Brickbats for Graham Greene
FRANCOIS MAURIAC has been -1-• receiving the plaudits—and the Nobel Prize for Literature--in Stockholm while his friend and fellowCatholic novelist Graham Greene has been getting brickbats.
In this picture Mauriac is being greeted by Stockholm's Vicar Apostolic, Bishop Muller.
But for Graham Greene . . . "Hoist the plague-flag on the Drama theatre."
"The Doors Opened to the Sycophants of the Vatican."
"Graham Greene Inferior to Snoddas" (a well-known lowbrow cabaret artist).
Such are the vehement reactions against Graham Greene's first play, "The Living Room," which had its world premiere in the city.
1 he quotations are taken from Norway's Catholic weekly, St. Olav, which devotes a full page to the event.
The paper remarks that these ferocious criticisms are found not in extremist papers but in highly respected dailies such as A fiontidningen,Morgontidningen and Dagens islyheter.
Graham Greene has apparently touched them on the raw by putting across the footlights the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage, whatever sacrifice this may demand, against marriage theories which reject fidelity in marriage involving sacrifices.
One of the critics, summing up his final judgment on marriage, states: "For anyone thinking in humanist terms marriage as an institution is folly."
The Catholic weekly expresses great concern over such a mentality because freedom of speech is in danger when critics are allowed to hoist the plague-flag when plays do not agree with their idealogics.
When it was announced that Mauriac had been awarded the Nobel Prize he said he owes a great deal to Graham Greene and his English translator, Gerard Hopkins.
"By assuring a very large audience for my work," he said. -they have given it an immense public in the world. I am extremely grateful to them."