About book May We Borrow Your Husband & Other Comedies Of The Sexual Life (1967)
It sounds naïve, but I think Graham Greene really was never as good with the comedic as he was with the bitter and bizarre. The stories in this collection are okay, but in a lot of them o was confused by what tone he was going for- is "Dr. Crombie" meant as a comic elaboration on the cliche "masturbation causes [insert disease of choice]," or a glance back at the past when lung cancer was only on the periphery of medical paranoia, or some simple coming-of-age set against a portrait of a fallen man? How much did the "shock value" of gay and lesbian relationships (predatory ones at that) play into the decision to write "May We Borrow Your Husband" and "Chagrin"? Are"Awful When You Think Of It?," "A Shocking Accident" "Beauty," and "The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" completely set up for their own single, somewhat feeble punchlines? I get that he wrote the majority of these in "a single mood of sad hilarity," as he writes in the introduction to Collected Stories, and it's not as if the possible directions that one can sense in any of these stories are bad ideas, but in many cases their weakness is that Greene doesn't fully develop any single of of those directions. Also, just another little thing that bothered me is that Greene's characterization of Americans and the U.S. Really do not ring true, and though they're small it feels awkward to read an English man's reflections on the American character. The most baffling is probably in "Cheap In August," a story I otherwise like, where Mary Watson complains about American food having tomatoes in every dish, a phenomenon I have neither experienced nor heard of and makes me think he just chose an indigenous American plant for his purpose.There are, however, a few good stories that seem confident in what they are. One is "The Root of All Evil," a winding tale of pure absurdity, apparently pulled wholesale from a dream. The ridiculous succession of events along with the frame story give it an entertaining folk-tale feel, even though it's never laugh-out-loud funny. "Cheap In August" is really prototypical Greene, a moving and often uncomfortable story about a woman looking for an affair in Jamaica in the off-season. The final story, "Two Gentle People," also deals with chance meetings, and the cowardice and regret that comes with old age, but in a different way - nothing physical or scandalous, just tenderness between two people that never will be realized. And "Mortmain" is a somewhat sensational, disturbing story about a man, newly married to a young bride, who just can't escape the imagine presence of his previous rebuked mistress.Otherwise, this collection seems trivial in comparison with 21 Stories and Greene's great novels. I have yet one more of his short story collections to read, but this hasn't dampened my hopes for that because I do believe this one's weakness is its reliance on the titular theme of "comedies of the sexual life" which makes it include pieces that fit the bill content wise but wouldn't stand up in a regular collection.
Hard to rate short story collections, specially when they are all from one author. You have to find a middle ground. The middle ground here is between 3 and 4 stars. 3 and a half stars It was my first Greene experience and proved that he surely knows how to tell a story and make you enjoy and think. Despite the title it's not very sexual with today's standards . In some points it reminded me of some scenes from Woody Allen's movies, no surprise if it's been an inspiration to Allen. Stories are mostly about (love) relationships than the sexual lives. But who cares in fact there's not a lot of difference between these two.The narration has a satirical theme which is funny, but it's not like people in the other room hear you laughing while reading, you'll smile and probably some quick inside-laughs, short chuckles.There are twelve short stories, none of them are bad. Some are good some better. It's a good read.
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I'm calling this "gay" because the title story (the longest in the collection) and a few others have gay characters. Of course, we don't see these characters from inside, only from the POV of others (ie, someone refers to "those nancies").I usually rail against stories which suffer from the "undisclosed first person narrator syndrome". This collection is almost completely infected with the syndrome, yet somehow does not suffer from it. Perhaps it is a host. The reader imports knowledge of who the "middle-aged writer" might be, and so we are not left wondering. He is a self-described voyeur, and overhears conversations in restaurants and reports these things to us (this may be a bit of a nod to Greene's intelligence background). One still has to wonder what the first person narrator contributes to the narrative in most of these pieces.
—George Ilsley
Mid 20th century "Comedies of the Sexual Life" by an Englishman. I've been dragged to enough community theater to loathe "English sex farce". So I was leery. But the book was on my shelf so it was getting read, at least some of it. The title sucked me right in. The narrator of that story is an late middle-aged English ex-pat writer living on the French Rivera writing about people he met there. Somerset Maugham covered that ground really well and often. Greene does it a bit better than Maugham. I don't know if I would call the title story or any of the others comedies but in the sense that none of them ended like Hamlet with everyone dying, I guess they weren't tragedies. The next two stories also take place in Antibes and share the same magic. After that things get a little rocky. "The Overnight Bag" really had no point whatsoever, I reread the thing twice but I didn't miss anything. So that pissed me off a little. The remaining stories vary between great and pure crap ("Doctor Crombie" and especially "The Root of all Evil"). For the most part, the stories are quick, fun, breezy, but not shallow reads. The great ones are great and for the most part the clunkers at least aren't very long. This collection reminds of an album with several amazing great songs and bunch of filler songs. It's a shame the filler was included (I guess to give people their money's worth), they take a 5 star book down to 3 stars. People would buy and pay as much for a 30 minute great album as they would for 50 minute album with 30 minutes of great songs. But whatcha gonna do?
—Scoats
This collection of Greene’s short stories promises to cover “comedies of the sexual life”, and it delivers on that with the author’s usual twist of brilliance. Despite the title, there’s nothing necessarily scandalous here, and definitely not in the era of Page 3 girls. A memorable scene involves a wife who says to her husband that planes make her feel erotic; he replies that it “must be the vibration.”Greene used to categorise his work as either a serious novel or as an ‘entertainment‘ – not only is this clearly an entertainment, it’s one of the most entertaining. If you’re new to Greene and want a book that makes you smile, this is as good a place as any to start.
—Socialbookshelves.com
