How many nipples had Graham Greene?

Letters

Vol. 16 No. 13 · 7 July 1994

From Gerry Dukes

Reading the private correspondence of any writer, as Colm Tóibín did Graham Greene’s (LRB, 9 June), can be an eye-opening experience but the voyeuristic reader needs to keep a sharp look-out for the wool which is hovering just outside the field of vision. That Greene was a fine novelist is doubted by few but that he was an expert wool merchant is not yet fully acknowledged. I should like to offer Colm Tóibín tweezers and an eye-bath.

Graham Greene was approached by Sean Donlon of Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA) in December 1988 to see if he would agree to function as the final adjudicator for the 1989 GPA Book Award. Greene was happy to so do but on terms which were unusual and which GPA did not fully comprehend. Greene insisted that he could go beyond the shortlisted titles in his nomination of the book which would receive the Award. The company was pleased to have secured the services of ‘the greatest living man of letters in the English language’ (Tony Ryan, chairman of GPA) and felt obliged to indulge him.

Early in 1989 GPA approached me and asked me to become the administrator of the Book Award and to recruit the panel of international assessors whose task it would be to draw up the shortlist. By mid-spring the books were flowing in, intensive reading was underway – the show was on the road. It was early June before I finally made it to Antibes to brief Greene on the shape and pattern of the Award. When I entered his living room there was a single volume in the middle of his table: it was Vincent McDonnell’s novel The Broken Commandment. Over drinks Greene told me that this was the book to which he had decided to give the Award. It look a lengthy and convivial evening to convince him to defer a final decision in this matter until after he had seen the shortlist which would be compiled in September, after the qualifying period for books had expired. Of the many small services I have rendered to Irish letters, getting drunk with Graham Greene was not the least pleasurable.

Greene’s patronage of McDonnell’s novel was extensive and the subject of common knowledge in the book trade. He had ‘encouraged’ Max Reinhardt (his own publisher) to publish it in 1988, he had written an endorsement for the jacket and he had tried, unsuccessfully, to have the novel considered for the Sunday Express fiction prize. Greene must have regarded the GPA Book Award as a ‘godsend’.

In September I brought copies of the five titles on the shortlist to Antibes. For the record, these were: Roy Foster’s Modern Ireland, Seamus Heaney’s The Haw Lantern, John Banville’s The Book of Evidence, Aidan Mathew’s Adventures in a Bathyscope and Shane Connaughton’s A Border Station. The four-member panel of assessors had considered McDonnell’s novel but unanimously decided not to shortlist it. After more conviviality Greene agreed to read the books and we arranged another meeting in October. That meeting took place on Sunday 1 October in Antibes while the wavelets lapped the hulls in the marina and the vodka lapped the hulks indoors.

Greene was in a fix: he had (foolishly) intimated in writing to McDonnell (on 4 April 1989, as Tóibín reveals) that he ‘would be getting some good news in the autumn’ but he now realised that McDonnell’s novel was not the best of the total submission for the Book Award. The claims made by Banville’s novel were more than insistent and Greene was susceptible to them, despite his foolishness. The interim solution we jointly worked out that evening was that I would put pressure on GPA to come up with an additional £10,000 and recommend a 40/20 split of the augmented Book Award. I felt that GPA would buy the proposal: the difficulty I anticipated was selling the proposal to the writers. No one bought it, so the fix was now mine.

It was obvious to me that the ideal solution was to give the full Book Award to Banville and install another award for McDonnell to satisfy Greene’s magnanimity or his vanity or both. With Greene’s collusion, therefore, I exerted more pressure on GPA and the company came up with yet another £10,000. Greene was astounded by such largesse: munificence did not feature in his gloomy world. The story has been put about – Greene himself initiated it – that GPA put intolerable pressure on him to come up with the company’s desired solution. This, and the parallel one that the pressure ‘hastened his end’, like many another story chez Greene, is a mischievous nonsense. The only pressure GPA exerted on Greene was the upward pressure on his buttocks from the passenger seats of limousines, a helicopter and an executive jet during his trip to Dublin for the Award.

On his way out of the hotel on the morning following the Award, Greene was ‘door-stepped’ by a journalist who was told that the Award should have gone to McDonnell, not Banville. It would appear that integrity, too, was in short supply in Greene’s world. It is touching to learn from Tóibín that McDonnell’s wife wrote to Greene saying that he was one of the ‘36 good people on this earth’. I fervently hope the glorious powers will prevent her meeting a villain.

Gerry Dukes
Dublin

Vol. 16 No. 18 · 22 September 1994

From Pierre Joannon

I recently came across the funny article by Colm Tóibín entitled ‘How many nipples had Graham Greene?’ (LRB, 9 June), but I was much less amused by the subsequent letter by Gerry Dukes (7 July) on the role of Graham Greene as adjudicator of the GPA Literary Award. Gerry Dukes had only just been appointed as literary administrator of the prize, with no responsibilities whatsoever for its financial aspects, nor any involvement with Graham Greene’s preconditions as adjudicator. Having given the false impression that he had some say in these matters, he goes overboard to the point of misrepresentation.

My friend Sean Donlon, who was then managing director of Irish Aerospace, a division of GPA, rang me towards the end of 1988 to ask me if Graham Greene, who he knew had been a good friend of mine since the early Seventies, would agree to be the adjudicator of a literary prize which his company was setting up. I spoke to Graham who accepted on the condition that he might be allowed to award the prize to Vincent McDonnell, the young Irish author of a novel entitled The Broken Commandment which he had read in manuscript and which had moved him so much that he had convinced his friend Max Reinhardt to publish it. Sean Donlon accepted this condition without discussion and flew down to Nice shortly afterwards. In my house in the Cap d’Antibes, details were finalised between Graham Greene, Sean Donlon and myself. It was agreed that two lists of books would be established: a long list in which the name of Vincent McDonnell would appear, and a short list selected by a panel of literary assessors. Graham would be free to choose the winner out of one or the other list. Sean Donlon didn’t seem to find these terms ‘unusual’ and there was nothing he ‘did not fully comprehend’. On the contrary he found them to be totally acceptable and indeed confirmed them in writing with the briefest of delays.

However, after having received the books shortlisted by the panel of assessors, Graham rang me to say that he was extremely embarrassed. While he still thought that Vincent McDonnell’s talents deserved recognition, he also praised The Book of Evidence by John Banville. Wouldn’t it be possible, he asked, to split the £50,000 prize in two in order to award two prizes instead of one? I got in touch with Sean Donlon who spontaneously made the offer to create a ‘First Fiction Prize’ of £20,000 to be awarded to Vincent McDonnell, while the main GPA Literary Award would be given to John Banville. Graham heartily welcomed this generous move which assuaged his scruples. The matter was thus solved right from the outset to everybody’s satisfaction without the help of Gerry Dukes, who was never in the position at any stage to have ‘to sell’ anything to GPA. In pretending that he was the ‘fixer’ in this matter, he commits the sin of vanity of which he accuses Graham. Indeed, if Gerry Dukes found the proceedings so distasteful, why did he not dissociate himself from the entire affair and return GPA’s cheque?

Despite ill-informed rumours spread by people who knew nothing of the straightforward nature of this accord, there was never at any time the slightest hint of disagreement between GPA and Graham. No pressure was ever exerted by one on the other. It is true, however, that Graham was extremely tired prior to his departure and in spite of the comfort of his travel arrangements, he returned to Antibes in a state of near exhaustion. Having escorted him on this visit to Co. Tipperary and Dublin, where he received an exceptionally warm welcome from Dr Tony Ryan, chairman of GPA, and his team, may I say that it was only too obvious that Graham was putting a brave face on it despite his considerable discomfort and pain. If Gerry Dukes failed to notice Graham’s state of health, I am sorry for his lack of sensitivity.

Far from receiving the cold-shoulder treatment that one would have normally expected in the circumstances described so inaccurately by your correspondent, Graham was given a standing ovation by all the people gathered for the awards ceremony in the House of Lords of the old 18th-century Irish Parliament on College Green. Now, Gerry Dukes may have resented this ovation. He may even have remained seated in protest at what he describes rather bluntly as the ‘vanity’, ‘foolishness’, ‘mischievousness’, ‘absence of integrity’ of the grand old man of English letters. If he did so, I must say that his dissent was so discreet that it went unnoticed. His acrimonious letter, of the kind that we call in France le coup de pied de l’âne, only confirms what Jonathan Swift once said: ‘When a true Genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the Dunces are all in confederacy against him.’

Pierre Joannon
Antibes