"The End of the Affair", by Graham Greene
Up until now, there has been only one book that, after reading, I will simply refuse to ever read again: J. D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye", but not because it was a bad book; on the contrary, it was one of the finest books I think has ever been written. Up until now, that is. I have to say that Graham Greene's 1951 novel "The End of the Affair", is the second book to make that list.
Most stories start with the beginning of love; how a love affair blossoms between two people, ending either in a poignant bitter sweet resolution (i.e. Ethan Hawke's "The Hottest Day"), or something just barely short of a nice, "happily ever after" ending (i.e. Nick Hornsby's "High Fidelity"). Greene does something which I'm sure was quite novel in his day and age -- he comes to the heart of the matter (to quote one of Greene's other famous works) and takes us straight to where it really begins: how a love affair dies.
People often write about the ebb and flow of a relationship, but I think that a lot of people don't really stop to consider the aftermath of a relationship's end, for better or for worse. David Gilmour, in practically all of his novels, talks about that, but he talks about getting caught in the fallout of a relationship's end kicking and screaming all the way to the bitter end. Gilmour's a fighter, and if there's one thing that all of his characters have in common, from Professor Darius Holloway in "Sparrow Nights" to the young Simon in his deeply personal novel "Lost Between Houses", they all choose to valiantly fight a losing battle against the inevitable. There's a heroic quality in them, even though emotionally and romantically, they must meet their end, in a metaphorical sense. A long time ago, I chased after a girl with whom I no possible chance of building anything meaningful. And yet somehow I chased and chased, and fought and fought. Why couldn't I do it the way they could?
In contrast, Greene's novellist Maurice Bendrix is someone who feels hopelessly overwhelmed. His dreary existence is completely changed forever by Sarah Miles, and then, all of a sudden, she has been taken away from him, and he is at once relegated back to a life of relative boredom -- a life that is little different from that of Sarah's true husband, an innocent in this whole story. Like a tired swimmer fighting a raging current, he doesn't have much choice but to tread water, fighting not just to keep up the offensive, but to merely find another reason to live.
Sarah, who is grieved by an obligation she feels she must keep to God, presents herself as a Christ-like figure for the sake of her husband and her lover. She calls upon God to end her life, if only to end the suffering of the people she loves around her -- Smythe, the atheist, telephones Bendrix and tells him that miraculously, his facial disfigurement has been cured, while Parkis writes to Bendrix saying how his child has been cured of his staggering stomach pains. What will she do for Bendrix? It's hard to say, since we get little sense of how he has changed. But the fact that he has not changed is not a fault of Greene's technique, but a fault of Bendrix's steadfast character. He refuses to totally believe in Sarah's love for him throughout the book, and even when he does it is as if he is being strong-armed into it, if only because he simply cannot resist. He starts off his rebellion against God this way, though it isn't fully sure if this too will eventually wear him down into belief and submission.
Bendrix is angry. Angry and selfish -- but we can't hate him because, at least for someone who has endured the pain of going through a lost relationship, we know that we ourselves are very much with him in our own feelings and thoughts. We don't just know what he's feeling; we've actually experienced (and as anyone will tell you, knowledge is far more powerful than experience). It's been said that Greene based this novel on a similar set of events that unfolded in his own life in England, and that really isn't all that surprising, given the vividness with which we see Bendrix's own range and sorrow at his loss.
And in that, we see Bendrix himself as a Christ-like figure. He has a duty to his friend Henry. Even though he would have stolen his wife, he has a loyality to him which he can't truly turn back on, even if he wanted to. Henry doesn't feel very much grief or sadness but that's because Bendrix is doing all of the suffering for him. And isn't that how it should be? Henry is little more than an innocent child, completely oblivious to his wife's numerous indiscretions -- he's just an ordinary civil servant, just living his life and getting by. His marriage to Sarah is little more than one of convenience, yet we see that Henry does have a genuine sense of care for her...though it isn't quite what you would expect from a loving husband to his faithful wife. Bendrix on the other hand has to suffer for them both; not only does he have his own sins to atone for, but the sins of Henry as well -- the fact that Henry was simply incapable to serve as a husband for Sarah. This is painfully apparent in the closing chapters of the book, where Bendrix rails on against the arrogant Catholic pastor, while a relatively calm Henry tries to restrain him.
Greene himself was a Catholic, and this really comes through in the way that the book is structured and built; see Sarah and her example.
As for me, a whole range of emotions just flooded me as I read this book. All of the memories I held inside me just played again in my head as a reminder of people I had held very dear to me, but now are essentially dead and gone to me. I have to say truly that this is one of the greatest novels I've ever read. Any book which so profoundly captures the spirit of the death of love deserves this title and more.
posted by Ctenuchid @ 4:46 p.m.
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