiskey priest is a significantly flawed man, a bad alcoholic, who has been scandalized by fathering a child in a night of weakness with a peasant woman. He is acutely aware of his defects and failures as both a man and a priest. Although a man of the cloth with faith in a hereafter, he is terrified of pain and of death, and thus acknowledges his doubt. His knowledge of self elevates him to the level of heroic in the novel, as he is redeemed by his conviction that he is responsible for his sins and the suffering he has brought on others, especially on his illegitimate daughter.
He especially feels a sharp pain when seeing her--she's around 10--because she seems to have lost her innocence way too soon and thus he sees her as having scant hope for pleasure and happiness in the world. His love for her and sense of responsibility for her plight, her ruined purity crush the man: "
The world was in her heart already like the small spot of decay in a fruit." So, through the sin of her conception and the love he has for her, he finds salvation, even in his darkest hour as the chase by the lieutenant and police force gets tighter and closer.
Though dark and tense, this novel is so hopeful in Greene's vision and truth that even a most flawed man can achieve redemption if he can humbly accept his fallibility and responsibility for his sins and the harm he has caused others. Indeed, such a man can gain back respect and even be admired to the point of being heroic.
In today's world where our leaders spew spastic shit daily in 140 characters under a tweety bird, full of noxious narcissism, always passing the buck and refusing to admit even the possibility of their human fallibility or a sense of responsibility when things go wrong, this parable seems a particularly important read for young adults and a must-read reminder to the rest of us of our greater selves.
Rating: really liked it
The Power and the Glory is the sort of title to inspire readers to great deeds, pushing beyond the bounds of normal reading capabilities to turn pages at superhuman speed! But alas no. And why not? Afterall, the premise is promising...
A cynical, whiskey priest sneaks about the poor, rural lands of southern Mexico, evading capture for the treasonous action of being a priest. The question is whether he's on the lam to preach the word of god or to save his own neck.
I haven't read much Graham Greene, but what I have read makes me think Greene could turn a phrase and slap a good sentence together right up there with some of the best of them. The problem seems to be his plots. They don't punch you like you expect. I always seemed to be waiting for something more out of this book and it never came, and this isn't the first time it's happened with a Greene book.
Straight out of college I made a pledge to read through the works of respected authors. I powered through Kafka and then Camus. Both were exciting or at least interesting. In hindsight, I think I read them both at the perfect time in my life.
Next up was Greene. He wrote over two dozen novels, and then there were plays, screenplays, children's books, travel journals, short story collections. Out of all that, all I managed to read was
The Man Within, his less than spectacular first attempt at a novel. Such were the deflating affects of that ho-hum experience that twenty years passed before I picked up my second Greene,
A Gun For Sale aka
This Gun For Hire. It wasn't great, but it was good enough to reignite my interest. Since then I've renewed my pledge, but with lowered expectations. I just don't think I'll be able to bulldoze through his work.
If only his work was a bit more exciting. As you read on a growing sense that nothing will be resolved starts to envelope you, and if you're a person that likes resolution, you're up shit's creek paddle-less, my friend. If you let the current take you, you'll float along into a boggy morass of self-doubt and moral ambiguity, where you're left to stew in unpleasant juices (<<< like contemplating a poorly mixed metaphor). Graham Greene writes thinking man's books and I don't mean books for smart folk necessarily. I mean he intends you to ponder his ideas well after you've put the book down.
The Power and the Glory is just such a book. That's fine, but couldn't he have managed both? Say perhaps, a thinking man's thriller? I'm just asking for a little more spark. It would make me leap to his next book!
Rating: really liked it
During a book fair organized in my village, I was surprised to find this book by Graham Greene that I had discovered as a teenager and forgotten.
The story takes place around 1930 in Mexico. The communist revolutionaries hunt down and shoot priests who refuse to deny their faith. Finally, an undercover priest, the last exercising the profession, is pursued by a convinced Communist lieutenant. This hunted priest is an alcoholic, the father of a little girl he had with one of his parishioners.
A price is placing his head. His pursuers threaten to execute the villagers who come to his aid.
That's a vital text, not always easy to follow, but a significant work for the great Catholic writer Graham Greene.
Rating: really liked it
Extraordinary, my favorite of the Greenes I’ve read, like a kinetic action scene with some slowed down sequences out of Dostoyevsky, and a touch of The Night of the Hunter. Goodness I loved this book.
Rating: really liked it
“He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted-- to be a saint.”--Greene
I have always listed this book among the top ten novels of my life, but have not read it for many years. I agree with John Updike, who says of the book, “This is Greene’s masterpiece. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, and an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist.” I just reread Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, which I found terrific, but darker than Power and the Glory, which though also dark, sings in places, and is ultimately moving, and unforgettable. And to this agnostic (me, I mean), he makes a powerful case for some kind of faith in love, even possibly God's love:
“'Oh,' the priest said, 'God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us--God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, and smashed open graves. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.’”
And it’s a particular kind of love that this priest and Greene explore, one for the poor, the indigent, and not the love of the Crystal Cathedral and the comfortably rich.
The Power and the Glory is one of four “Catholic” novels from Greene (also including The End of the Affair and Brighton Park), though all of them feature struggles with faith worthy of Dostoevsky and J. M. Coetzee. This is a pilgrimage novel—such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or even Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in a way, a story of hope and love in the darkest of times. The whiskey priest is stripped of every religious vestment, his life reduced to bare spiritual essentials. He’s not a saint, he’s very much a human being with deep flaws who continues to serve as a priest and keep his faith in God.
Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation was in part intended to address what were seen as abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, which some had seen as getting rich and fat as the poor suffered. This was also the idea behind the Red Shirt anti-clericalism of Mexico in the thirties, where priests were forced to marry, and the Church and indeed all evidence of religion was eventually--for a time--banned. Priests who did not renounce their faith were at one point rounded up and shot. Those who didn’t turn over priests in some towns were taken hostage and shot. It is in this context Greene writes of the last priest in the state of Tabasco, who had fathered a child whom he loves, though it is evidence of his "sin," his "adultery."
The whiskey priest can hear the confessions of people wherever he goes, but he himself can't yet renounce his own transgressions.
“When we love the fruit of our sin we are damned indeed,” the whiskey priest thinks. But he can’t repent this sin, because he loves her, of course, which of course makes so much sense for all of us.
The priest also drinks, and he is afraid of the death that he is faced with as the authorities hunt him down, as he is tracked down by a character he knows as “Judas” again and again. Pomp and “respectability” are taken from him, as he, like Jesus, goes among the poor, the destitute.
“How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.”
His is an identity by subtraction--almost a kind of Buddhist renunciation, or maybe John Calvin and Martin Luther's stripping down the Church in their Protestant moment to the bare, unadorned essentials of faith--as he loses everything he has owned, is reduced to rags, without shoes. And still he performs the Mass as he shuffles from village to village, hearing confessions of people as he goes.
And his nemesis in this tale is a red shirt atheist/Communist lieutenant who hates the Church and its indulgences, and hates the priest, too, for not taking an active role against poverty: “It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. He knew.”
There are powerful images of spiritual anguish in this book, such as this one of an encounter on the road between the priest and a woman whose baby has died, who carries him in search of a blessing, maybe searching for a miracle:
“The woman had gone down on her knees and was shuffling slowly across the cruel ground towards the group of crosses: the dead baby rocked on her back. When she reached the tallest cross she unhooked the child and held the face against the wood and afterwards the loins: then she crossed herself, not as ordinary Catholics do, but in a curious and complicated pattern which included the nose and ears. Did she expect a miracle? And if she did, why should it not be granted her? the priest wondered. Faith, one was told, could move mountains, and here was faith--faith in the spittle that healed the blind man and the voice that raised the dead. The evening star was out: it hung low down over the edge of the plateau: it looked as if it was within reach: and a small hot wind stirred. The priest found himself watching the child for some movement. When none came, it was as if God had missed an opportunity. The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle, began to eat, and the child lay quiet at the foot of the cross. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?”
This is a powerful novel of spiritual depth, one of my favorite books ever. When I first read it I was a Christian, and again when I taught it, and now think of myself as an agnostic, but I was still very moved by this book again all the way through. I don't think you have to be religious to strive for some kind of meaning in bleak circumstances. Greene was once asked where he imagined the whiskey priest might be, in the afterlife, and he answered “purgatory,” which is to say neither saint nor damned, but as a deeply flawed and sympathetic human being who loves his daughter, who makes him realize: “We must love the whole world as if it were a single child.” With that kind of love, then, you could have some chance of changing the world. You don't have to be religious to understand that kind of love and commitment to goodness.
Rating: really liked it
The Power and the Glory is a powerful novel that is unashamed to reveal the inglorious that resides in human nature and the real struggles the best of us encounter in trying to rise above our limitations. The protagonist is an unnamed whisky priest who is all too acutely aware that he is unfit for office.
The story is set in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s when the Catholic Church was outlawed by the revolutionary government. It was a time of religious persecution and a capital offence to function as a priest. All priests are to be shot unless they conform to the governor’s law to marry. The whisky priest is the last priest alive on the run, hotly pursued by a police lieutenant who despises the Catholic Church and everything it stands for.
A reward is placed on the head of the priest. In every village the priest has visited and given shelter, hostages are taken and killed unless they turn him in. I followed the whisky priest’s desperate shuttling from place to place to avoid capture with fear and trembling. It soon became clear that even though the priest is an alcoholic and has fathered a child, and continues to struggle with elements of the faith, he is moved by the suffering of others. On many occasions when he is at risk of being arrested, he has visited the dying, conducted Mass, listened to the confession of the people at their insistence, and even extended help to an outcast whom he knew will betray him. Yet, at other times he is not above charging the poor for baptism and bargaining with cantina owners for liquor, including wrestling the last chicken bone from a lame dog. He is ashamed and mortified. He encounters kindness from people he meets while on the run, and is moved by their extraordinary affection and companionship.
What stood out was Greene’s ability to bare the whisky priest’s soul to us. He is tortured by his failings and unworthiness. Yet, he is honest in not being able to repent and is ashamed of his empty prayers of contrition and even habit of piety. What struck me the most is his palpable humanity. Reading his painful struggles, it is impossible to be self-righteous and think I can do better. The dominant feeling I had toward this priest is one of pity. The last section that documented his fate was heartbreaking.
I was left with one thought after the last page was turned. Perhaps, there are no saints. There are only fallible human beings who sometimes, in rare moments of better judgment, succeed in showing kindness and compassion toward others.
The Power and the Glory is considered Greene’s masterpiece and worthwhile reading.
