Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place (review)
Roston's arguments in the other chapters seem neither controversial nor particularly original or memorable. Whether or not A Burnt-Out Case is an "agonized search for religious faith" (82), it is certainly agonized, and Roston is clearly correct in his contention that Greene's use of secondary characters helps to "swing the reader to Querry's side, prompting a degree of empathy with him" (87). Speaking of cheating on Greene's part, neither Roston nor more hostile critics seem to be aware of Greene's tic of using ellipses in this novel, in The Heart of the Matter, and, perhaps, elsewhere to avoid coming down on one side or another of a question. The chapter on Monsignor Quixote assumes that it is a major novel, which is arguable, but not carefully argued here. Roston's rather narrow focus on the texts of the novels is admirable, but often he devotes more space to summaries and generalizations than to analyses of the texts themselves. And that narrow focus prevents him from considering textual revisions and from recognizing passing allusions to "Dover Beach," Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, and, in the Parkis sequence in The End of the Affair where the employer is mistaken for the subject's lover, to John Galsworthy. Still, at this stage of Greene criticism, readers should be grateful for an original and stimulating reading of even one novel. If future critics can be persuaded by Roston's positive example to concentrate more closely on the text of Greene's novels than on supposed biographical parallels or by his negative example to concentrate less on theology, then the study of Greene will be advanced and enriched.