I am composing this letter on an aeroplane having just taken off from Chicago. With me I have this notebook and a Graham Greene novel ("The Heart of The Matter"). His novels are so addictive despite all I've read having the same basic plot points - During wartime, a writer/artist/poet travels abroad and falls in love with a married woman whose inattentive/dispassionate husband works as a polititian, businessman, policeman, etc. The husband befriends his wife's lover. One character usually dies. See also: "The End of the Affair" and "The Third Man".
Although they could touch each other it was as if the whole coastline of a continent was already between them; their words were like the stilted sentences of a bad letter-writer - pg. 89.
He thought sadly, as lust won the day, what a lot of trouble it was; the sadness of the after-taste fell upon his spirits beforehand - pg. 159.
Greene is at his best attempting to capture the wide ravine that exists between people in the closest relationships, the lengths we go to in order to pursue a connection, and our ultimate inability to establish and maintain true communion.
Themes of The Heart of the Matter: success/failure, love vs loyalty vs lust, the role of guilt in grief, and integrity vs self-sacrifice.
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