Matthew Arnold suggested the best method of judging the excellence of literature is the amount of time it has survived. There is no greater proof of this touchstone for a novelist than Graham Greene. His books are still selling, often in terms much greater than newly published books that get intense media coverage. His books are read with enthusiasm and taken seriously. It is surprising that many of his contemporaries, many Noble prize winners included, are simply vanishing into the past, while the books of Greene not only endure but thrive.
For the modern novelist, these facts demand attention. In practical terms, in the method or craft of producing these novels, just what did Greene do? What aspects of storytelling have produced such long-term vitality?
Every so often, an apparently seismic shift in American race talk occurs — “Negro” to “black” in the 1960s, “black” to “African American” in the 1980s, and back to “black” more recently. The summer of 2020 marked the latest linguistic revolution, as a swath of major news outlets opted, as a rule, to capitalize the “B” in “black” — a change swiftly embraced in everyday use. The linguistic revolution took place over the span of two or so weeks in June, prompted by the highly-publicized police killings of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd. It was framed as part of the supposed reckoning with American antiblackness those murders — and the subsequent protests, sit-ins, lobbying, and, yes, riots — prompted. The push to capitalize was no mere aesthetic or semantic flip-flop; it was, from the beginning, political, and painted as politically radical.
In “Travels With George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy,” his 13th book, Nathaniel Philbrick brings his proven gift as a narrator to this on-the-road part of Washington’s life.