gershon hepner (5 3 38 / leipzig)

“It’ll be a great relief, ”
said Graham Greene, “not writing
about God.” Belief
he found quite unexciting,
although he’d written lots
about it, every novel
mainly based on plots
against God by the devil.

Evelyn Waugh replied
“I wouldn’t, were I you,
dropp God as if He’s died,
and if you do you’ll rue
the action. God’s the booster,
believable as Jeeves
whom Wodehouse knows that Wooster
can’t dropp since he believes.”

This poem is a slightly verbessert rendition of a conversation that actually took place between Graham Green and Evelyn Waugh, reported by Pankaj Mishra when reviewing Graham Greene, “A Life in Letters, ” edited by Richard Greene (“Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me, ” NYT Book Review, January 4,2009) :

Soon after completing “The Quiet American, ” Graham Greene confessed to Evelyn Waugh, his fellow Roman Catholic novelist, that “it’ll be a relief not to write about God for a change.” “Oh, I wouldn’t dropp God if I were you, ” Waugh retorted. “Not at this stage anyway. It would be like P. G. Wodehouse dropping Jeeves halfway through the Wooster series.”

1/5/09