The Shipwrecked

She believed she knew : men were conditioned by their insecurity.  It was not that they envied him his money or were consciously opposed to his international purpose ; it was that increasingly they needed sensations to take their minds off their personal danger :  a murder, a war, a financial crash, even a financial success if it were sufficiently startling.  She was disturbed when she thought of the immense impersonal pressure that was exercised on any man with power, to induce him to make a sensation at the cost of security : by ulitmatum, telegrams, slogans, huge bonuses with nothing paid into the reserve. It was only a man completely out of touch with what people thought, without a private life, who could resist this pressure. And Anthony wanted to make him human. 

From: Graham Greene, England Made Me (published 1935, retitled The Shipwrecked, 1953).

The Monastery of Information

  “Another, more serious proposition he received was from Charles Wrey Gardiner of the Grey Walls Press, who was present when Brooke outlined a projected fantasy novel called ‘The Monastery of Information’.  The basic elements included an astrally projected Tibetan lamasery, controlled from the forbidden city itself and invisible to all except those in a state of ecstasy: drunks, lovers etc;  there was also a London bank which financed the nefarious operations of the Tibetan fifth-column with phantom money and was manned by cashiers stuffed with straw.  Murders of people who knew too much were committed by a band of trained commando midgets, and the conspiracy’s total aim was world domination, narrowly averted.

     Wrey Gardiner, impressed by what he called a poetic variation on thriller themes, actually offered to advance something on a synopsis if I collaborated on the writing of the book; and, as the music publishers’ tenner was running out faster than the spirits in the pubs, we got down to work that night, but Brooke fell asleep over the table just as we reached the first murder by midget.”