‘We are all animals, and therefore, we are continually being attracted. That this attraction should extend to what is called love is a human misfortune cultivated by novelists. It is the horror we feel of ourselves, that is of being alone with ourselves, which draws us to love, but this love should happen only once, and never be repeated, if we have, as we should, learnt our lesson, which is that we are, all and each one of us, always and always alone.‘ — Henry Green
‘Start reading any of Henry Green’s books and some long dormant faculty in the brain becomes alert. The words are simple enough but the phrases never seem to slide into their usual slots, to be skimmed and forgotten – you have to read slowly, but it feels like an engrossing conversation rather than work. Why is “as he was doing” tucked into the middle of that sentence, comma free? And what in the world does he mean by “felt thoughts”? (I’m still not sure about the latter.) In this heightened state of attention, awake but slightly disoriented, strange bits of poetry come floating to us down the sentences – “would give the cool moon to stand in his shoes.” Not showy lyricism, but ordinary speech at its most expressive.
‘Over the years, Green has accumulated an odd coterie of admirers and, as far as I can tell, very few readers. Each admirer also tends to connect with a different set of Green’s books because they are extraordinarily dissimilar. Despite some obvious stylistic similarities – the preponderance of dialogue, the occasional dropping of articles, strange word orders – each novel takes on a different method of storytelling and an entirely new set of narrative problems. And unlike, say, D.H. Lawrence, Green doesn’t have a stable set of moral concerns, and occasionally appears to have no concerns at all: his books don’t seem to be making points or pushing any view of the world on the reader. At first, it’s hard to see what drove Green to write them, and indeed Green wasn’t too sure himself. He had plenty of money and a job available to him running his family’s factory, and he apparently wrote novels because he couldn’t help it. He once said that he was no more proud of producing his books than growing fingernails.
‘Green’s books are the work of a genuine savant. He never seems to have struggled through a derivative phrase, and his earlier books (the first was published when he was 19) are just as singular, in different ways, as his later ones. All of his novels, plus one extraordinary memoir, seem to casually shrug off the entire history of the art form – every familiar narrative device, every piece of emotional shorthand that we’ve come to expect as readers – and cut closer to the truth of lived experience than any writer I’ve come across.
‘I’m not sure why Green stopped writing. He died in the early 70s, without publishing a word after 1952. Apparently he spent much of that time drunk. I don’t want to pretend that I have any explanation for this, but I wonder if part of his dryness came from the loss of the vernacular culture from which he drew so much of his inspiration. In Pack My Bag, Green has wonderful samples of working class British talk: “When they describe,” he writes, “as everyone knows, they are literally unsurpassed in the spoken word.” And one can imagine him listening to maids and workers and the office typing pool, all of their words mixing with his imagination and becoming art. Much of that world was already going after the war, and maybe Green was himself withdrawing from what was left of it. In any case, it survives in the books – nine novels and a memoir – and it is among the great fictional universes left by any writer this century, a happy age of literature all by itself.’ — The Occasional Review
Henry Green’s house
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Context
Birmingham, UK in the 1920s
Birmingham, UK in 1935
Birmingham, UK in 1964
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Further
‘Molten Treasure: The Books of Henry Green’ (1949) @ Time Magazine
‘Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green’
‘Caught in the Web: Henry Green’ @The Guardian
‘PUSHING THE DAGGER OF PERCEPTION THROUGH THE DRAPES OF NARRATIVE: TIM PARKS ON HENRY GREEN’ @ 3:AM Magazine
Henry Green page @ Facebook
Henry Green @ goodreads
‘Silent Treatment: Benjamin Anastas on Henry Green’ @ Bookforum
‘Henry Green, the last English Modernist’ @ TLS
Henry Green @ Dalkey Archive
Buy Henry Green’s books
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Manuscript
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Interview
by Terry Southern
from The Paris Review
INTERVIEWER: Now, you have a body of work, ten novels, which many critics consider the most elusive and enigmatic in contemporary literature—and yourself, professionally or as a personality, none the less so. I’m wondering if these two mysteries are merely coincidental?
HENRY GREEN: What’s that? I’m a trifle hard of hearing.
INTERVIEWER: Well, I’m referring to such things as your use of a pseudonym, your refusal to be photographed, and so on. May I ask the reason for it?
GREEN: I didn’t want my business associates to know I wrote novels. Most of them do now, though . . . know I mean, not write, thank goodness.
INTERVIEWER: And has this affected your relationships with them?
GREEN: Yes, yes, oh yes—why, some years ago a group at our Birmingham works put in a penny each and bought a copy of a book of mine, Living. And as I was going round the iron foundry one day, a loam molder said to me, “I read your book, Henry.” “And did you like it?” I asked, rightly apprehensive. He replied, “I didn’t think much of it, Henry.” Too awful.
Then, you know, with a customer, at the end of a settlement which has deteriorated into a compromise painful to both sides, he may say, “I suppose you are going to put this in a novel.” Very awkward.
INTERVIEWER: I see.
GREEN: Yes, it’s best they shouldn’t know about one. And one should never be known by sight.
INTERVIEWER: You have, however, been photographed from the rear.
GREEN: And a wag said: “I’d know that back anywhere.”
INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard it remarked that your work is “too sophisticated” for American readers, in that it offers no scenes of violence—and “too subtle,” in that its message is somewhat veiled. What do you say?
GREEN: Unlike the wilds of Texas, there is very little violence over here. A bit of child killing, of course, but no straight shootin’. After fifty, one ceases to digest; as someone once said: “I just ferment my food now.” Most of us walk crabwise to meals and everything else. The oblique approach in middle age is the safest thing. The unusual at this period is to get anywhere at all—God damn!
INTERVIEWER: And how about “subtle”?
GREEN: I don’t follow. Suttee, as I understand it, is the suicide—now forbidden—of a Hindu wife on her husband’s flaming pyre. I don’t want my wife to do that when my time comes—and with great respect, as I know her, she won’t …
INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry, you misheard me; I said, “subtle”—that the message was too subtle.
GREEN: Oh, subtle. How dull!
INTERVIEWER: … yes, well now I believe that two of your books, Blindness and Pack My Bag, are said to be “autobiographical,” isn’t that so?
GREEN: Yes, those two are mostly autobiographical. But where they are about myself, they are not necessarily accurate as a portrait; they aren’t photographs. After all, no one knows what he is like, he just tries to give some sort of picture of his time. Not like a cat to fight its image in the mirror.
INTERVIEWER: The critic Alan Pryce-Jones has compared you to Jouhandeau and called you an “odd, haunted, ambiguous writer.” Did you know that?
GREEN: I was in the same house with him at Eton. He was younger than me, so he saw through me perhaps.
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Book
Henry Green Party Going
Penguin
‘Party Going opens with a small group of hastily assembled characters converging in, or making their way to, the railway station, on their way to a holiday in Europe. The sense of holidaymaking suspends the hotel somewhere in a semi-realistic state: between home and holiday, and between station and city. When intense fog envelops the city they are halted on their journey and take refuge in the station hotel. This creates a sense of anticipation which is never fulfilled and which leaves the characters vulnerable –- unsure of how to act and behave in the static environment. The hotel as a refuge, however, soon takes a sinister turn as those unable to enter it become trapped in the station where they are swept up in a frenzy of panic and claustrophobia. Green continuously plays with point of view giving different descriptions of entrances and exits in order to juxtapose various characters’ reactions to the same space, highlighting the distinctions between interior and exterior space. Initially, a fragile sense of community is formed through those characters that are able to occupy the hotel, to take refuge in it. It is an odd sense of refuge, however, for they do, of course, all remain in the city where they live; yet at the same time removed from their everyday life and trapped by external circumstances (that is by the obscuring fog and crowds shut in on the station concourse). And it is precisely this ‘known’ London being rendered ‘unknown’ and their powerlessness in the face of this transformation, which brings about a growing sense of panic as they begin to lose control of the situation.’ — Joanna Pready, Literary London
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Excerpts
Fog was so dense, bird that had been disturbed went flat into a balustrade and slowly fell, dead, at her feet.
There it lay and Miss Fellowes looked up to where that pall of fog was twenty foot above and out of which it had fallen, turning over once. She bent down and took a wing then entered a tunnel in front of her, and this had DEPARTURES lit up over it, carrying her dead pigeon.
*
Seen by Julia from the hotel windows directly above, the crowd seemed to be swaying like branches rock in a light wind, and she had forgotten what it was to be outside, what it smelled and felt like, and she had not realized what this crowd was, just seeing it through glass. It went on chanting WE WANT TRAINS, WE WANT TRAINS from that one section which surged to and fro and again that same woman shrieked, two or three men were shouting against the chant but she would not distinguish words. She thought how strange it was when hundreds of people turned their heads all in one direction, their faces so much lighter than their dark heads, lozenges, lozenges, lozenges.
It’s terrifying, said Julia, I did not realize there were so many people in the world.
*
Standing prepared, empty, curtained, shuttered, tall mirrors facing across laid tables crowned by napkins, with space rocketing transparence from one glass silvered surface to the other, supporting walls covered in olive-coloured silk, chandeliers repeated to a thousand thousand profiles to be lost in olive-grey depths as quiet as this room’s untenanted attention, but a scene made warm with mass upon mass of daffodils banked up against mirrors, or mounded once on each of the round white tables and laid in a flat frieze about their edges — here then time stood still for Jane, even in wine bottles over to one side holding the single movement, and that unseen, of bubbles rising just as the air, similarly trapped even if conditioned, watched unseen across itself in a superb but not indifferent pause of mirrors.
Into this waiting shivered one small seen movement that seemed to snap the room apart, a door handle turning.
*
Air she breathed was harsh, and here where there were no lamps or what few there were shone at greater distances, it was like night with fog as a ceiling shutting out the sky, lying below tops of trees.
Where hundreds of thousands she could not see were now going home, their day done, she was only starting out and there was this difference that where she had been nervous of her journey and of starting, so that she had said she would rather go on foot to the station to walk it off, she was frightened now. As a path she was following turned this way and that round bushes and shrubs that hid from her what she would find she felt she would next come upon this fog dropped suddenly down to the ground, when she would be lost.
Then at another turn she was on more open ground. Headlights of cars above turning into a road as they swept round hooting swept their light above where she walked, illuminating lower brances of trees. As she hurried she started at each blaring horn and each time she would look up to make sure that noise heralded a light and then was reassured to see leaves brilliantly green veined like marble with wet dirt and these veins reflecting each light back for a moment then it would be gone out beyond her and then was altogether gone and there was another.
These lights would come like thoughts in darkness, in a stream; a flash and then each was away. Looking round, and she was always glancing back, she would now and then see loving couples dimly two by two; in flashes their faces and anything white in their clothes picked up what light was at moments reflected down on them.
*
p.s. Hey. As you may have seen, the Halloween London screening of ‘Room Temperature’ sold out really fast, so we’ve added a second screening the next day, November 1st, 4:30 pm at the same location. Tickets go on sale at 11 am this morning GMT. Get them here. I would move quickly, just to be safe. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Happy start! I guess my brain is back, but how would I know, I guess. Helen Keller as a metaphor or something, why not? Good plucking there by love. Love thanking everyone who bought or will buy tickets to ‘RT’, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, He’s sampleable up the wazoo, I reckon. Well, I’m def. skipping out on ‘Primetime’, but give me the scoop. ** Adem Berbic, Yeah, the speed at which the screening sold out was let’s just say a surprise. Hopefully you’re up early enough today to score Sunday tickets. 11 am, hit that site and button. Excellent that you found your de-clogger in James. Not surprised. Not anywhere close to an acceptable level of spooked yet, but it’s October 2nd. Needn’t be greedy. Yeah, super nice of Andrew to accept the moderator slot. ** Regina, Hi, Regina. Oh, gosh, hopefully you’re seeing this early enough to get tickets for the Sunday screening. Hopefully it’ll fill up more gradually. I hope you can come. Cool, you sound squared away on the film front. Here, the Cinematheque just reopened and the big annual experimental French film festival is close by. It has a screening of experimental films by teens aged 12 to 17, and that is always a must see. Where are you with your short? That’s exciting! Everything’s good enough here, thank you. Have the best day. ** scunnard, Hi. Well, assuming you still want to, a second Sunday screening goes on sale this morning. See: above. Humidity is the enemy. Except when it’s cold outside. New film: we’re starting the fundraising phase, i.e. the most stressful phase. I guess we’ll know soon how tough that’s going to be. Otherwise, it’s written and growing exponentially in Zac’s and my brains. Really excellent about the show and the upcoming projects. You sound pretty great. I’ve been fine, doing what I do and hope to do with no serious obstacles thus far. ** Jonathan Lees, Well, hey there! Welcome, and I so agree with you about the dumped baby. Respect! ** James Bennett, Thanks, yeah, so far so good. Holy crap, I was totally at that Sebadoh gig! Wild. I’ll re-experience it. I remember it being kind of a super fun total mess. And I’ll scour that guy’s channel. I probably knew him or something. Thanks! Week’s okay. Inching forward. Saw some good art and friends. So appreciating the atmospheric descent. For my money Joy Williams is pretty much the best living American fiction writer, so I’m happy she’s clicking with you, obvs. And Pinget! You are on a serious roll! ** Mark Stephens, Mr. Mark Stephens, old pal. So lovely to get to ‘see’ you. I know, no LA Halloween. It’s murdering me, but the Halloween/London thing killed off my dream because I can’t afford to fly all the way over there right now if I can’t get the full Halloween experience. But I’m sad as fuck, and seeing you will have to wait a bit, which obviously also sucks. I hope to get there before year’s end. I saw something about Disney making cuts, and of course I thought of J and tensed up a little bit. I’m beyond awfully glad that the artifact is just sitting there like an annoying but harmless little bitch. Ugh, though. Did we see that Nico show together? Awesome. Possibly Spedding, yes. Supposedly that show had Tim Hardin as the opening act, but I don’t remember seeing Tim Hardin, and I don’t see how I could’ve forgotten that. Sending tons of love back to you! And hopefully we’ll be in each others’ eyesight ere long at all. xo. ** Carsten, Glad you’re ensconced. For me, if the day ever comes when I stop absorbing & gulping down everything, I hope I’m being zipped up in a body bag. Romantic comedies may be the most off-putting genre for me. But luckily practically no interesting director ever makes such things. Musicals aren’t a problem. It’s a big enough area. My ‘fear’ is that ‘Digger’s is this moment’s ‘Megalopolis’, which I really hoped would be an auteur masterpiece but was in fact almost unwatchable level awful. ** laura w, Happy Halloween’s starting gate. ‘Stainless’, cool, Todd was an old friend of mine. Very sadly missed. Someone said the ‘RT’ BluRay is now preorder-able on Amazon or somewhere, but I haven’t checked. Out on November 10th, I think. It has some cool bonus features if I don’t say so myself. ** i🌙, Hi. Good characterisation of Bachmann’s gift. Too young, complete nonsense. You know and feel and understand things right now that you won’t or won’t remember accurately when you’re older, and I think the perspective of teenagers is as serious and valuable as that of people of older or any age. If you don’t write what you know and want to know, etc., now, important things will get lost. Musicians your age make great work, and there’s no reason on earth why it’s any different for writers your age. Granted, I became a serious, if not very good writer when I was 15, so I come from where I come from. ** HaRpEr //, You got a ticket! Whew! Never imagined it would sell out so fast. It is a small venue, but still. I’m sure I can find the Jack Smith doc in some nefarious streaming location, and I’ll head over there. Thanks, pal. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Rob the post with my permission and blessings! Happy October 2nd! Very sweet about the $1000! Wow. Um, I think maybe something like that existed back in my school days. It rings a bell. Fortunately or unfortunately I had moneyed parents, so I wouldn’t have qualified. There isn’t a ton of spooky stuff over here to choose from, but definitely a trip to Halloween makeover of Parc Asterix and checking out a ‘Haunted Park’ thing they’re doing that will probably be kind of lame. If the ‘Hellraiser’ game is on Nintendo, I will play it. I’m totally way more than okay with the post. October 9 is completely fine. Awesome, that would be amazing. I drove through New Orleans once, so I just saw it through the car windows, and I couldn’t tell what it was exactly. Never been to NC. Always wanted to. I’ll figure it out. Happiest day! ** Okay. Have you guys read Henry Green? People don’t seem to read him very much these days, but he’s awfully good. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 