[MZS]≫ Libro Gratis The Power and the Glory Penguin Classics Graham Greene John Updike 9780142437308 Books

The Power and the Glory Penguin Classics Graham Greene John Updike 9780142437308 Books

Download As PDF : The Power and the Glory Penguin Classics Graham Greene John Updike 9780142437308 Books

The Power and the Glory Penguin Classics Graham Greene John Updike 9780142437308 Books

This version is formatted terribly! I'm not sure what is going on here. It has not title page or anything. It literally looks like it's been copy and pasted off the internet with weird spacing, paragraph breaks and numbers in brackets in the middle of sentences like you would see if you were reading passages off the internet. And on the last page, it says:
"Made in the USA
Lexington, KY
09 February 2018"
Which is the date I ordered it! This does not appear to be a reputable book publisher/dealer and quite honestly, it's so hard to read with this formatting that I honestly just want me money back!

Don't buy this version! Hope this helps someone else out there.


Tags : The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics) [Graham Greene, John Updike] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b> Graham Greene's masterpiece  </b>—<b>John Updike)</b> In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico,Graham Greene, John Updike,The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics),Penguin Classics,0142437301,Classics,Literary,Anti-clericalism,Anti-clericalism;Fiction.,Catholics,Catholics;Fiction.,Christian fiction,Clergy,Mexico,Mexico;Fiction.,Classic fiction (pre c 1945),Fiction,Fiction Classics,Fiction Literary,Fiction War & Military,Fiction-Classics,GENERAL,GREENE, GRAHAM, 1904-1991,General Adult,Literature - Classics Criticism,LiteratureClassics,Literature: Classics,REFERENCE General,United States

The Power and the Glory Penguin Classics Graham Greene John Updike 9780142437308 Books Reviews

"The Power and the Glory" has been called Graham Greene's masterpiece and after having read it I must admit I agree. I am hesitant to compare any novel to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" but I would be remiss to say that it did not remind me of what many scholars consider one of the greatest novels ever written.

Set in a remote part of Southern Mexico where the Catholic Church and priests have been outlawed and hunted down by a political/military group called the Red Shirts (Communists), it reveals the undying faith of the peasant classes and the corrupt leaders and fat cats who are suppose to be God's representatives on earth (the church, priests, bishops, etc.).

The lone priest left in the area, a person all to human with a woeful record of debauchery, is hunted down throughout the book by the Red Shirts and a reward has been placed on his head. It is through the priest's capacity to allude capture that we learn how the situation in this part of Mexico developed. This book is based on real life events and Mr. Greene's analysis of the situation (he was a reporter during the upheaval) is both fascinating, enthralling, and heart wrenchingly accurate. As a Catholic, it had me cringing and yet I would strongly recommend this book to all Catholics and all people of different faiths. An amazingly powerful piece of writing.
It is a terribly sad, but good book. I had never read Graham Greene, although I had certainly heard of him. I had earlier dismissed him as a sort of John Le Carre, writing about the complexities of international espionage. However, then Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa praised The Power and the Glory in Vargas Llosa's series of essays on various writers entitled The Truth of Lies, and so I thought that I would give the book a shot.

It is not an easy read nor, at first glance, an uplifting one, although one can seem moments of redemption and revelation laid out in the book. Everything is set in a Mexican state that I believe is meant to represent Tabasco during the 1920's, shortly after the Institutional Revolutionary Party's ascension to power. At that time, and in that state, it seems that the Mexican government was carrying out a pitiless purge of Roman Catholic priests, and although there were a number of believers, they observed the Catholic rites underground. It appears that the government effected the purge using philosophical observations akin to Lenin's observation that religion is the opiate of the masses.

Greene had spent time in Mexico prior to writing the novel, and wrote a memoir that expressed his loathing for the country and all that he saw. And certainly, both the foreigners and the natives living in the novel's setting are deeply unhappy. The former suffer from a profound sense of dislocation, and often dream of going home. The latter are oppressed by unbelievably cruel hardships, including political repression and hunger.

Vargas Llosa explained that the novel presented a conflict between the upright Lieutenant, who is totally committed to his secular beliefs and hopes to extirpate the church in order to do away with obscurantism in the hopes of bringing paradise to this world. His bite noire is a priest, who is sinful, guilty of fornicating and drinking and yet, much more human than the rigid Lieutenant.

However, I did not see it that way. The Lieutenant is admirable in his own way, particularly when compared to his corrupt and complacent superiors. However, Greene paints the Lieutenant in broad brush strokes and spends relatively little time with him. Greene spends far more time with the corrupted "whiskey-priest," and the real conflict is between the whisky-priest's attempts to discern the nature of his own calling, which he pursues with increasing diligence, which is remarkable considering horrific suffering that he passes through, including near starvation. Still, the whiskey priest cannot decide if he was closer to God when he was a younger priest, relatively well to do and with a parish, or if he is closer now, even if he spends the night in jail and even if he robs rotten meat from a dog because he is hungry.

For me, Greene uses the whiskey-priest to explore various theological conundrums. As the novel progresses, we see that the whiskey-priest is becoming weary of life, which is understandable because he has been on the run for eight years. And yet, when he returns to the very state where the police are chasing him, ostensibly to hear the last confession of a murderer, Greene makes clear that in part, the whiskey priest has begun to despair of this life. Thus, Greene asks us to ask if the priest's decision to return is a Christ-like gesture, in which he willingly sacrifices his own life for the betterment of another? Or it is a selfish gesture - in which his desire to die is in a way reflective of a selfish desire to cease living and thus cease suffering?

On that note, a remarkable aspect of the novel is the tremendous hatred that nearly every character feels towards this world. And yet, that contributes to the novel's power, because Christianity indeed deals and indeed to a degree condones a contempt for this life.

Regardless of the feelings that he may have harbored about Mexico, Greene sets out the priest's struggles with great subtlety and precision, showing him advancing towards a nearly beatific state at times while alternatively feeling repulsed and disgusted by the people around him. At each point, we are encouraged to ask if the priest is moving closer to God, or indeed farther away.
With some shame, I admit this is the first Greene novel I've read. And it's said to be his most powerful. However, I found myself indifferent to the individuals involved, and, most specifically, to the central figure of the "whiskey priest" who mea culpa's his way through his flight, especially after his own realization of his "indifferent piety" of the years of living comfortably and being respected. I did, however, sympathize with his inability to confess the sin of breaking the vow of chastity when he had loved the outcome of the 'sin' - his child (perhaps loved more in theory, as he had little if any contact with it). Coming to the end, and with complete lack of interest in the fate of the priest, I was left with an appreciation of fine writing and uncomfortable insights into the human character (this after reading Tolstoy's Resurrection which is teeming with such insights). Certainly I'll continue with other Greene novels - but will not revisit this one.
This version is formatted terribly! I'm not sure what is going on here. It has not title page or anything. It literally looks like it's been copy and pasted off the internet with weird spacing, paragraph breaks and numbers in brackets in the middle of sentences like you would see if you were reading passages off the internet. And on the last page, it says
"Made in the USA
Lexington, KY
09 February 2018"
Which is the date I ordered it! This does not appear to be a reputable book publisher/dealer and quite honestly, it's so hard to read with this formatting that I honestly just want me money back!

Don't buy this version! Hope this helps someone else out there.