The Man Within Book

Who is a real man? What makes a man what he is? Is he supposed to be made up only of courage or also of chivalry? Is he supposed to be the brute who has to be tough and ruthless or is he supposed to be the tender, considerate, even brave-hearted hero that he is made out to be in tales of adventure and peril? Is he allowed his share of sin or cowardice or are romance or sincerity too alien concepts for him? 'The Man Within' asks these questions boldly, stridently and a touch pedantically and yet it resonated with me on a personal level not least because as I come of age, finally shrugging off the coat of boyhood and young adulthood and embrace manhood, these are questions that are posed to me daily. Answers are hard to come by and I end up making more errors than I intend to. But I can agree that a man is all these worthy and vicious things and no challenge or feat is enough to test his real virtues and make him confront his demons.

This was Graham Greene's first novel and it shows. It is overwritten in places, most notably in the end, which goes on a bit too long (though in its own delirious, nihilistic way, it is marvellously enjoyable); the language, while unmistakably evocative, is a bit too flowery in places, dimming slightly the sharp, incisive impact of his impeccable flair at drama and suspense; it is, as I said, a touch pedantic in places too. With time, Greene would be a bit more crisp, tight, more magnificently ruthless and more adept at carving out his irredeemably flawed anti-heroes very realistically. Since this was his first novel, these niggles show up distinctly but, but, they cannot just rob the pure, giddy pleasure that Greene still had the power, at that nascent stage, to offer to his readers.

It is hard to fault a book which still reverberates as a very well-crafted entertainer nearly 90 years after it was first published. That is almost like a century ago and I know many classics that have just not aged well as they were supposed to (John Buchan's admittedly entertaining but quaintly dotty 'The Thirty Nine Steps' comes to mind) but Greene's debut, being a debut and, in the author's own confession, a minor work (though that is impossible to agree with) in his later ouevre, is not such a book. It remains as unforgivably intense, agonisingly heart-wrenching and fascinatingly dark as it would have been back in 1929. And yes, it is, as its author confessed, 'hopelessly romantic'.

Hopelessly but also so thrillingly romantic that even as Greene does ill-fated romance like no other writer, the warmth and almost painful and mesmeric eroticism that flows in the novel's closing chapters are impossible to resist. Greene loves and cares for his characters. He always did, even in his subsequent novels, and even a seemingly ruthless smuggler out to take revenge on the man who betrayed the gang can be worthy, in his beautiful, beautiful words, of not just empathy and warmth but, most crucially, love, passion and a belief in goodness and honesty. Yes, it is that compassionate a work. It is easy to miss the compassion of Greene's works because his laments on mankind's many failings are so beautiful in their heartbreaking irony. What everyone misses is the heartfelt compassion and respect that he has for his characters. And 'The Man Within' does not disappoint in that one big crucial aspect.

Other than that, it is so many things at one time. An exciting, even perilous tale of manhunt, an ethical argument on whether criminals can be believably human or whether men with cowardice can discover their inner heroism and valour, even a metaphysical drama that wonders if men can leave behind legacies and demons beyond their graves. And, of course, one extraordinary romance, a love story of two flawed, less than perfect characters, who meet under very extraordinary circumstances and yet are characters whom we root to win in the end against all odds. Greene, that rascally devilish storyteller, that lovelorn man who always listens to his heart, does know how to break our hearts as much as he knows how to pull the rugs beneath our feet.

Yes, it has its niggles and yes, it is far from the perfection that he would achieve so soon, but all that is nitpicking in light of what brilliance this novel demonstrates. Get over your skepticism and read it from cover to cover to witness the birth of a real legend of modern literature.