Taking Sides: Graham Greene and Latin America
2002; Indiana University Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2979/jml.2002.26.2.113
ISSN1529-1464
Autores Tópico(s)Contemporary Literature and Criticism
Resumo"If one takes a side, one takes a side, come what may," Graham Greene wrote in his memoir Getting to Know the General.1 He was speaking about what he called his "involvement" with Panama's General Omar Torrijos, but his comment applies equally well to his general involvement with the politics of Latin America. By the time of his death in 1989, Greene's long-standing, ever-deepening interest in Latin America had developed from the touristic to the analytical to the polemical. It was an interest that had begun with a 1938 visit to Mexico that resulted in a travel narrative and a novel. In the 1950s and 1960s, his visits to Haiti, Cuba, and Paraguay produced four novels and several essays. Finally, his trips to Chile (1972), to Panama (1976 to 1983), and to Nicaragua (1980 to 1986) culminated in one more novel (his last), a series of articles, a book-length memoir, and several letters to The Times arguing for the support of governments and causes that he found admirable in Latin America. His visits to Latin America, he said in an interview, "brought with them a political commitment in a number of ways."2 In his later years, Greene had indeed taken a side.
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