The Power and the Glory

This one stuck with me. I read it last year and it wouldn't leave me for quite a while. Most of my literary adventures are very private at this point in life... having left classes and discussions behind 20ish years ago. I do have my sci-fi book group but it is as much, or more, social than any actual discussion. That's fine. But for some reason this book hung out in the folds of my brain for months and I had a desire (less than a year later) to re-read it. I cannily conjured a plan to ambush two of my more literate friends from movie club by gifting them the book, thereby creating a splinter book club from movie club!

Even after the second read I'm still not totally sure what it was/is about this one that moved me to re-read it so quickly... and also strong-arm some smart friends into a discussion with me at Skylark on a Tuesday.  TBH even after another read I'm not quite sure... its hard to pin down but at its most fundamental it is human and hopeful and hopeless all at once. So, you know, life. And it's a slice of history I had no idea about before reading (I was also in Mexico City for the first read...). It's lonely. It's sad. But I do I love the whiskey preist for all his flaws written so plain and heartbreaking. 

Graham Greene has always been a name I knew, and knew he was important in the "canon", etc. etc. but had never read a single thing. Then, IDK, two years ago I was eating lunch on a weekday and put on Anthony Bourdain. He's a comfort to me and was a true prince in life and I miss him. So anyhow, I had on Parts Unknown and he is bopping around somewhere in Asia, being in love with the locals as only he can, and then he quotes a passage from The Quiet American, because, of course he does. 

I breezed through that one, The Quiet American, one of Greene's serious novels. It is really great (maybe greater than this one?). Then I read Our Man in Havana, one of his entertainments. (he likes to make the distinction) It is also great in a more mad-cap kind of way. Those two beautiful and interesting books led me to The Power and the Glory. The scenes between the lieutenant and the preist are really what makes it all worthwhile, punctuated by cinematic weather, which I always love. Many of the characters are archetypes to move the plot along (if walking around evading anti-religious authority is a plot... It probably is... No. It is.). I think I do love this book but I'm unsure where the love comes from. I will read it again in a few years. Maybe I'll still love it in a confused way. Maybe I'll see why I love it. Maybe I'll see the flaws more and not love it as much but remember the love I had. Any of those things can happen and I will be elated. Life. Time marches on. Love remains.

Because i still don't know what to say about this book... I'll leave two passages here.

...he began formally to say his goodbyes to the world;

he couldndn't put his heart into it.

This was the last chapter, and in the last chapter things always happened violently.

Perhaps all life was like that -- dull and then a heroic fury at the end.