Greene, Waugh, and Catholicism

Written by:Ben Granger.

George Orwell, never one to let the chance go in having a pop at Catholicism (usually very justified too) wrote in the late 30s that the English novel was practically a Protestant art form, and that Catholic practioners were thin on the ground both numerically and qualatitively. Just as he wrote this however, two of the great English authors of the mid century, Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh were surfacing to take the literary world by ferocious storm. And both, of course, werent exactly short on Catholic sensitivities.Bad call from Mr Orwell on this one at least.

I have long loved many of the works of Greene, and Waugh is a more recent discovery.I recently read The Power and the Glory and Scoop, and enjoyed both greatly in their different ways. In many respects the authors could hardly be more different.Greene was an instinctive sympathiser with the underdog, and by logical extension both the sleazy underbelly of life and those rebelling against authority. Waugh was of course a misanthropic snob, a great satirist whose lampooning of the upper-classes hinged largely round the fact that they failed to live up to his reactionary ideal. Though both transcended both, Greenes style skirted round the genre of the thriller, Waugh around that of farce.

And yet what they had in common was an intense sense of inner desolation, a horror and despair at the world, an acidic looking within, and it was their Catholicism which mirrored this. It is interesting that both were converts as though they were both actively seeking to find as stark and unforgiving a theology to wallow in as possible. Greene famously said he became a Catholic as something to measure his evil against, he apparently adulterously fucked near altars for the thrill. The conversion of Waugh was more clearly that of a man desperate to retreat into a mythical past. This was after all a man who proclaimed the trouble with the Conservative Party is it has not turned back the clock one second.

There has never been a shortage of radical British writers of Catholic background, but this has usually stemmed from their outsider nature, most typically in coming from an Irish and/or working-class background. The upper and middle-class converts to the faith by contrast were far more often doing so for reasons which were reactionary by default, even if that was not the initial intention. In this sense Waugh was the more typical figure, though the Blimpish caricature he succumbed to by the end was probably an extreme rather than a typical example (and by a sublime irony was mirrored in the similar decline into self-parody of Kingsley Amis, a writer Waugh lambasted as lower-middle-class scum at the beginning of his career.) Greenes radicalism therefore, his vicious attack on American interference in Vietnam, his support of Castro, is the great exception here. Interesting also that he was a reactionary before he came to the Faith, a strike-breaker and MI6 agent to boot. It was after he went leftward. Proof perhaps that it as at least possible for Catholicism, just occasionally, to be a spur to social justice for some (Oscar Romero, Chavez), despite the dirty uses put to by others, (Papa Ratzo, a million others.)

Transcending politics what both the pair seemed to take from the Faith in their writing was a sense of the complete fragility and frailty of the human condition, an essential worthlessness of people gained from Original Sin. In Greene this seemed to inspire a a sense of poetic heroism amidst inevitable failure and desperation, in Waugh a very real contempt not just for humanity as a whole in the abstract, but for all human beings individually. Great grist for the artistic mill it must be said, but in neither case, it must also be said, a wonderful advert for Catholicism as a source of comfort to the soul that both must have sought out.

Did I mention they both wrote some very good novels? And, whatever their huge differences, became great friends and remained so until Waughs death. I have read a few interesting articles in the past comparing the two, their different take on Faith and how it affected their writing, but, curiously, cannot find anything about this on the internet. I wouldnt mind reading a longer, book length treatment on this subject either. Does one exist? Can anyone help me? Well? Eh?

Posted on September 4th, 2006.

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