“Brighton Rock” by Graham Greene (story reading)


Brighton Rock was the most frightening book I ever read. I found it much more frightening than Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, though that had its moments. Brighton Rock is much closer to a horrible reality, a man alone facing forces of evil. Brighton used to be a place of police-corruption and gang-warfare. I knew all the places mentioned here: I lived in Brighton, although Brighton then wasn’t then the bright and fresh seaside resort it had been in the thirties. The West pier had long been a ruin, but most of the attractions were still functional – not that anybody I knew cared about that. There were still the day-trippers but of a different kind, who came down on the milk-train. They were like the one the Beatles sang about, they came for different reasons, the girls sewn into their jeans by their distrustful mothers. They came to my coffee house and listened to folk music and to beat poetry. I just discovered it’s been filmed again with Helen Mirren, though set in the “Mods and Rockers” era of 1964 instead of 1938. I didn’t know that when decided to read this opening chapter. That’s the honest truth, Guv’nor, strike me pink if it ain’t. “Art is a form of therapy. Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic-fair inherent in the human situation.” …Graham Greene He talked about alternating periods of creativity and reflection. The pictures are stills from the 1947 movie. Colley Cibber