The Heart of the Matter (Essential Penguin Paperback) [Mass Market Paperback]

Over forty years ago a new English teacher at my school answered a question asked by an eager student. The question was, "What do you think is the greatest novel written in English?" He didn't think for very long before replying, "The Heart Of The Matter."

We academically-inclined youths borrowed Graham Greene's novel from the library and eventually conferred. There were shrugs, some indifference, appreciation without enthusiasm. We were all about sixteen years old.

I last re-read The Heart Of The Matter about twenty-five years ago. When I began it again for the fourth time last week, I could still remember vividly the basics of its characters and plot. Henry Scobie is an Assistant Chief of Police in a British West African colony. It is wartime and he has been passed over for promotion. He is fifty-ish, wordly-wise, apparently pragmatic, a sheen that hides a deeply analytical conscience. Louise, his wife is somewhat unfocusedly unhappy with her lot. She is a devout Catholic and this provides her support, but the climate is getting to everyone. She leaves for a break that Scobie cannot really afford. He accepts debt.

The colony's businesses are run by Syrians. Divisions within their community have roots deeper than commercial competition. There is "trade" of many sorts. There are accusations, investigations, rumours and counter-claims. Special people arrive to look into things. There's a suicide, more than one, in fact, at least one murder, an extra-marital affair, blackmail, family and wartime tragedy.

But above all there is the character of Henry Scobie. He is a man of principle who thinks he is a recalcitrant slob. He is a man of conscience who presents a pragmatic face. He makes decisions fully aware of their consequences, but remains apparently unable to influence the circumstance that repeatedly seems to dictate events. He remains utterly honest in his deceit, consistent in his unpredictability. His life becomes a beautiful, uncontrolled mess. His wife's simple orthodox Catholicism contrasts with his never really adopted faith. He tries to keep face, but cannot reconcile the facts of his life with the demands of his conscience. His ideals seem to have no place in a world where interests overrule principle. He sees a solution, a way out, but perhaps it is a dead end.

For twenty-first century sensibilities, the colonial era attitudes towards local people appear patronising at best. Perhaps that is how things were. But The Heart Of The Matter is not really a descriptive work. It is not about place and time. Like a Shakespearean tragedy, the events and their setting provide only a backdrop and context for a deeply moving examination of motive and conscience. And also like a Shakespearean tragedy, the novel transcends any limitations of its setting to say something unquestionably universal about the human condition. Forty years on, I now realise, that my new English teacher was probably right.

The brittle and sparse nature of Greene's writing does surprisingly well at conjuring up the heat, repression and the inner workings of law enforcement in Africa. It draws the reader into the mind of the perfectly moralistic and "right" police officer Scobie, so strongly that the reader encounters their own moral tug of war, with the boundaries between right and wrong becoming clouded with circumstance and passion. The writing, subtly and cynically, leads the reader to an intensity of indecision and frustration at the ensuing events and emotional ruin desribed. It is a gripping story, which thrives on its interwoven sub-polts and humane descriptions.

Here's another one I put aside at first but then decided, as part of a New Year's resolution, to return to and finish. When it didn't grab me from the start, as Graham Greene's novels normally do, it was partly because this particular Penguin edition has just about the smallest print it is humanly possible to put to paper and still read.

While beautifully written, of course, it is not Graham Greene's most impressive and convincing novel. The main character, Scobie, is a police inspector in some fictional West African British colony at the outbreak of WWII. This very much reflects Greene's own experiences at the same time. Still, I find it hard to believe in this social environment where no one seems to care or worry even remotely about the situation in Europe. The exact time frame isn't quite clear, but we do move from 'The Phony War' (after the German invasion of Poland) into talk about the Vichy Government (apparently the neighbouring colony is French), meaning that we are well into Battle of Britain times. You would think these people were at least occasionally debating things at home, worrying about relatives, not to mention the fact that at this point it looked very much as though the Germans would win the War. Even from a one hundred percent egotistical point of view this would have changed everything for them. Yet Scobie and his fellow Brits live in their own little world of intrigue, jealousy, matrimonial quibble and career struggle (it's as though they already know it will all end with an Allied victory, as indeed Greene knew at the time he wrote the book). On top of that Scobie, a middle aged married man, falls in love with a nineteen year old girl, still emotionally shaken from the loss of her husband. He doesn't refrain from having sex with her on their first ever one-to-one meeting, and subsequently on numerous occasions. We assume he must enjoy it since he continues the relationship, but in between he gets submerged in guilt and worries about how he will be spending his afterlife according to his faith.

Mentally, Scobie is under attack on several fronts. He is deeply in love where he shouldn't be, he is marred by his extremely active conscience and by his religion. Here we find another of the novel's weaker point. How a man of this kind can bear being a police inspector is a bit of a mystery, as this part of his life is severely underrepresented in the novel. Criminal justice can't avoid at times being rough and unfair, particularly in an environment like this. Furthermore, at no point does Scobie doubt the British government's right to rule rigidly over other people thousands of miles from the home land. I suppose you could say all that is irrelevant since this is a psychological novel, not a political story. Still, there must be a limit to how much you can isolate the two. Certainly in later novels, such as 'The Quiet American', Greene manages masterly to combine them.

What this novel has, however, is a lot of insight into the Catholic mind. To an outsider it looks inconsequential and hypocritical, as represented by Scobie's young mistress, Helen, a daughter of a Church of England minister. Her lack of understanding adds to Scobie's desperation, to a point where you get the feeling that behind all his correctness and goodness there is also an element of self-righteousness. For him to exist he needs to do everything morally and formally right, and as soon as the small breech is opened the whole construction on which he has built his life crumbles, mentally and physically.

Then there is perhaps the real theme of the novel; the theme, perhaps, that has appealed to aging university tutors over the years; the theme which Anthony Burgess in his short Ernest Hemingway biography describes as 'the middle-aged man's desire to be born again', i.e. to take a young mistress. Hemingway, in his novel 'Across the River and into the Trees', utilised this theme as a platform for a storyline around the same time as Graham Greene. It's not an easy theme at all. Old men with young female lovers are generally ridiculed: he's having a midlife crises, she's looking for a father figure or perhaps even for his money. However, this is a serious trap for aging men to fall into, and Greene is not at all wrong in suggesting that the outcome can be suicide. There is a feeling that on some partly unconscious level he wrote this novel to warn himself of a dangerous situation, yet when later on he used the theme repeatedly there seemed to be no moral second-thoughts involved. Make of that what you want. (Incidentally, Burgess suggests the aging male artist approach the problem as Hemingway seemingly did: by making her his muse and keep sex out of the relationship.)

In conclusion, I would say that unless you are particularly interested in the issues of Catholic guilt, some of the secondary themes in this novel are probably better dealt with in other Graham Greene novels such as 'The Quiet American' or 'The Human Factor'. Still, even non-perfect Greene is better than no Greene at all and despite its shortcomings this is a wonderfully written story delivered in straight-forward, lucid, unpretentious sentences as one would expect from one of the very best authors of this era.