Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ucla-cs.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!qantel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!ucla-cs!reiher From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.books Subject: "The Tenth Man" by Graham Greene Message-ID: <6968@ucla-cs.ARPA> Date: Wed, 2-Oct-85 18:34:15 EDT Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.6968 Posted: Wed Oct 2 18:34:15 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 14:47:52 EDT Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Lines: 45 "The Tenth Man" is a short novel written by Graham Greene in the late 1940s. It was written for a studio (MGM, I think) while he was under contract to them, so the studio owned the rights and Greene forgot all about it. Recently, the studio sold it to someone other than Greene's regular publisher. Greene looked it over, remembered it, and contributed an introduction to the book. To bring the book up to even a slightly respectable length for a novel, two story synopses Greene had written are also included. "The Tenth Man" is typical Greene, perhaps more heavily influenced by Joseph Conrad than usual. Thirty Frenchmen are confined by the Germans during the Second World War. As retaliation for a partisan killing, the Germans tell the prisoners to select one man in ten to be killed. The prisoners decide to use a lottery. One of the unlucky three is a wealthy lawyer, who tries to convince someone to take his place in return for all of his wealth. Eventually, one man agrees so that his mother and sister will be able to live in comfort. After the liberation, the lawyer finds himself drawn irresistably back to his old country home, now occupied by the dead man's relatives. The bulk of the story deals with his encounter with the dead man's sister and with an unusual interloper. Greene bites off some big themes here, but doesn't really have much to say about them. In the end, he settles for a story about courage and guilt. The story fits into the "good not great" spectrum. The story suffers from the main characters, the lawyer and the sister, being underdrawn and dull. Perhaps this results from the fact that it isn't really a novel, but an extended story treatment for a film. Things happen, but Greene doesn't make us care about them enough. One of the story summaries attached to the short novel is very brief, a tale of mistaken identity, postwar Nazis, and amnesia. A little too much for one film, and it covers ground covered rather well, already. The other story treatment eventually resurfaced, in a simplified form, as "Our Man in Havana". It's moderately amusing reading, but its greatest effect is to make you want to read the full book or see the film. Even with two story treatments and an introduction, "The Tenth Man" runs only 150 pages or so. The quality isn't extraordinarily high, so buying "The Tenth Man" isn't a very good idea. Greene fans will want to pick it up from a library. For anyone else, it is a painless way to spend a couple of hours, but it doesn't really even suggest Greene at his best. -- Peter Reiher reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com