“A story,” Graham Greene wrote, “has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” The End of the Affair. The first sentence. Of course, then there was the movie, Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. I’m watching it again now. I left it, a moment ago, to stand on a stool, then lunge to stand on a shelf, to reach the book on the very top shelf. From the last page, I saw I had read it in August of 2001. Unfortunately, my paperback references the movie on the cover. It must have been the only copy I could get my hands on at the time. I can’t remember the words. I want to read it again.
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“It’s hard to tell somebody what you mean to say. And that’s an idea that I’m obsessed with. It’s why I write. It’s why everybody writes.”
--Jonathan Safran Foer
I’ve never been a big fan of Greene. However, I agree with that first line. Thanks for the reminder.
Great first line of a wonderful novel…I read it only recently years after enjoying the film. I was afraid the film memories would affect how I read the novel, but they seemed to compliment each other. The novel, of course, probes a bit deeper into the characters and is more precisely drawn, but I’ll always fondly recall the film as watching it nine years ago was the first time I became aware of the one and only Graham Greene.
I recently posted a tribute to Greene, my favorite writer:
http://davethenovelist.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/living-in-greeneland/