Graham Greene's Two Conversions

Asked if he was disappointed recently at not winning the Nobel Prize, Graham Greene said no, he was waiting for an even bigger prize. Asked what that was, he replied, "Death." The notion of death as a reward is strange to most modern literature, which confines itself to the area between the womb and grave, paying no attention to what comes before of after. It is this sense of moral claustrophobia that is largely responsible for the tedious pessimism of the modern novel. How many more books are we going to have to endure about bourgeois infidelities in the Hamptons or squinty New York novelists with writers' block? A point has been reached where boredom overwhelms the natural passions. The reader's sense of rebellion and iconoclasm propels him to react, "Nuclear war? Racism? Apartheid? Who the hell cares? Blow up the world. Shut down the rape crisis centers. Give the Nobel Prize to Abu Nidal. Let's have a goodwill treaty with P.W. Botha."