Graham Greene — A Sort of Life

Penguin Books 1974 Paperback, 160pp. Graham Greene writes: 'An autobiography is only 'a sort of life' - it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and ends prematurely. If one cannot close a book of memories on the deathbed, any conclusion must be arbitrary, and I have preferred to finish this essay the the years of failure with followed the acceptance of my first novel . 'In another sense too a book like this can only be a 'sort of life', for in the course of the 66 years I have spent almost as much time with imaginary characters as with real men and women . There is a fashion today among many of my contemporaries to treat the events of their past with irony. It is a legitimate method of self-defence . I have tried, however unsuccessfully, to live again the follies and sentimentalities and exaggerations of the distant time, and to feel them, as I felt them then, without irony.'. (ISBN: 9780140034950). Good.