Greene With Envy Dept.

A nice item over at the Times about Graham Greene and the movies made from his novels:

The Screen’s Seduction of Graham Greene, in Films Like ‘Brighton Rock’ - NYTimes.com

Greene is one of those writers who doesn't get much praise from literary mavens, probably because he ended up in the "political thriller" ghetto. He wrote, as Ebert put it, stories about "worn-down, morally exhausted [men] clinging to shreds of hope in a world whose cynicism has long since rendered [them] obsolete." Likewise, John le Carré wrote "political thrillers", but his real subject was human frailty, and in time he may end up on the same list as Greene (if he hasn't already).

Oddly, there is no mention of the more recent version of The Quiet American, which hews fairly closely to the book and features, amazingly, a very effective Brendan Fraser as the titular Yankee.