An interesting mix of theology and gangster drama.

books:

	• Brighton Rock Graham Greene Vintage Classics, 2004 - 282 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good enough that I'll never read it again

What makes a book "good"? Is it gripping? enjoyable? convincing? I found this book utterly gripping and not at all enjoyable. It's one of the bleakest books I've ever read. There is no redemptive value to any of the characters. Maybe that's Greene's point- damnation is a major theme in the novel. I've heard one character, Ida, referred to as "brave" or "heroic", but she came off to me as equally depressing as the others--a busybody led on by a flimsy sense of self-righteousness, a juggernaut whose actions lead to death and sadness and who embarked on those actions almost for something to do. Pinkie is one of the most soulless characters ever created, and Rose has nothing other than her fanatical sense of loyalty. Never does anyone show genuine compassion, pity, or joy that is above momentary self-gratification. To be true, the story is a fascinating glimpse into the mind and soul of someone who believes himself to be beyond hope. It is vividly written, like most Greene, in economic, knife-edge prose. I was POWERFULLY moved by this book, and for that reason, I'm never picking it up again!

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Modern Feminity Revealed

Although Greene's "The Power and the Glory" takes a similar tack in its pursuit of that dread beast, the secular humanist, here the portraiture is done in even finer shades of grey. Furthermore, "Brighton Rock"'s Ida is given more internal monologue, and a larger piece of the action, than the ardent socialist lieutenant of "The Power and the Glory."

Ida is perhaps the purest distillation of what must be referred to as "the modern woman." A distant descendant of Madame Bovary, she is no less dogged in her pursuit of her own good (at least what she perceives that to be), but perhaps without even Emma's vestigial sense of shame. She has absolutely no sexual compunction, but at the same time, believes in her own measure of good and evil. As the novel progresses, and more of her character reveals itself, the portrait of her conscience becomes truly terrifying. It has absolutely no built-in governor. It is like a brain without folds. It is blank Nietzchean will-to-power.

Brighton Rock's chief strength, ultimately, is how prophetic it is. Millions of women in modern-day America (the West in general) are something like Ida. It is harder to say with certainty, perhaps, how many were like this in 1930s and 40s Britain, at the time of its authorship. In either event, credit must go to Greene -- for all of his technical lapses as a prose stylist -- for this spot-on bit of feminine psycholanalysis.

As an aside, the musings on the notion of repentance, and the guilty conscience at the moment of death, are no less profound. There's a phrase which gets thrown around in this book, "between the stirrup and the ground", which sums up Greene's understanding of the relationship between the speed and the thoroughness of repentance.

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An interesting mix of theology and gangster drama.

Graham Green always insisted that he was a "writer who was Catholic" rather than a "Catholic writer", which he was often pigeonholed as. Regardless, he frequently incorporated Catholic themes into his writing, all the more interesting because he was not born into the religion, and so approached it with the viewpoint of a man who was converted as an adult. This is the first of the "Catholic novels" (which would later include such works as "The Power and the Glory"), and in many ways represents the segway from his initial crime novels into more complex literary work, since this is a sequel to the much less contemplative "A Gun For Sale", though knowledge of the events of that novel are not required in the least (most people are surprised to learn that it is a sequel).

The story opens with a Mr. Hale arriving in Brighton on work, with the unforgettable opening line: "Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him." Greene grabs you with that, and Hale, in the manner of Hitchcock's "Psycho", is quickly disposed of. The murder of Hale by a gang of local thugs touches off the new phase of the story. Hale found only a single sympathetic ear as he tried to avoid death, one Ida Arnold, who refuses to abid eby the coroner's inexplicable (indded, unexplained) conclusion that Hale died of natural causes. Ida is a kind, good-natured but irreligious soul (though superstitious; as Greene tells us, she only believes in the Ouija board), with a rather temporal sense of right and wrong, and an impressive rack (as Green frequently mentions, oddly). She is on the trail of the gang, led by Pinky Brown, ie, the Boy, as Greene always calls him in-text, a 17-year-old sociopath who lives within a rigid Catholic morality system which he has more or less inverted, having become fascinated by damnation (being unable to picture Heaven, because of his grim circumstances). The cover-up of Hale's death is more or less complete, but for the existence of Rose, a dumb but nice sixteen-year-old waitress who shares Pinky's Catholicism, and comes to share his attitude regarding Hell, albeit filtered through a sort of dogged desire to demonstrate the depth of her devotion to Pinky.

Greene's work is very much interested in how Catholicism functions in the real world (he himself was no saint; he would later leave his wife and have relations with other women, while remaining technically married, much in the manner of Spencer Tracy). We expect that those who adhere to Catholic morality will be better people, but Greene shows how this is not necessarily the case. Pinky and Rose's belief in damnation is transformed into a kind of determined attraction to it, mixed with the idea that there is enough time to repent 'between the stirrup and the ground" (which, for all we know, there is; who can say what happens to Pinky? Greene never tells us). Ida, meanwhile, is merely superstitious and possessed of an easy, shame-free sexuality (indeed, Greene unknowingly captured what his own future situation would be). By contrast, the Boy is repulsed by the concept of intimacy, particularly in a sexual context, in another reversal of expectations, since one tends to expect a religious writer to associate free sexuality with immorality (though there are some light questions about how Ida lives, and she is, at story's end, considering whether or not she should go back to her husband (albeit consulting the Ouija on this)). Catholics, as a priest says in-story, have perhaps the greatest propensity for evil because of their closeness to God.

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Bleak and disappointing

BRIGHTON ROCK is unremittingly bleak. It features the blighted and ignored dregs of English society of the Thirties and, to be sure, their lives were pretty damn bleak. But other than a portrait of the underbelly of society, noteworthy for its time, there is little to commend this novel. The plot is only so-so. Greene's characteristic humor, even if it be dark and ironic, is missing. There is a lot about Catholicism, repentance, and the efficacy of religion in human affairs, but done in a way that I suspect would be interesting only to those who are obsessed with Catholicism. Were it not for the fact that this was Greene's first serious novel, I doubt that it would be kept in print or read much anymore.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

With a new introduction by J.M. Coetzee

A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous Ida Arnold, who is determined to avenge a death.

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