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Volume
13, Number 23 |
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Also
in this section: A
discreet touch of genius: on reading The Power and the Glory Graham Greene is a skilled storyteller. Mario
Vargas Llosa
The
book (The Power and the Glory) gives me more satisfaction than any
other I have written. Graham
Greene
Genius
is a promontory jutting out into the infinite. Victor
Hugo
I’m going through a phase where I’m revisiting novels I first read in the 1980s --- La tía Julia y el escribidor; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Siddartha; The Princess Bride; and Crónica de una muerte anunciada, among others. I’m not completely certain as to why I’m spending time with these old friends again, but I suspect it’s because it was around then, some twenty years ago, that I started to dream about writing novels and, instinctively, I was searching for good models. I had chosen Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory in preparation for writing my first novel --- which ended up a failed venture, the clumsy work of an apprentice. During the mid to late 80s, I wasn’t aware of literary works that fit my particular outlook as US Latino and Latina writers had yet to break through in publishing. And since I wanted to see how a writer, who wrote in English, dealt with a novel set in Latin America, I selected Greene’s most highly regarded work to see what I could learn. But at the time --- with scant knowledge of the writing craft --- I failed to appreciate fully the genius behind this novel. In my most recent reading, however, upon finishing the last page I was in awe of Greene’s mastery over his narrative. The Power and the Glory is set in Mexico, during the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles who, under the pretext of ending obscurantism, persecuted the Catholic Church and its clergy. What most stunned me during this reading is Greene’s inclusion of an ingenious device: a pamphlet on Catholic martyrs --- a piece of forbidden literature, printed clandestinely in Mexico City and distributed throughout the country --- that a woman reads to her three children. The two daughters --- ages 6 and 10 --- listen attentively to the decidedly inflated tales of bravery and sacrifice of future Mexican saints, priests who went on to become martyrs of the Cristero War. The son, however, at age 14, has adopted the government’s scorn toward the Church, and he wishes, in silence, without intending to denounce his mother’s subversion, that the authorities had been competent enough to confiscate the pamphlets before these reached his house. As the mother reads out loud, the daughters interrupt her with questions about the two priests that are known to them. The first priest, fearing for his life, saved himself from certain martyrdom by renouncing the priesthood and marrying a local woman. The second priest, the “Whiskey Priest,” is the protagonist of the story. Living on the run, he had once taken refuge in the home of the pamphlet family, drinking brandy the entire night he spent there while hiding from the authorities. When the girls ask their mother whether these priests were also martyrs, the mother categorically condemns the first one for betraying his vows; but she leaves open the possibility for the Whiskey Priest to join the glorified ranks of future martyrs and saints. But shortly after her pronouncement, once the children are asleep, she confides to her husband that a priest that seeks refuge in alcohol is unworthy of a sanctified death. The family appears in three segments of the novel: once early on, and the second time midway through the first half. Other than equating the tension between the mother and her adolescent boy to that between faith and the Mexican government’s version of reason, the reader is at a loss as to just how the family fits into the plot. But in their third appearance, which takes place at the conclusion of The Power and the Glory, the family fulfills its literary purpose, and formidably. The execution of the nameless whiskey priest is first seen from the point of view of Mr. Tench --- an English dentist who’s a lost soul, having lived for many years in a country he can’t even begin to understand. Observing the priest’s death from far away, through the dentist’s eyes, the protagonist is a rag doll that jerks about wildly under the impact of the firing squad’s bullets. Thus, from this point of view, the death of the priest is comical, devoid of glory or redemption. But in the scene that immediately follows, the mother reads out loud the execution of the saintly priest of the forbidden pamphlet. The sisters, having listened to virtually identical scenes from the other pamphlets, and many times, have fallen asleep. But the boy --- who had witnessed the execution of the whiskey priest, earlier that day --- has now cast aside his cynicism. For the first time, he listens with reverence to the tale of a fictional martyr as the forbidden pamphlet narrates the last thoughts of a brave and noble priest who never, throughout his entire existence, wavered in his faith. And we, the readers of The Power and the Glory, transfer these thoughts onto the pathetic rag doll whose execution we observed earlier, and it is then that we can accept the Whiskey Priest, with all his imperfections, as worthy of sainthood. So it is through the inclusion of the pamphlet --- that discreet touch of genius --- that the central character finds redemption, and through this wonderfully ingenious device Graham Greene gives The Power and the Glory its breathtaking ending.
Also
in this section:
Make
the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
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©
2007 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or phone: (507) 6-632-6343 Mailing
address: |
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