Greene on Capri: A Memoir

Author - Shirley Hazzard ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Farrar Straus & Giroux (T) was reviewed on 23-Oct-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Farrar Straus & Giroux (T). Shirley Hazzard´s memoir is touching and literally transports you to a time when writers gathered casually on islands and sipped wine wine and talked about the world. However, her friendship with Greene provides remarkable insight into Greene´s character and actually left me wanting to read more about Greene, but much more about Hazzard herself.¤

2) Hardcover Book Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Farrar Straus & Giroux (T). Really no more than a very, very long New Yorker sort of profile blown up to book size, GREENE ON CAPRI A MEMOIR is an irresistible sort of book and pure opium for those of us who like to read about people with so much money they can afford to live on several continents at once. Shirley Hazzard writes so creamily that it was only after several chapters that I started asking myself, where is all this money coming from? For none of the characters, save the distantly observed fishermen, have anything to do with their time but sit around all day at one of Capri´s many colorful cafes, sip aperitifs, and cap each other´s quotations from the Brownings.

It´s a form of literary sleight of hand that at its best is positively alluring, but when the illusion falters for even a minute a certain distast sets in. All travel writing is sort of alike, and there are two sorts of readers, one who loves nothing better than a book about Capri, and the other, who would rather undergo a Brazilian body wax without anesthesia than have to read a book like this one. Beyond this certainty, there are a few other problems with Hazzard´s book. One is the problem noticed by most reviewers: that she really doesn´t care much for Greene, so you ask yourself, then why write a book about someone who you just can´t stand? The feeling creeps in that she was fascinated by his bad manners and his egotism, but that she was too drawn to his fame (the way her husband, Francis Steegmuller, became known as a permanent barnacle of the fame of Cocteau) to resist.

Another debit is the photo selections which render Shirley Hazzard, not a bad looking woman, as the victim of a truly evil costume designer. No matter what decade it is, you see her wearing blouses with long Peter Pan style collars in which the tabs droop down practically to her breasts, a bizarre style which makes her look like a bejeweled and preening horse. It must have been Graham Greene´s revenge. Probably long ago, in 1962, in Capri, he might have sent her a little CARE package from some demented designer in Antibes, and advised her it would make her look less like Lillian Hellman. His unpleasantness was legendary, the "irrational and cruel paroxysm of the playground," as Hazzard hazards. The odd thing is that Greene went to Capri at all! He was of the generation of Englishmen, she avers, that was actually blind to the beauty of physical surroundings. Perhaps they thought it unmanly. He was just there because it was "away." Her explanation isn´t very convincing, but she does provide some interesting sidelights, such as the fact that Greene thought Olivier a terrible actor, much preferring the mundanities of Ralph Richardson or Paul Scofield. Hazzard also provokes a chuckle when she talks about how bad Graham Greene´s own performance is, in Truffaut´s DAY FOR NIGHT. "In a companion scene of the same film, a cat does far better."¤

3) Hardcover Book Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Farrar Straus & Giroux (T). I read Shirley Hazzard´s book prior to visiting Capri for the first time in 20 years, and took it with me to read on the flight to Italy. In fact, the book made the journey with me to the island. This is an excellent portrait of Graham Greene and the information Ms. Hazzard adds concerning Capri certainly whetted my appetite and increased my anticipation to get to the island to see the places she mentioned.

The book is written in a beautiful style. One hears Ms. Hazzard´s voice in her writing and shares her experiences. I must confess that I really did not like Graham Greene very much as a person but I understand a great deal about him and what drove him. I was most touched by what Ms. Hazzard had to say about Harold Acton, so much so that I re-read that part of the book. Mr. Action was such a wonderful scholar and writer with such a wonderful presence that I would very much have liked to have known him. I will never forget the last visit of Ms. Hazzard to Harold Acton when he said he regretted not being able to see Naples one more time. Since I was reading this in Naples I was able to understand what he meant all the more.

Someone else I enjoyed learning about was Ms. Hazzard´s husband Francis Steegmuller, and some of the books he wrote. In particular the discussion about Mr. Steegmuller´s book about Flaubert in Egypt sparked my interest to read it. Another book mentioned by Ms. Hazzard that has my interest in The Viper of Milan, historical fiction on the war between the dukes of Verona and Milan, which sounds like quite an exciting read.

So this is a wonderful book that gives us a unique perspective on a great writer - Graham Greene - but also gives us a glimpse into the island of Capri and the people who came to live on this paradise of a place over the years, some who came and left and others who never did. I gained insight into places of the island, such as the Villa Jovis and the town of Capri, and met some interesting people, chief of whom is Ms Hazzard herself. I highly recommend this book for the superb memoir that it is and also for the excellence of the writing.
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4) Hardcover Book Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Farrar Straus & Giroux (T). Shirley Hazzard brilliantly evokes Capri in this easy-to-read portrait of one of the 20th Century´s most influential British authors. This book melds literary biography at its best with personal memoir, and Hazzard´s friendship with Greene offers important insights into not only his work habits and travels, but also his interpersonal relationships. As to her prose style, Hazzard may be a part of the "old-school" authors--long, serpentine sentences and frequent digressions--but there is only enjoyment to be found in the quiet island life she chronicles. Anyone interested in Greene, Hazzard and the beautiful isle of Capri itself will delight in this book.¤

5) Hardcover Book Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Farrar Straus & Giroux (T). I can only conclude from other reviews that Shirley Hazzard is an acquired taste, but would add that it´s worth giving a go. She is a supremely old-fashioned writer, which I think some find mannered or awkward. It´s odd, because I find her prose illuminating and exciting to read - each word is measured and beautiful. Her novels are luminous things of beauty, particularly The Bay of Noon and The Great Fire. She´s just won Australia´s top literary prize - very well-deserved. If you have time and patience, for her books need careful reading, they are richly rewarding. It´s only an inexpensive paperback, go on, try some, you never know, you might like it!¤

6) Hardcover Book Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Farrar Straus & Giroux (T). The subtle portrait of a great but difficult man and a legendary island.

When friends die, one´s own credentials change: one becomes a survivor. Graham Greene has already had biographers, one of whom has served him mightily. Yet I hope that there is room for the remembrance of a friend who knew him-not wisely, perhaps, but fairly well-on an island that was "not his kind of place," but where he came season after season, year after year; and where he, too, will be subsumed into the capacious story.

For millennia the cliffs of Capri have sheltered pleasure-seekers and refugees alike, among them the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, Henry James, Rilke, and Lenin, and hosts of artists, eccentrics, and outcasts. Here in the 1960s Graham Greene became friends with Shirley Hazzard and her husband, the writer Francis Steegmuller; their friendship lasted until Greene´s death in 1991. In Greene on Capri, Hazzard uses their ever volatile intimacy as a prism through which to illuminate Greene´s mercurial character, his work and talk, and the extraordinary literary culture that long thrived on this ravishing, enchanted island.

Shirley Hazzard´s books include The Evening of the Holiday, The Bay of Noon, The Transit of Venus (winner of the 1981 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction), and The Countenance of Truth. She lives in New York City and in Italy.¤

7) Hardcover Book Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Farrar Straus & Giroux (T). Shirley Hazzard´s first encounter with Graham Greene had it all: timing, art, and an unbeatable setting--Capri. One December morning in the late ´60s, he and a friend sat down at a café table next to hers and he began to quote from Browning´s "The Lost Mistress." Yet try as Greene might, the last line wouldn´t come to him. When she got up to go, Hazzard filled in the blank. As the beginning of a literary friendship goes, this could hardly be bettered. What´s more, within hours she and her husband, Francis Steegmuller, were dining with the English author. Greene on Capri, Hazzard´s evocation of their subsequent years of friendship, is generous, restrained, and complex. Two of those adjectives could, she makes clear, describe her friend, while restraint doesn´t seem to have been part of his being.

That longing for "peace," which Graham invoked throughout his life, in published and in private writings, seemed, on the other hand, a fantasy of transfiguration. Anyone who knew him--and he knew himself best of all--was aware that peace was the last thing he desired. It was literally the last thing, synonymous--as often in his fiction--with death.

Many of the book´s pleasures come, too, in her descriptions of Capri, capturing both the island´s romance and its layers of unreality. But in the end, Hazzard´s considerable generosity cannot preclude disappointment with Greene. How could it when she too often witnessed her friend´s discernment edging into deep disdain? Readers will rejoice in her seven marvelous pages (which beg to be anthologized) on the writer Harold Acton, an exquisite contrast to Greene. "From his company one brought away unique lightness, tolerance, a sense of joy," Hazzard writes, and offers this misunderstood man the following valediction: "If his shade revisits his beloved garden, it certainly does not waste the moonlit evenings there in rancour; but will pass them joyfully, re-experiencing the grand illusion of art in the company of those who count the hours spent with him among the best." Greene on Capri makes one long for a fuller Hazzard memoir--and even more so for another of her beautiful fictions. --Kerry Fried¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 20-Nov-2008, 03741667579780374166755, 790-730-680-210-570-860-8

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