The Comedians [Paperback]

I first read "The Comedians" around thirty years ago and then again around twenty years ago. Remembering how much I enjoyed and admired the novel I have just finished re-reading it and have now sadly closed the book.

It is an extremely satisfying novel written by one of the finest novelists of the 20th century.

The three main characters are the men, Brown, Smith (with the feisty Mrs. Smith) and Jones who meet as strangers on board the cargo-ship "Medea" bound from New York to Haiti where their paths cross and re-cross.

Brown, the main character, is a rootless hotelier with a shady past and without faith or hope.

Smith is a one-time American Presidential Candidate on an evangelic crusade to establish a vegetarian centre.

Jones is a mystery at first, a liar certainly, a con man perhaps, who falls in and out with the regime but eventually finds some redemption.

Set in the era of Papa Doc Duvalier's misrule with his sinister Tonton Macoute secret police the novel captures the atmosphere of a nation failed by it's corrupt leaders with a people living in fear and oppression.

But this story is not about Haiti, it is about failed romance, disillusionment, cynicism but with some hope and redemption (but not for all).

The introduction by Paul Theroux is a spoiler - he unravels and lays bare the plot and it is his opinion that this is "not one of Greenes best" and a "tepid novel" - whatever that means. I strongly advise readers to read Theroux's introduction AFTER the book and make their own minds up.

I believe this to be one of Greenes finest novels that even thirty years on from our first meeting was immensely pleasurable to read and one I highly recommend.

This harsh revelation of the "violence, injustice and torture" imposed on Haiti by the thuggish "Tontons Macoute" supporters of the sinister "Papa Doc" during the 1960s forms the background to a novel that is a mixture of tense thriller, sad love affair, and reflection on the meaning of life provided through the portrayal of a variety of characters. Sadly, this impoverished island escaped from Papa Doc's control only to suffer the ravages of AIDS in the 1970s.

Returning to the rundown hotel in Haiti which he cannot sell, Brown has to deal with the body of a dead government minister in his swimming pool. This must be concealed from his only two guests, an idealistic but naive American couple, the Smiths, who are resolved to transform Haiti with an ill-timed project to promote vegetarianism. Can Brown maintain his clandestine "semi-detached" affair with Martha, whom he resents having to share with her spoilt and all-too observant young son, while Brown is unsettled by the suspicion that Martha's ambassador husband knows about the relationship but appears to accept it. What has brought Captain Jones to Haiti - a congenital liar beneath his blustering charm?

Although Greene himself did not regard "The Comedians" as one of his best works, and he admitted his experience of Haiti was superficial, this book hooked me from the first few pages with his gift for storytelling, constructing a plot in which every incident and character counts, creating a strong sense of place and devising scenes which are by turns poignant, philosophical, menacing, exciting or hilarious - hence the idea that we are all to some extent playing the part of comedians.

The narrator Brown may be cold, cynical and self-centred, but his role as an outsider gives him the detachment to observe and analyse the people and situations he encounters. He may be forgiven a little bitterness since he has never known his father's identity, and his flamboyant mother abandoned him as a small boy in a Catholic boarding school where the monks could be relied upon not to throw him out when she failed to pay the fees.

For the first time, I have understood some of the Catholic angst which pervades so many of Greene's novels. Near the end, Brown refers to "the never quiet conscience injected into me without my knowledge, when I was too young to know, by the fathers of the Visitation." Brown seems to be the vehicle for Greene's introspection. "The rootless.... we are the faithless. We admire the dedicated....the Mr. Smiths for their courage and integrity......we find ourselves the only ones truly committed to the whole world of evil and good, to the wise and the foolish, to the indifferent and the mistaken. We have chosen nothing except to go on living."

Written from the point of view of the self centered and unlikeable Mr Brown, somehow this book has a ring of truth about it. The reader is left wondering what Mr Graham Greene has been up to!
There is no real story line, no plot, but the events described (recorded?) are set in Haiti and read as if they really happened. It is Greene's entertaining writing style and understated humor that keeps the reader engaged.
At the same time the book has historical interest.
Perhaps many of us have forgotten, or never heard about the appalling events and dreadful suffering of the poor people of Haiti during the reign of the monstrous dictator, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier.
Greene's description of the terrifying Tontons Macoutes leave the reader with a real feeling of the fear which pervaded the country from the late 1950's to the early 1970's