| Title | : | Travels with My Aunt |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0143039008 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780143039006 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 254 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1969 |
Travels with My Aunt Reviews
-
Some persons are like cats and some – like mice…
…and in any case I have a weakness for funerals. People are generally seen at their best on these occasions, serious and sober, and optimistic on the subject of personal immortality.
Graham Greene has at once won my attention with his subtle irony – for me it is the best kind of wit.
Protagonist and narrator, Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager is a very timorous and highly introvertive man.
This is the boy:Too many books by too many authors can be confusing, like too many shirts and suits. I like to change my clothes as little as possible. I suppose some people would say the same of my ideas, but the bank had taught me to be wary of whims. Whims so often end in bankruptcy.
His aunt, Aunt Augusta is a woman of the world, she is very extravertive and she knows no scruples.
This is the girl:I remembered how at Brighton she had told me that her idea of fame was to be represented at Tussaud’s, dressed in one of her own costumes, and I really believe she would have opted for the Chamber of Horrors rather than have had no image made of her at all.
So thrown together they constitute quite an alliance…It was as though I had escaped from an open prison, had been snatched away, provided with a rope ladder and a waiting car, into my aunt’s world, the world of the unexpected character and the unforeseen event.
Travels With My Aunt is a weird, witty mystery and for me it turned out to be a real delight. -
"One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read..." - Graham Greene, Travels With my Aunt
Having only read one other Graham Greene book previously (Brighton Rock) I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book. It turned out to be a fun and entertaining story about Henry Puling, a very unimaginative, conservative retired English bachelor in his 50s who meets his eccentric Aunt Augusta for the first time in decades on the day of his mother's funeral. Aunt Augusta is one of the most unforgettable characters I've ever come across in fiction; she's selfish, unapologetic, and has had quite the unconventional life, especially if you consider that she's in her mid-70s and this story takes place in the late 1960s. She takes Henry away from his boring humdrum life of tending dahlias, and they end up travelling around the world, breaking laws and meeting a motley crowd.
There was a lot of dry humour in this book which seems to have stood the test of time. While in Turkey Aunt Augusta says, "Politics in Turkey are taken more seriously than they are at home. It was only quite recently that they executed a Prime Minister. We dream of it, but they act." Well, it made me laugh!
The mildly infuriating Aunt Augusta is definitely a people person and loves to tell stories. How true they are, Henry still isn't quite sure. Yet, as he later muses:
"What does the truth matter? All characters once dead, if they continue to exist in memory at all, tend to become fictions. Hamlet is no less real now than Winston Churchill, and Joe Pulling no less historical than Don Quixote."
In between all the shenanigans, Greene leaves some food for thought:
"Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time. How briefly and to the point people always seem to speak on the stage or on the screen, while in real life we stumble from phrase to phrase with endless repetition."
There's still some things I haven't figured out about this book yet. I feel Greene packed a lot more social commentary in here than my bookclub and I had time to discuss. Firstly, I felt he was poking fun at the postcolonial, post-War era, but I don't know enough about England at this time to confirm this. But maybe I wasn't meant to take the novel as seriously as I did at times.
One part did shock me though. -
Clever and witty, a character driven novel written in a crisp clean style. Fun comes from the interplay between stodgy Henry and his outrageous Aunt. Told through Henry’s eyes, a cautious man recently retired from banking who never married, whose passion has never extended beyond the growing of dahlias. “I like to change my clothes as little as possible. I suppose some people would say the same of my ideas, the bank had taught me to be wary of whims.”
Contrasted with Aunt Augusta who first appears at his mothers funeral, an immoral woman with one driving ambition - live life to the fullest. Making no apologies for her self absorption she leaves in her wake a trail of broken hearts. Brutally honest “I've never wanted a man who needed me, Henry. A need is a claim” she simply is who she is, takes full responsibility for her actions and casts no blame.
'I despise no one, no one. Regret your own actions, if you like that kind of wallowing in self-pity, but never, never despise.”
Henry's life is irreversibly changed when he joins her as a travelling companion, entering “my aunt's world, the world of the unexpected character and the unforeseen event.’
As British Humour a solid 4 stars. My first but not last Graham Greene, think
Our Man in Havana next.
Cons: A tad dated (but not annoyingly so) and the plot is a bit weak. If you’re the kind who writes off old people as boring you’ll really hate it, but I'm telling you - you'll be missing out on some deliciously funny stories. And finally parts of it are sorta sick It’s obvious Graham was just having fun writing this - don’t take it too seriously - he clearly didn’t.
________________________________________
“Laziness and good nature often go together.” -
On a superficial level, this is a tale about Henry, a retired, timid bank manager from London, who learns how to live it up from his adventurous, sexually liberated septuagenarian aunt, a woman so outrageous that she is almost a trickster character. But this would be a rather simplistic reading of this witty tale: Eccentric Aunt Augusta is a self-centered criminal with a lover whose police record lists, among other things, the collaboration with the Nazis. She is fully a-moral and tries to teach Henry her ways, and of course Greene, the Catholic, wanted to lure his readers on this thin ice: The fascinating, entertaining person at the center of the novel is an elderly, female
Mephistopheles character - and it's hilarious. I want more radiant villains with crazy grandma vibes.
Henry meets Augusta for the first timt in over 50 years at his mother's funeral, which sets in motion a whole chain of events: He leaves behind his comfortable, but boring life including his dahlias and his ponderings to marry tatting fan Miss Keene, in order to join his aunt on her travels that, bit by bit, reveal the woman's past of international crime and intrigue. Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Italy, Paraguay, you name it, Aunt Augusta had a lover and a scheme there, and most of them pop back up, sucking Henry into extraordinary (and of course fully unbelievable) adventures, featuring hippies, Interpol, a playboy from Sierra Leone, and international smugglers, to name a few. There are punchlines, slapstick und parody elements, but also underlying themes of morality, especially regarding racism, from the Nazis over South African Apartheid to colonialism and everyday racism in England.
This is extremely well-written and hilarious, while subliminally telling readers what they make themselves complicit in. I see how this inspired some of the most aesthetically forward-thinking authors of postmodern German-language literature,
Christian Kracht and
Eckhart Nickel. -
Travels with My Aunt, one of Graham Greene's later and lighter novels, was my fourth by the author, and although it might not have been the best it was certainly the most fun to read. It’s a merry one for Greene, who is normally associated with darker moralistic themes usually playing heavy on Catholicism. At the heart of the story is bank manager Henry Pulling, retired, in his 50s, whose boring suburban life, including having an affection for dahlias, is changed by his elderly Aunt Augusta, who convinces him to go travelling with her. What we have then is a uproarious romp of sorts, starting in England, moving across Europe, and then later ending in Paraguay, and as the narrative progresses the comical and lighter moments (and there are plenty of them) give way to a slightly more menacing mood. What is it to lead a good life? That seems to be Greene's pondering question here. Is enthusiasm for adventure a better way of living than a quiet, comfortable life? How far would one go to upgrade from a mediocre existence ? At the funeral of his mother we first meet Henry's Aunt Augusta, and after decades of not really knowing her, she takes him back to her apartment, where she resides with her lover, a middle-aged man from Sierra Leone called Wordsworth. Aunt Augusta, who is one way or another is dabbling in some dodgy money-making scam, tells outrageous tales of her life, and it seems there’s always some truth to them, but the naive Henry, is too lacking in worldly experience to fully understand the implications of some of her actions. Suddenly Henry eyes are open to a different more exciting way of living, with his loveless existence being juxtaposed against his aunt’s often fascinating past. The travels through France, switzerland and Italy, on the way to İstanbul via the Orient Express, see others enter the story, like Tooley an American girl on the loose, her CIA father, a fortune-teller, and a war criminal, and when the scenery is dull Augusta passes the time by recalling her earlier lovers. Added to the travelling we have a police investigation into Henry’s mother’s ashes being replaced with marijuana, a spoonful of espionage, and some truly funny one-liners. I get the sense Greene got much enjoyment from creating his two central characters, who play off each other as polar opposite in various amusing set pieces along the way. I didn't find the last third as good as the previous two, but Travels with My Aunt was still a novel I much enjoyed. I would be surprised if Greene wrote anything else as humorous as this. -
‘Travels with my Aunt’ (1969) is certainly the funniest book by Graham Greene that I have read so far. It tells us the entertaining story of Henry Pulling our very conservative, socially compliant, dull and boring erstwhile bank manager of some years standing. Henry encounters the eponymous ‘Aunt’ – Augusta for the first time in 50 years and as the title suggests, almost involuntarily, embarks on said ‘travels’.
So whilst at first glance ‘Travels with my Aunt’ is ostensibly not as profound nor in the same league as Greene’s classics (Power and the Glory, Heart of the Matter, End of the Affair etc) – it is a very much a different kind of novel. But don’t be fooled by this veneer of a seemingly light-hearted and superficial fun story – there meaning here too.
Amusing and entertaining though this novel is (being one of Greene’s so-called ‘entertainments’ rather than serious novels) – as it comes from the pen of Graham Greene, there is of course a serious nature and undertone to the story. There is much here about the dullness and self-imposed imprisonment of suburban domestic life – focussing on this aspect of an imprisoning effect, being happy yet bored, successful yet uninspired, an absence or suppression of any sense of adventure. What is painted here is very much a middle England, middle class, middle brow, middle management existence – certainly as the starting point and impetuous for our forthcoming adventure.
As with all of Greene’s work, ‘Travels with my Aunt’ is expertly executed from start to finish – Greene is very much a solid and reliable, as well as brilliant, writer. Both Aunt Augusta and Henry Pulling are so very well created and drawn and when it all comes down to it – don’t we all secretly wish for our very own Aunt Augusta and a series of perplexing but exciting and life changing adventures to call our own? It that sense at least, it is not just Henry who is escaping here – it is the reader also who, as with the best of novels, is on a real journey of escapism and discovery here.
-
After a pedestrian career in a high-street bank, retired branch manager Henry Pulling is settled in his life as a single middle-aged man who is devoted to his dahlias. He attends his step-mother's funeral and meets up with his Aunt Augusta, someone who has not seen since by Henry since he was a young baby.
The renewed association brings travel, some mystery about his family and his own aunt's life to the fore. For a man whose horizons reach little further than the English home counties the reconnection with aunt Augusta will bring Henry new angles to life, experiences and people he'd have only come across in newspapers and radio, and challenge his perceptions and thoughts on how he will live his life in retirement.
Graham Greene is one of my favourite authors, and this book, very much centred on characters rather than plot - although there is an underlying one - shows his great ability to create situations and circumstances that make the reader smile, laugh, cringe and sympathise with Henry.
My copy was the beautiful 2004 Folio Society edition with colour illustrations by John Holder in a lovely slip case. Grey decorated boards with an illustration on the front exterior and black lettering on the spine enclosed in white and red blocks to the spine. Introduction by John Mortimer (of Rumpole of the Bailey fame). 268 printed pages and 9 colour illustrations. -
Since some years ago I’ve tried to read this seemingly readable “Travels With My Aunt” but it’s a pity I could read no more than 8-10 pages and left it on its stack, more than once. So last month I decided to read it hoping to enjoy this fiction like his six ones, I’ve found his ‘intoxicating entertainment’ (GR synopsis) amazing and worth spending my time. Like I said somewhere, I started by reading its brief synopsis as an essential overview as well as the one from Wikipedia at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travels... for more detail.
The story is about a middle-aged retired bank manager named Henry Pulling, he has just met Aunt Augusta for the first time in fifty years at his mother's funeral. His aunt, in her seventies, is a formidable character fond of Henry and action, she simply plans her itinerary abroad with a bit of adventure in mind, rather than mope and stay home; therefore, Henry has no choice but follows her plan by keeping going and solving problems from some unexpected plights or weird people along the way.
Surprisingly, I found reading this reluctantly long-awaited book inimitably hilarious with wonderful dialogs, fantastic plot, unthinkable climax, etc. Moreover, each reasonably manageable length of each chapter is not too tedious for us as his admirers or newcomers. There are 20 chapters in Part One and only 8 in Part Two; we may call such a chapter as a numerical one because we see only Numbers 1 (4+pages), 2 (3+), 3 (8), …. 20 (6+) and Numbers 1 (10+pages), 2 (4), 3 (11), … 8 (8).
Once in a while, I have sometime found some words used in the right context and wondered if this is one of the ways in which Greene has told us that he regards writing some of his novels as a sort of 'entertainment' that implies reading entertainment for us as well, for example:
1. It was a sad occasion without Sir Alfred, who had been a very jovial man, laughing immoderately even at his own jokes. (p. 22)
2. 'How was the mowing-machine by the way?'
'Very wet, but no irreparable damage.' (p. 24)
3. 'I told Jo what the doctor said, and he mouthed a reply, I thought I made out, ''not good enough.'' (p. 56)
4. 'Does he speak English or French?'
'It is not likely.' I felt hopelessly abroad. (p. 91)
5. So I sat in the West Berlin Hotel shedding beery tears of self-pity and envying the men who danced with their arms round strangers' shoulders. (p. 124)
If you notice something uniquely well-expressed in each item, you'd see the point and agree with me on the following: immoderately, irreparable, mouthed, hopelessly abroad, and beery. What do you think?
Moreover, Greene has Wordsworth, a key character, speak his transcribed pidgin English which is of course literally amusing whenever we hear the typical dialog or we speak it mockingly. Try reading the extracts and you'd see why:
'Ýour auntie, Mr Pullen. She allays safe with old Wordsworth. Ar no cost her nothing. But she got a fellah now -- he cost her plenty plenty. And he too old for her, Mr Pullen. Your auntie no chicken. She need a young fellah.'
'You aren't exactly young yourself, Wordsworth.'
'Ar no got ma big feet in no tomb, Mr Pullen, lak that one. Ar no trust that fellah. ...' (p. 208)
'Who is this man she's with, Wordsworth?'
'I won spik his name. My tongue turn up if I spik his name. Oh, man, I bin faithful to your auntie long time now.'
... (p. 208)
'He was asking me about you. He saw us on shore.'
'What he look lak?'
... (p. 209)
Incidentally, touched by his mention of 'Thailand' in this book rather than 'Siam' as found in his memoir, I think first it's a kind of honor to see him write/type our country to the world to see and probably those people unfamiliar with or rarely heard of our country may find out in a reference or on Wikipedia, and second it's due to its first publication in 1969 so 'Thailand' has since been widely heard and more collaborated in telecommunications, journalism, business, etc. internationally. The mention in question is as follows:
'You've been out here for six years?'
'No, but I was in Thailand before this.'
'Doing research?'
'Yeah. Sort of ...' ... (p. 204)
Again, when I casually read this sentence, "The great gates had been cleaned of rust and flung open; the chandeliers sparkled in the sala, lights were turned on in even the empty room, ..." (p. 254) The word 'sala' (in italics) rang a bell and kept me wondering if it comes from a foreign or a Thai word ; so I tried Wiktionary and found two meanings:
1. From Spanish, from Germanic; ...
A large hall or reception room.
2. Borrowing from Thai ศาลา (saa-la).
An open pavilion in Thailand used as a meeting place or to shelter from the weather.
[
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sala]
I have no further information on his 'sala' used in the sentence so it might have been from either one. -
"A long life is not a question of years. A man without memories might reach the age of a hundred and feel that his life had been a very brief one."
"He traveled from one woman to another all through his life. That comes to much the same thing. New landscapes, new customs. The accumulation of memories."
"He asked me if I could find him a house of three hundred and sixty five rooms so he could live for a day and a night in each. In that way he thought life would seem almost interminable."
Graham Greene published this comic take on the mistaken assumptions of a younger generation to an older one during 1969. Henry Pulling reconnects with his Aunt Augusta, who had long been gone, on the occasion of his mother's death. Henry is a retired banker who never married, never goes anywhere, and whose hobby is tending his flower garden. Augusta, a bon vivant who traveled all over the world, at 75 doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon.
It is a comedy of mismatched personalities as Henry meets Augusta's African boyfriend and gets tangled up in her risky and risqué affairs. After Henry's suggestion of a brief visit to Brighton they board a first class flight to Paris and take the Orient Express to Istanbul. Aunt Augusta downs copious quantities of vodka and gin and tells tales of her earlier adventures. Henry is conservative and set in his ways but discovers a fascination with the lifestyle of Augusta.
From the outset Augusta reveals family secrets about the circumstances of his birth and philandering of his father. She evades his growing suspicion she may be smuggling drugs. Swinger parties, brothels and burlesque were part of her past milieu. She is fabulously wealthy, extravagant and eccentric. Her recollections wander from time to place as older people's often do. Henry's attitudes begin to change after he meets a young hippy woman on the train.
Greene takes his customary aim at Americans, from their revolution to restrooms, magazines to cartoons, bonds to teabags, cigarettes to coiffures, overconfidence to loudness, drinking to impertinence and Protestants to puritanism. He lampoons Catholics as well, with impostor priests and a dog mass diocese. Caricatures of Italians, Germans and Turks, a dope and diamond dealing immigrant from Sierra Leone, where Greene once lived, also appear on the stage.
Back in England Henry ponders the mystery of his birth and visits his father’s grave in Boulogne. While still skeptical of Augusta he misses the excitement of travels with his aunt. They are reunited in South America where she hides out with a WWII fugitive. Henry is attracted to an underage girl and considers trafficking in contraband. While completely out of character the absurd conclusion adds to the enjoyment of Greene’s story. The fruit rarely falls far from the tree.
While not as deep as some of his earlier dramas or thrillers, it's a funny romp through 1960's Britain, Europe and South America. Written at the age of 65, after he had conquered the world of English novels, literary criticism and film, there is a lingering impression Greene phoned this one in. Even so it's difficult to imagine he is capable of writing a bad book. The characters Augusta and Henry, like Greene, are in unresolved tension between convention and nonconformity. -
“My books are a good antidote to foreign travel and reinforce the sense of the England I love, but sometimes I wonder whether that England exists still beyond my garden hedge or further than Church Road. The future here seems to me to have no taste at all: it is like a meal on a menu, which serves only to kill the appetite. If you ever come back to England—'but that was a sentence I never finished, and I can't remember now what I intended to write.”
This is a wistful and ruminative action-adventure novel from Graham Greene. Greene’s ageing heroes are often humiliated and barely survive in an increasingly savage world. These gentlemanly heroes almost seem to be Greene’s not so gentle takedown of the hard-boiled American hero. Even though I am a big fan of the novels with hard-boiled American heroes, Greene’s ageing English characters have more depth and despite their pusillanimity, their inner life is a pleasure to read.
Henry Pulling, an ageing retired banker who likes to spend time with his dahlias in the garden is adopted by his 75-year-old aunt, after the death of his mother. He is pushed into adventures that sends him on journeys across Europe and South America with his aunt who might not be what she seems to be.
An important theme in the novel is the decline of British influence across the world.
“Your people don't count for very much here, I'm afraid. We provide their arms—and then there's the new hydroelectric station we are helping them to build . . . not far from the Iguazu Falls. It will serve Brazil too—but Brazil will have to pay them royalties. Great thing for the country.”
This is what a CIA agent who comes to Henry’s rescue after his arrest in Uruguay tells him, when Henry says the police do not seem to understand “British Embassy”.
Henry longs to retreat into his garden with his dahlias and write letters to Miss Keene, the only woman who has ever shown any interest in him. Like him, Miss Keene, an Englishwoman, travelled to South Africa to settle down and does not really fit into that world. Henry himself is often racked by a sense of anomie during his travels with his aunt. He longs for the Victorian England and often seeks solace in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, the novels of Walter Scott and alcohol.
Henry does not seem to mind The Beatles -
“It seemed at first another and a happier world which I had re-entered: I was back home, in the late afternoon, as the long shadows were falling; a boy whistled a Beatle tune and a motor-bicycle revved far way up Norman Lane.”
He does on occasion enjoy the thrills of these adventures -
All the same I found sleep difficult to attain, even in my comfortable bed at the Royal Albion. The lights of the Palace Pier sparkled on the ceiling, and round and round, in my head, went the figures of Wordsworth and Curran, the elephant and the dogs of Hove, the mystery of my birth, the ashes of my mother who was not my mother, and my father asleep in the bath. This was not the simple life which I had known at the bank, where I could judge a client's character by his credits and debits. I had a sense of fear and exhilaration too, as the music pounded from the Pier and the phosphorescence rolled up the beach.
There is the usual talk of Catholicism and Christianity that are an obsession for Greene. But in Travels with My Aunt, it is rendered with humour -
“I nearly became a Roman Catholic once. Because of the Kennedys. But then when two of them got shot—I mean I'm superstitious.”
And more than a hint of religious supremacy (but since I live in a country with competing gramophones/loudspeakers, I wholeheartedly agree with Greene here) -
"We have even gone as far afield together as Istanbul where I was a good deal disappointed with the famed Santa Sophia. I can say to you—as I couldn't say to my aunt—that I much prefer our own St John's Church for a religious atmosphere, and I am glad that the vicar doesn't feel it necessary to summon the faithful to prayer by a gramophone record in a minaret."
For a guy racked by Catholic guilt, not many critics seem to notice that Greene’s novels are quite racy and even downright pervy at times. Henry attracts the attention of a couple of young women one of whom is underaged. It is not the best Greene novel that I have read. But Greene has heaped up the novel with exotic locales, eccentric characters (there is a character who counts the time while pissing and notes it down each time, maintaining a record) and Henry's inner life. -
“She had come into my life only to disturb it” (p. 155).
I didn’t find this funny or fun at all. Until his amoral aunt came along, Henry was minding his business, enjoying his retirement, tending his dahlias, and reading Sir
Walter Scott. But Aunt Augusta ruined him, sending his life spiraling down into all sorts of bad behavior, from smuggling and aiding a war criminal to courting an underage girl.
“A little honest thieving hurts no one, especially when it is a question of gold … and you mustn’t think me strait-laced. I am all for a little professional sex” (p. 63).
Aunt Augusta is horrible. It is not just that she engages in behavior that’s bad (e.g., sleeping with married men) or even illegal (smuggling), but she also treats others badly, especially when she is jealous, and, perhaps worst of all, she tries to get others to misbehave. What kind of relative tells a family member that they should be a worse human being, just for the fun of it?
“He was a cheat too, and I only wish you were. Then perhaps we’d have something in common” (p. 104).
Below is one quote that I thought was memorable, although it did not apply to Henry, whose later life was more shaped by Aunt Augusta than by books:
“One’s life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand” (p. 194). -
This was probably the most amusing of the Graham Greene novels I have read.
The blurb says "Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over fifty years at what he supposes is his mother's funeral.
Soon after, she persuades Henry to abandon Southwood, his dahlias and the Major next door to travel her way, Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay... through Aunt Augusta, a veteran of Europe's hotel bedrooms, Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society; mixing with hippies, war criminals, CIA men; smoking pot, breaking all the currency regulations... coming alive after a dull suburban lifetime."
And is sums it up better than I would.
It is a fairly light hearted work, very readable, and very funny, with twists and turns to the plot - some of which can be seen coming, others not so much. My impression is Greene didn't take this one too seriously - and had a lot of fun with it, and I think the same.
Aunt Augusta is a laugh a minute, with great stories, and a sordid history, all the better to contrast Henry, a conservative and straight laced ex-bank manager.
There were some great quotes from both of them in this book:
“I have never planned anything illegal in my life,' Aunt Augusta said. 'How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?”
“Politics in Turkey are taken more seriously than they are at home. It was only quite recently that they executed a Prime Minister. We dream of it, but they act.”
“I like to change my clothes as little as possible. I suppose some people would say the same of my ideas, the bank had taught me to be wary of whims.” -
'Does he speak English or French?'
'It is not likely.' I felt hopelessly abroad.
The book is unequally divided into two parts, the first taking up most of it. I will have to separate them in my review, for they inspired very different feelings.
The Good Stuff (about Part 1)
"You must surrender yourself first to extravagance"
- it is well written, as you expect a classic work of literature to be;
- it was funny, even outrageous and surprising at times, in a way I didn't expect a classic work of literature to be;
- Aunt Augusta's character;
- the message.
"A long life is not a question of years. A man without memories might reach the age of a hundred and feel that his life had been a very brief one."
"I was afraid of burglars and Indian thugs and snakes and fires and Jack the Ripper, when I should have been afraid of thirty years in a bank and a take-over bid and a premature retirement."
"Travels with my Aunt" is a story of empowerment. It urges you to shed boredom and just do stuff, go places. It inspires to question the sense of moral superiority which often comes with following the rules:
"Perhaps a sense of morality is the sad compensation we learn to enjoy, like a remission for good conduct"
I can't say I agree that is always the case, but it definitely is sometimes. We often choose to interpret our fear, laziness, inertia and perpetual boredom as moral superiority, loyalty and a will of iron, where there is none of that.
Aunt Augusta's character in Part 1 can be summed up by these few lines:
'I hope you don't plan anything illegal.'
'I have never planned anything illegal in my life', Aunt Augusta said. 'How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?'
Aunt Augusta is a 75-y.o. lady and a spitfire. She is straightforward and honest, she loves life and she loves people. She is unashamed to state, that at her age, yes, she still falls in love and enjoys a sex life. I'm so used to seeing old people portrayed as either adorable-lost-featherhead knitting in the background, or as a cranky old fuck, or as a quintessence of faceless wisdom. Aunt Augusta is flesh and blood, and that was refreshing. Her honest, judgment-free view on other people around her was nice to read. She has her faults, for sure, but I agreed with Henry here:
"Loyalty to a person inevitably entails loyalty to all the imperfections of a human being, even to the chicanery and immorality from which my aunt was not entirely free."
The Bad Stuff (about Part 1)
- it was slow at times, and I found myself zoning out;
- Henry's character.
Henry is best described here: "As I went upstairs to bed I felt myself to be a ghost returning home, transparent as water." He's over 55, doesn't have any friends, lovers, interests, skills or a job or anything at all in his life. The man has never been in a relationship (romantic or just close kinship), has never been excited about ANYTHING! He studied, and after graduation, his mom found him a clerking job, which he held for over 30 years, now he has retired, and that's it! All he does is gardening and reading a few of the same books back to back over and over. I can't imagine someone really having such an empty life, such a total lack of personality, ambition, will.
This story is supposed to be about his journey to becoming a real person, of his empowerment, but in fact, he just continues with the same thing:
"It was as though I had escaped from an open prison, had been snatched away, provided with a rope ladder and a waiting car, into my aunt's world, the world of unexpected character and the unforeseen event"
Again, he just goes with the drift of things, the drift being Aunt Augusta, he makes no decisions of his own, just, as always, follows along and pretends that's what he wants.
The Good Stuff (about Part 2)
None found.
The Bad Stuff (about Part 2) **Spoilery**
The first part wasn't exactly perfect, but it was good, but it all went to shit in Part 2.
Aunt Augusta disappointed me so badly, it was as if her whole strength was eliminated. She is head over heels in love with this guy - they've been together before, in their youth. The man is described as "short and fat and bald" - I appreciate the fact that he wasn't an 80-y.o. with a six-pack. YES, being old and not beautiful does not render you unlovable. So, she loves him. But he so obviously doesn't love her back, uses her, etc. And he's done it before. Their relationship years ago ended on him robbing her blind!
"- So you gave him money the second time, Aunt Augusta?
-Of course, what did you expect? He needed it."
'You have forgotten glasses.' I watched Aunt Augusta with fascination. I have never seen her taking orders from anyone before."
DAFAQ?! Aunt Augusta is supposed to be this devil-may-care strong woman, femme fatale even, but in Part 2 she just loses all self-respect and allows herself to become a doormat. Although to be fair, if we recall the stories she told about her romantic history with other guys - she has been there before, too. Like, with that married guy she loved, then found out she was his second mistress, then he dumped her, and she begged him to continue fucking her once a week, being third in line. UGH.
The author seems to romanticize females being doormats: "Not many men have been so loved or have been forgiven so much." Um. Let's see. So they used to be together. He dumped her and robbed her of a fortune. She went on living, and then decades later she gets a letter from him, asking her to participate in illegal activity and giving him all the money she has. What does she do? Drops everything, travels half the world over to bring him everything in her teeth and virtually becomes his servant. WOW!
And that is presented to us as an example of super-love, selflessness, kindness, forgiveness. Ahem. When someone robs you, then asks for more, and you give it - that's not forgiveness. The perpetrator didn't ask for forgiveness, doesn't think he did anything wrong at all, and you affirm that. UGHHHHH I was sooooooooooo riled by this whole storyline I was on the verge of screaming at my book.
Aunt Augusta continues spewing evil bullshit:
"I've never wanted a man who needed me, Henry"
"I need a man who is untouchable. Two touchables together, what a terrible life they always make of it, two people suffering, afraid to speak, afraid to act, afraid of hurting. Life can be bearable when it's only one who suffers. It's easy to put up with your own suffering, but not someone else's. I'm not afraid of making Mr. Visconti suffer. I wouldn't know how. I have a wonderful feeling of freedom. I can say what I like and it will never get under that thick dago skin of his"
Okay, lady! Don't parade your emotional dependence on this guy as liberty. Oh, you're not afraid of offending him, because he doesn't care? Well, you can't make him happy either, for the same reason. Can't love a good guy, who loves you? That's your problem if you like pining after someone who doesn't give a fuck, but don't paint the rest of the world as a bunch of suffering people. Caring for one another is about HAPPINESS, not misery. It doesn't make one fearful or weak. You become stronger and you share that strength with the loved one.
There were a few bullshitty details for which I don't understand the purpose of this book. Like the illiterate servant who perfectly forged a valuable painting and put his initials on it. Henry meeting O'Toole in Paraguay - who is a CIA agent and the father of Tooley - the girl they briefly met on a train in Europe. Like, how likely is that? I would have bought it if Tooley was sorta spying on them... But no. Supposedly, it was pure coincidence. And O'Toole believes they were friends - for no reason whatsoever.
The predictable twist that Augusta is actually Henry's mom, not aunt. Totally saw it coming.
By the end of the book, there appeared bizarre poetry quotations on virtually every page. I didn't get them, their purpose there, it was just stupid.
The worst was the conclusion to it all. Henry becomes the henchman of the guy Augusta "loves". Again, none of that is his decision, so the supposed emancipation is a total failure. As always, Henry just goes where others take him. So he smuggles drugs for that guy. That's presented as liberation. And he becomes engaged to a 14-year old girl, to marry her at the age of 16. He's close to 60 at that point! And the book takes place somewhere around the 1960s, so it's not like it was normal at the time. DAFAQ?!
Why do books about personal liberation have to create a conflict between law and freedom? The opposite of boredom is interest. You don't need to participate in an orgy to be an interesting person. You don't need to turn an aging bank clerk into a drug smuggler! Just give him a few hobbies, a friend, let him take responsibility for his own life, be an active participant in it, not a log being hurled downstream in a river.
UGHHH -
I thought this book would be a non-fiction travelogue of driving around Europe with Graham Greene and an aunt of his.
Wrong. It is a fictitious account of Henry Pulling a never-married bachelor in his fifties whose greatest adventure has been creating accounts for wealthy clients at his bank. He has now retired and enjoys quiet days cultivating his precious dahlias. Then his aunt arrives on the scene.
It starts at the funeral of his mother. While Pulling is sitting there in the crematorium funeral parlor considering his mother's life and also his father's he hears a voice behind him say, "I once attended a premature cremation."
Thus is his introduction to his Aunt Augusta, his mother's sister.
With no more introduction than that, Henry finds himself sucked into the drama of this aunt he has never before met. The second thing she informs him of (the first being the crematorium incident; as a child she accidentally pushed a button which set the coffin off, but luckily when the others arrived for the service, no one realized the body was no longer there) is that his mother was not his biological mother she was just the person who married his father (who was his biological father) and raised him as his own.
The story then proceeds to bounce back between hilarity and absurdity.
Aunt Augusta is quite a woman. Or a trollope, depending on your point of view. She has known quite a few men in her seventy odd years and is not slowing down any time soon. She is currently living with a man, Wordsworth, from an African country-quite shocking since this was published in 1970- and he's half her age.
But before Wordsworth, she lived in Paris with a married man, and before that in Istanbul with a general Abdul and before that with an Italian Visconti and I almost forgot Currin, the priest of the Dog church back in a small English town.
Pulling just wants to stay home with his dahlias but Aunt Augusta propels him across Europe because, it turns out, she is smuggling money and needs his help. He helps but not intentionally. Only later does he find out what she's carrying in all those heavy suitcases.
Greene is a brilliant writer and very, very witty. But he also demonstrates how evil looks interesting in fiction when it is actually boring in real life.
We find out that Aunt Augusta has all these lovers because she financially supplies them with her wealth. She's not stupid. She knows that is why they love her and when her money runs out, they leave her. She loves them all the more for that. She tells her nephew that she could not love a man who loved her back. Emotional need is too much of a claim on one's soul.
It reminds me of the socially awkward kid at school who tries to buy friends with his lunch money. How is one exactly satisfied with that? The whole thing seems a sham.
But that is not how Greene presents it. Aunt Augusta is the exciting one. Pulling is the boring one because he wants a normal secure life.
Aunt Augusta breaks a lot of laws for the sake of her lovers and she finally ends up in Paraguay back with Visconti whom we're supposed to believe is the real love of her life. Well, as long as that smuggling business stays profitable.
Another thing. The woman who raised Pulling is presented as a narrow-minded prig of a person and it turns out that SPOILER ALERT!!!!!! Aunt Augusta is not really is aunt, but rather his mother. This is never explicitly stated but we're to gather that from the clues strewn throughout the story.
Excuse me, but I have to applaud the woman who raised Henry, not the woman who deserted him to traipse across the world buying criminally-minded men's love.
But I suppose we're not really supposed to take any of it seriously. In which case it is nothing more than a well-written silly story. -
Travels with My Aunt was my first Graham Greene (films don't count! Or do they?) . I didn't know which to choose because I didn't have internet access at the time of the big moment. The jacket said it was the only book that Greene ever wrote for the fun of it.
Maybe he had fun. I sure as heck didn't. Maybe it was the times (publication date is 1969) ... An old woman who proclaims way too loudly that she's having a great time to make her cliche of a stiff upper lip Englishman nephew feel more befuddled than Hugh Grant at the height of his befuddled niche as the go-to guy for befuddled Englishmen in postcard English life films. Maybe I'm in a bad mood and this was funny in 1969. I thought that it was trying too hard to have fun. Henry didn't know how to have fun and Aunt Augusta is the aging bar slut who brags about what a crazy wild night she had fifteen years ago. I can't stand that type. Have fun while you are having it. No, I don't want to see photos of you getting drunk last week on your myspace or facebook. I was sooooo bored. I didn't care about anything that happened. Their travels were more boring than the most boring part of travels (the traveling part and not the getting somewhere part). There's a tacked on murder that came too late to be interesting. By that time I was desperate for the book to be over. Then he gets together with a flipping fifteen year old and they read religious passages from Browning. Why go through all of that just to creep me out? If he was dissatisfied with his life why not learn about women by hanging out with one who is not in her seventies and related to him? How come Aunt Augusta liked to talk about having fun so much? Talk, talk, talk.
Could Greene have been having that much fun if he wanted to fit in so badly? All of those drugs and swinging parties? The Coleridge joke about the manservant Wordsworth was also painfully obvious.
Okay, now that I've read Pnin by Nabokov that has a complimentary quote by Greene on the book jacket I feel guilty trashing this book. It's kinda sad to try desperately to have fun and not be in on the joke. That doesn't mean I don't find the memory of this book boring as waiting (I hate waiting). At least it makes the whole process seem like an exercise in fun and less than preachy Aunt Augusta and her high wheeling life. Like documentaries about free love, you know? -
I'm a big fan of Graham Greene's writing.
For me, the humor in this book didn't quite work.
Aunt Augusta is portrayed as kind of gauche and not in a subtle way (Disney figurines anyone?)
I don't know if Greene is looking down on his characters and laughing at their expense. But it didn't work for me. -
Somehow I thought this book was going to be a lighthearted romp. Funny it was, but in a sad, meditative way as Henry Pulling comes under the influence of his Aunt Augusta Bertram. I should have known better:
Graham Greene is not the romping type. That takes a particular kind of character, one which does not look at life with the calm grey eyes of the author of The Heart of the Matter and The Burnt-Out Case.
Travels With My Aunt is a delightful book -- one that could easily have gone off in several other directions. But it didn't: With his aunt, Henry has found a family to replace the one he lost; and, with her, he has found the attractive teenage daughter of a Paraguayan customs official.
I like to remember the late Mr Pottifer's idea of immortality:I think the reason lay partly in his idea of immortality, but I think too it belonged to his war against the Inland Revenue. He was a great believer in delaying tactics. "Never answer all their questions," he would say. "Make them write again. And be ambiguous. You can always decide what you mean later according to circumstances. The bigger the file the bigger the work. Personnel frequently change. A newcomer has to start looking at the file from the beginning. Office space is limited. In the end it's easier for them to give in."
The way that Greene plants the Pottifer story in the novel gives it a unique significance. Check it out when you read the book: I don't want to give the author's secret away. I have too much respect for him. -
Definitely funny.....but maybe too funny? Do you know what I mean?
Of course I chuckled at lines like these:
"You will never persuade a mouse that a black cat is lucky." (chapter 5)
or
"I had such a good memory.......once!" (chapter 6)
or
"I have never planned anything illegal in my life! How could I plan anything of the kind, when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?!" (chapter 7)
or
"A little honest thieving hurts no one." And then, "It was all very harmless and gave employment to many."(chap 8)
Have you noted how the statements get more and more criminal in tone? Can Graham Greene write a book without turning it into a mystery or a crime novel? . What exactly is the relationship between Aunt Augusta and her nephew, Henry? It helps to enjoy crime mystery novels. Here you get an amusing spoof.
Back to the humor. I read somewhere that Graham Greene wrote this, his sole purpose being to compose a f-u-n-n-y book. The humor changes as the book proceeds. It becomes sharper, more satirical. Politics, sex, religion and human behavior are often the brunt of the joke.
I would like to give you a feel for the humor because what appeals to one will be dishwater to another.... and yet I fear that you have to know the characters to understand the message conveyed. On sex, Aunt Augusta declares, keep in mind she is in her seventies, "I have always preferred an occasional orgie to a nightly routine." Or, if you are annoyed at your kids, this line might speak to you, "They go away from you. You can't go away from them." The lines are clever and funny, and certainly I chuckled often, but it is exactly that that I cannot deal with. I cannot read a joke book from start to finish.
Have you noted that I have shelved this book in many different countries? The book is about travel and all the countries where I have shelved it are visited.....but you neither see nor smell nor experience the different couture of the lands visited. You get a teeny bit about Paraguay. The two, aunt and nephew, travel on the Oriental Express. So much more could have been done with that!
This is a book of humor. The narrator of the audiobook, Tim Pigott-Smith, did an absolutely marvelous job of revealing that humor. He uses different intonations for the different characters in a wonderful way. Five stars for the narration.
Please keep in mind that you may totally love this book even if it was not a good fit for me. -
A fun, rollicking story of a fun aunt.
The plot concerns middle-aged retired banker’s travels in Europe and South America with his quirky Aunt whom he meets after his mother’s funeral. Henry has a quiet, English sort of life. His aunt, though, is a completely different. She tells him later his mother was not his mother
We can guess who the birth mother is can’t we? From this point on, she engages Henry in her various travels which become increasingly illegal and dangerous.
It is a first person story narrated by Henry. He is naive.
We suspect things that Henry, in his inexperienced and conservative ways doesn't understand. Part of the story’s enjoyment is the tension Greene creates between Henry and his free-wheeling Aunt. This tension provides one of the most fun books.
I recommend -
3.5*
Travels with My Aunt really cemented my love for Graham Greene. I had previously read two of his books, and I always had the nagging suspicion that he was a very witty writer, but the drama and the somber aspect of the novels I read didn’t give him much space to indulge in witticisms. Travels with my Aunt has all the ingredients of a very funny tale: an eccentric, sexually liberated woman, an uptight conservative nephew, colorful characters, love, intrigue, and shifty Italians. It also feels very modern. The other books I’ve read by Greene were set during or before WWII. This is one is set in the late 60s, much closer to our own time.
Sadly, the last 50 pages were a letdown. Aunt Augusta was definitely the best thing about the novel and to hide her from the readers for so long did the book no favours. I enjoyed the ending, however. Although Henry’s change towards learning how to live the good life was predictable, the novel travels through his transformation in a very competent way. -
I wasn't sure what to make of this novel at first. I was set to give it 2 stars, but after the tedium of Aunt Augusta's stories (she's highly offended when Henry, pleading tiredness, doesn't want to listen to one of her stories at the moment, but I understood completely!) has passed into the background, the story picked up considerably and I was able to go with its flow.
This is a 'comic' (in both senses of the word) novel and it works as such -- it's just not a favorite genre of mine. It's as well-written as any Greene novel, though different from any I've read. And though comic, it's not light. Serious themes lurk beneath, as you'd also expect from Greene; and as with
The Human Factor, the last Greene I'd read, and though for a very different reason, patience was required. -
"I found myself to be a ghost returning home, transparent as water. Curran was more alive than I was. I was almost surprised to see that my image was visible in the glass."
So says Henry Pulling, a retired English bank manager who has lived life so prudently, safely, carefully and boringly that he comes to realize that he has left no consequential living memory in anyone he's ever met. His favorite thing in all the world is tending to his dahlia flower garden and reading dusty volumes of Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott. When his mother dies, Pulling is suddenly clued in to a lot of realities about who he really is and what his family was really up to, thanks to a long-absent ebullient aunt, Augusta, who brings Henry up to speed on a good number of the facts of life that the naive naif nephew seems to have missed. Aunt Augusta herself has been long absent because she's been spending her life traveling Europe, living and loving and losing with brio, and becoming entangled in romances and petty criminality, some of which may be fancifully embellished in the retelling to Henry. She whisks Henry off on various travels, and during their course, dull Henry starts to regret the wasted opportunities of his life.
Greene generally classed his books broadly into two categories: serious novels and what he coined "entertainments." This one blends elements of both, weaving an eccentric whimsical tale with dark undertones into a typical Greene story of Anglos entwined in espionage, smuggling and foreign intrigue in Third World countries. One thing that's always interesting about Greene's novels is the timelessness of his political observations; nothing much changes even if the surface issues and names do. There's even a fictional shell corporation mentioned that sounds prophetically like Enron. As usual, Greene casts a bemused observational eye on the strange bedfellows borne of corruption and amorphous morality operating within systems, politics, ideologies. As usual, Catholicism (and other religions) enter the mix and come in for genteel digs.
Though this book might be considered lightweight and trivial Greene to some degree, it accumulates in relevance as it proceeds, building a palpable gravitas. The book is very meticulous and slow; some might rebel in the face of its sometimes Jamesian precision of descriptive detail. The book plods a bit and seems to not have a plot, but there is one; it's just not rushed and is always hinted at with tiny clues along the way. The main point of the book, though, is about how people choose to live their lives, and it's that point of contrast that Greene explores in themes and variations. In some ways, it seems almost too simplistic to make the contrast with such obviously diametrically opposed characters; Pulling does seem too boring to be real. But as it proceeds his character takes on dimension, and the contrast between he and his Aunt provide much food for thought. Aunt Augusta, like Henry, is a literary construct, no doubt, but she's a fun one, speaking the Queen's English but letting shocking (to Henry) revelations pour from her seemingly proper old tongue.
The humor and situations at the outset of the book seem fidgety and forced, one senses Greene trying to outdo Waugh and Wodehouse and failing, but eventually the charms emerge and there are a few genuine laughs and crazy situations and characters, such as the cremation urn used for drug smuggling and the CIA man who keeps a meticulous daily diary of his urine output.
This novel's parts are better than the whole, and I have to admit that I found this to be my least favorite Greene book thus far (*2011 addendum: I would now say Loser Takes All is my least favorite GG). Yet, I think it's a better book than I'm giving it credit for; it covers a lot of ground and at the end is quite poetic. There's a major revelation in the last pages that was telegraphed long before and that's how I'd already suspected that that's where the book was going.
The novel is a bit of an oddity and will not be everyone's cup of tea and it's definitely NOT the place to start to engage the work of Graham Greene, but readers familiar with his motifs and style will find it strong on observation, occasionally delightful and a worthwhile example of his eclectism. -
سفرهایم با خاله جان داستانی پر شخصیت و خاکستری که چه یک هفته ای یا یک ماهه خونده بشه بعد از تموم شدنش براش دلتنگ می شی.
داستان نه خیلی قوی اما از متوسط هم بالاتر بود.
شخصیت ها توی داستان زیاد بودن که البته لطمه ای وارد نمیشد اما گاهی خواننده رو سردرگم می کرد.
پایان کتاب هم غافلگیر کننده بود -
Read years ago and it still stands out as very, very funny. So have added it to favourites.
-
I laughed out loud so many times reading this book.
It is sublime and it is subversive, and the dialogue between Aunt Augusta and Henry actually reminds me of some conversations I have had with my great-uncle, whose stories have influenced me in a similar way that Henry has been affected by his Aunt – except, of course, that neither of has been involved in smuggling, founding religious groups, or “the stage”... well, at least not that I know of. I should give him a ring again soon.
Having read
The Heart of the Matter and
The End of the Affair, I am glad though that this is not the first of Greene’s novels I turned to, as Travels With My Aunt seems to be quite different. It’s
Our Man in Havana next for me to delve into his spy novels. -
The 1960s were a particularly important decade in the 20th century. It was not just the era of the musical and sexual revolution or of the devastating political assassinations and the military travesty in Vietnam. It was also the decade when all of culture came together for both a celebration and a 'cause celebre', for both the Summer of Love and for the Winter of Cold War paranoia. This was the decade that gave us the greatest band of all time and that also witnessed, in unbelieving shock, one of the greatest American presidents killed in front of the global audience. It was the season of Free Love and it was also the napalmed morning of the Tet Offensive.
And so, it is only right that Graham Greene's 'Travels With My Aunt', possibly the most resonant and affecting of his entertainments, is less of a picturesque travelogue or even a globe-trotting and rollicking adventure in the fashion of Jules Verne's 'Around The World In Eighty Days' and more of a gently picaresque portrait of that particular decade in its tumultuous final years, set against the background of the haze of counterculture and psychedelia. But even that does this often ribald and mischievous yet strangely and beautifully meditative book no justice. If you are thinking that this will be an irreverent romp like most of the post-modern novels being churned out in America and even England, you are mistaken. Irreverent it might be, in Greene's typically tongue-in-cheek and quick-witted fashion but it is certainly not the sleazy orgy that you would walk in expecting it to be, though sexual licence and romance are just lingering in the corners.
What is it then? Simply put, it is the story of mild-mannered retired bank manager Henry Pulling who meets his intriguing and enigmatic Aunt Augusta at his mother's funeral. This meeting paves the way for an adventure of a lifetime for Pulling, who accompanies his inscrutably, entertainingly free-willed aunt on a journey through the past, the past of a city, country, continent and even the world as it was before the Second World War destroyed lives, corrupted many souls and then left us all nervous about being blown up by a bomb falling from the sky.
Yes, that is what Greene's book is: less of Verne's novel, which was more about a tourist's eye view of the world unfolding as against the contemporary background of imperialism and more of a passionate, almost lovelorn ode to a bygone past and even as there are unforgettable and telling scenes that the master storyteller hands us of each of the signposts in Aunt Augusta's and Henry's travels: a tea shop crammed into a corner in Brighton, a naughty pub in Paris, a leisurely odyssey through the changing landscape of Eastern Europe on the Orient Express, a bar in Istanbul where mustached men drink beer and dance together in a sort of ritual and the heavy Victorian flavour of Boulogne, for most part it is the undeniably more vivid and kaleidoscopic past that lingers most, especially as Aunt Augusta, with the gift of the most unreliable but also unforgettable narrators, takes over and tells Henry and us of the delirious, guileless joy of her own time and days.
Aunt Augusta is a beautifully crafted character, a solid vindication of Greene's frequently overlooked ability to create women who are no mere window-dressing for his tales of men and their demons and failings of masculinity but, more crucially, a foil with their own will, intelligence and objectivity and also fully believable and compelling characters in their own right. The novel belongs to her, to the allure that she exudes at her septuagenarian age and to the alternating tenderness and malice that she exudes in her exchanges and interplay with others. But what surprised me most, as always with Greene, is how, beyond Augusta's effervescence, lends dignity, spark and resonance not only to the meek and mild-mannered Henry but to even the most minor of characters. From the archetype high-strung hippie girl Tooley to her helpless estranged father who may or may not be in the CIA right down to an enigmatic and notorious fugitive from the World War II who deserves to be discovered by the uninitiated firsthand, these might be deliciously outrageous stereotypes but they are also full of charm and affability, of real pathos and even more stirring passions and feelings. Greene might be having his fun with them but the brilliantly astute storyteller that he is, he does not forget to breathe real life into these colourful creations.
And that brings me to the much-debated character of Wordsworth, Augusta's erstwhile African paramour and valet who, unexpectedly, forms the bittersweet soul of this bittersweet, jaunty and beautiful book. Some might feel initially that he is a mere racial stereotype, talking about the hokey superstitions and rituals of Mendeland and asking earnestly for a little graft every now and then but this would have been the case with a different, more single-minded author. In the hands of Greene, alternately tender and casually cynical, he evolves into a character closest to the author's eternal sufferers, a dreamer and a romantic, a good-willed and cheery prankster for whom, in the morally grey world of Aunt Augusta and her other willingly criminal-minded partners and paramours, only heartbreak and disaster await.
And so, after rattling along comfortably the pre-war and post-war England and Europe explored in the first incendiary half of his splendid, illustrious career, we arrive to the end of Augusta and Henry's journeys, in that warm and seemingly languid South American milieu of Greene's equally magnificent later novels, by which time the latter has not only overcome his diffident personality but also become as admirably cocksure and even coolly sardonic as his aunt, now determined to seize every day and live it than just spend his life with dahlias and blustery majors back in Southwood. Called in the author's own words as 'the only book that I have written for the fun of it', 'Travels With My Aunt' is indeed a treasure trove of fun but it is not the fun and frolic of orgies and psychedelia or even too many uproarious laughs, even as the love that blooms and is talked about is of an amorous and even erotic nature, pot is not only found by nosy Scotland Yard cops but also smoked on the Orient Express and there is great, almost audaciously hilarious comedy to be found in the uniformly terrific dialogue and even the scandalous situations. As I said, yes, it is irreverent, even populated by scoundrels and charmers in equal measure, with silken, assured smugglers and awkward, befuddled spies and cops, all of which make it possibly the most vivid of all Greene's entertainments as well. And in the end, it is a passionate celebration of life, love and more than a little mischief, a gentle and heart-warming acknowledgement of the bittersweet certainty of death and an unabashedly joyful plunge into the unpredictability of life.
I did not want this book to end, just as I did not want the Beatles to break up ever. But end it did, and what a sensational, stunning end it proved to be, capping the 1960s with such beauty and elegance. Maybe the greatest journeys are the ones that end magnificently. -
A charming, and delightful little book! I enjoyed reading it.
-
'Tis better to travel hopefully...
When middle-aged Henry Pulling attends the cremation of his mother, he meets his mother's sister, Aunt Augusta, a woman he knows only from old family photographs. It seems Aunt Augusta was something of the black sheep of the family, her distinctly racy and unconventional lifestyle making her unwelcome. But Henry finds himself drawn towards her, her frank stories of a life full of incident providing a contrast to his own rather dull and lonely existence as a retired bank manager in the respectable little community of Southwood. And soon Augusta entices Henry to join her on some of her journeys, first on the Orient Express to Istanbul and later to South America.
This is a gentle little comedy without any of the profundity of Greene's major works but still with a certain amount of charm. Published in 1969, at a time when Greene was in his mid-60s, it does rather read like a tolerant older man's view of the 'permissive' society of the '60s, with its focus on 'free love' and incessant pot-smoking. However, through Aunt Augusta's stories, we are also taken on a light trip back through the century, though her storytelling technique makes it hard to pin down the truth of any event she is describing. From running a church for dogs in Brighton to her rather seedy career in France, from possibly having something to do with the Resistance to consorting with Nazi war criminals, Augusta's exuberant zest for life manages somehow to overcome Henry's normal repugnance for anything not quite respectable. The lesson he must learn from Augusta is the simple one that there is a difference between the tedium of merely existing and the joy of experiencing life.I went restlessly out and crossed the little garden where an American couple (from the St James or the Albany) were having tea. One of them was raising a little bag, like a drowned animal, from his cup at the end of a cord. At that distressing sight I felt very far away from England, and it was with a pang that I realized how much I was likely to miss Southwood and the dahlias in the company of Aunt Augusta.
The writing is, of course, excellent, especially the stories of their travels and the various places they pass through. It's not a travelogue, so there are no tourist brochure style descriptions – instead, it's a vague, impressionistic picture of the process of travelling and the places passed by as seen through Henry's untutored, and often uninterested, eye. The reader is more likely to be told about the availability of ham sandwiches than the great architecture of a given town. This changes a little when they head off to South America – in this section, we begin to get a much clearer picture both of the natural world and the strange and rather corrupt society Henry finds himself sucked into.When a train pulls into a great city I am reminded of the closing moments of an overture. All the rural and urban themes of our long journey were picked up again: a factory was followed by a meadow, a patch of autostrada by a country road, a gas-works by a modern church: the houses began to tread on each other's heels, advertisements for Fiat cars swarmed closer together, the conductor who had brought breakfast passed, working intensely down the corridor to rouse some important passenger, the last fields were squeezed out and at last there were only houses, houses, houses, and Milano, flashed the signs, Milano.
The humour runs at a consistently gentle level throughout, never becoming riotously funny, but never getting lost either. Unfortunately a good deal of the humour is centred on Aunt Augusta's younger lover, Wordsworth, a man from Sierra Leone, and to modern eyes his portrayal feels horribly stereotyped at best and somewhat racist at worst. In fact, given Greene's age and the time of writing, Wordsworth is actually rather affectionately portrayed – indeed, he's about the only likeable character, the only one with a true, warm and generous heart. But still, I found some of the dialect and his rather childish naivety made for pretty uncomfortable reading in places. Otherwise, however, the contrast between Henry's buttoned-up mentality and Augusta's free-wheeling acceptance of all life has to offer gives plenty of opportunity for Greene to quietly mock the society of the time.The vicar was saying clearly, while the congregation buzzed ambiguously to disguise the fact that they had forgotten the words: “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, have committed...” I noticed that the detective-sergeant, perhaps from professional prudence, did not join in this plea of guilty. “We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings...” I had never before noticed how the prayer sounded like the words of an old lag addressing the Bench with a plea for mercy. The presence of Detective Sergeant Sparrow seemed to alter the whole tone of the service.
This would not be the book I would recommend to people wanting to sample Greene for the first time. Much better to try one of his more serious novels where the depth of the subject matter tends to withstand dating a little better. In truth, I think profundity suits his style better than humour. But, overall, I found this a pleasurable if rather light read – one where the journey is more enjoyable perhaps than the destination.
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I read
Travels With My Aunt (1971) eons ago, probably only a few years after it was first published in 1971 and I'd completely forgotten how amusing it is. It is also brilliantly written which is often the only thing that links books by
Graham Greene (along with frequent references to Catholicism). It's hard to believe it's the same writer who gave us
Brighton Rock,
The End of the Affair and so many other classics.
In
Travels With My Aunt, Greene manages to weave in plenty of twentieth century history into a narrative which takes place against the backdrop of the then contemporary late sixties counterculture. It's an extraordinary achievement to embroil a quiet and unimaginative retired suburban bank manager into a host of unlikely adventures around the world, and into the past of his magnificent Aunt Augusta, an utterly memorable and beautifully crafted character.
Having read back what I've written I'm now conscious that a reader might anticipate a laugh-a-thon however that's not the case. There are some laughs however, ultimately,
Travels With My Aunt is actually poignant and quietly profound.
5/5
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"Žmonės kalba apie pilnametystę. Nėr tokio dalyko. Kai turi vaiką, esi pasmerktas visą gyvenimą būti tėvu. Jie tave palieka. Tu negali jų palikti."
"- Kartą savo darže susidūriau su žiurke, - ėmiau pasakoti ir leidau Viskončiui papildyti man taurę. -Stovėjo gėlių lysvėje nejudėdama, kad jos nebūtų pastebėta. Kailiukas atrodė papuręs kaip paukščio, šaltyje išpūtusio plunksnas. Nebuvo atgrasi kaip glotni žiurkė. Nesusimąstęs sviedžiau į ją akmenį. Nepataikiau ir tikėjausi, kad pabėgs, bet ji tik nušlubčiojo šalin. Viena koja, regis, buvo sulaužyta. Pailsusi sykį stabtelėjo ir pro petį dėbtelėjo į mane. Atrodė atstumta, ir man buvo jos gaila. Dar vieno akmens paleisti nebeįstengiau. Ji nušlubčiojo iki spragos ir pralindo pro ją. Kaimyniniame darže buvo katinas, žinojau, kad progos jis nepraleis. Taip oriai ji žingsniavo į mirtį. Visą tą rytą man buvo gėda."
