Graham Greene's Thrillers and the 1930sDiemert traces Greene's adaptation of nineteenth-century romance thrillers and classical detective stories into modern political thrillers as a means of presenting serious concerns in an engaging fashion. He argues that Greene's popular thrillers were in part a reaction to the high modernism of writers such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, whose esoteric experiments with language were disengaged from immediate social concerns and inaccessible to a large segment of the reading public. Graham Greene's Thrillers and the 1930s investigates some of Greene's best-known works, such as A Gun for Sale, Brighton Rock, and The Ministry of Fear, and shows how they reflect the evolution of Greene's sense of the importance of popular culture in the 1930s. |
Contents
Aspects of Detective Fiction | 62 |
A Gun for Sale Brighton Rock | 116 |
The Ministry of Fear | 151 |
Summing Up | 179 |
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adventure stories Allain already-read attempt Auden authority Battlefield believe Brighton Rock Buchan Caveda character classical detective story clues Confidential Agent crime criminal criminal's critics detective fiction detective novel detective's discourse Doyle's Dupin England English entertainment Essays experience explicitly F.R. Leavis figure film genre Graham Greene Greene's fiction Greene's novels Gun for Sale Hale's death Harmondsworth Hilfe Holmes Ida's ideology interpretation investigation It's a Battlefield Krogh Leavis literary literature London Mason Mass Mather Ministry of Fear modern modernist murder mystery narrative narrative's narrator novelist Orwell Penguin Pinkie Pinkie's plot Poirot police political popular culture popular fiction Prentice present Raven reader reading realism reality reflects Rennit Rowe Rowe's Rumour at Nightfall Savory sense Sheppard's Similarly Sir Marcus social society Stamboul Train story's structure suggests T.S. Eliot tell textual things Thirty-Nine Steps thriller tion tive truth University Press Woolf writers Wrong Reason York