Surviving: Stories, Essays, Interviews

"At its highest pitch", John Updike writes in his Introduction to Surviving, "Green's writing brings the rectangle of printed page alive like little else in English fiction in this century - a superbly rendered surface above a trembling depth, alive not only with the reflections of reality but with the consolations of art". But though fellow writers from W. H. Auden to Eudora Welty have lionized his brilliant, original, often hugely funny novels, Henry Green's work remains one of the great literary secrets of our time. Surviving, which gathers together a selection of Green's writings, is therefore a literary event of considerable importance and a cause for celebration. Featuring a number of remarkable stories from the 1920s and 1930s never previously published, this volume also offers a highly entertaining account of Green's service in the London Fire Brigade during the Blitz; a short, unpublished play, "Journey Out of Spain"; a selection of Green's journalism, including a group of revealing articles on the craft of writing, a marvelous evocation of Venice, a description of falling in love, and reviews that illuminate his literary enthusiasms; and a hilarious interview by Terry Southern for the Paris Review. Edited by the novelist Matthew Yorke, Henry Green's grandson, Surviving includes an Introduction by John Updike. Green's son, Sebastian Yorke, has written a biographical memoir which forms an afterword to the book, providing an unforgettable portrait of this unjustly neglected writer of genius.