The Man Within My Head

It has been said that <i>It's a wise child that knows his own father</i>, a statement credited to Shakespeare but also to Samuel Butler, though in the process of translating Virgil's <i>Aeneid</i> in high school Latin Class, I thought that I remembered Ascanius making the same comment in reference to Aeneas, or perhaps it was vice versa? <i>The Man Inside My Head</i> by Pico Iyer is a rather masterful excavation of paternal influences, both familial &amp; literary. Having tried &amp; failed to make my way through the author's <i>The Lady &amp; The Monk</i>, I wasn't sure just what to expect with this 2012 book by Iyer but ultimately found it to be fascinating, though it might be considerably less so for a reader unfamiliar with Graham Greene's novels.<br><br>One or more reviewers have called Pico's Iyer's memoir "obsessive" in terms of Greene but that would not capture a fellow author's influence on a life, except in a pejorative sense that bears little meaning for me. Admittedly, Iyer confesses that he "began to feel haunted by a compound ghost &amp; that Greene's novels were my unwritten autobiography." <br><br>Later, the author suggests that "the paradox of reading is that you can draw closer to someone else's voice than to the people who surround you." I have heard similar things said by others in relation to a mentor, even if the mentor in question is completely unaware of the degree of influence he or she has over another or is someone never personally met, the influence coming from a literary entanglement or works of art on canvas or inspiration by way of an architectural presence. <br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1586289680i/29250263._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>Pico Iyer is the only son of a Tamil-speaking, Mumbai-raised father with very British values who gravitated to England as a gifted scholar &amp; a mother who also had a deep interest in philosophy &amp; higher learning. Eventually, the family moves to California, with Pico's father taking a position at sort of New-Age think-tank for scholars in Santa Barbara, but by his father's design, takes his education at Eton, the elite boarding school in the U.K., staying on to take a degree at the University of Oxford. <br><br>There are almost constant paradoxes &amp; contradictions to this cultural bifurcation, growing up in a home that values western traditions but also was keen to assimilate the <i>Ramayana</i> and its Indian roots as well. Such a boy is a natural target for the works of Graham Greene, an author who seemed perennially distant from his own roots, forever detailing displaced souls who are almost always on the outside looking in.<br><br>There are connective fragments that seem to deepen the relationship between Pico Iyer &amp; Graham Greene, both of whom had their home burn down, Greene during the WWII blitz of London &amp; Iyer's family home in California due to a wildfire + the fact that at one point the two families lived close to one another in London. But mostly, it is the Graham Greene's fiction that counts as an ever-increasing influence, with many of Greene's books read by Pico Iyer multiple times. And, some of the places the vagabonding Iyer visits are in fact places where Greene situated his novels, including <i>The Quiet American</i> (Vietnam), <i>The Power &amp; the Glory</i> (Mexico) &amp; <i>The Comedians</i>, set in Haiti.<br><br>My interest in Graham Greene is rather deep but not reverential and having read a few biographies of the author, I will go on record as saying that Pico Iyer's analysis of the author in <i>The Man Within My Head</i> is perhaps the most incisive I have come upon, anywhere. Here are just a few of Mr. Iyer's insights:<blockquote>Graham Greene the novelist appeals to some of us--even challenges our sense of who we are--in part because he is so acutely sensitive to all the ways we can fail to understand one another, even those people closest to ourselves; he knew his characters better than anyone in real life. He becomes the caretaker of that part of us that feels we are much larger &amp; harder to contain, a mystery that is fundamental &amp; unanswerable, which gives us a sense of hauntedness. It is the best side of us, our conscience, our sense of sympathy, our feelings for another's pain--that causes the deepest grief. And God, if He even exists, is less a source of solace that a hound of heaven, always on our path.<br><br>One Greenian paradox is that in his books, as in many lives, enemies do suddenly become friends &amp; then turn into enemies again. Beyond that, he mocks America's civilization, yet his greatest love was an American, as was his favorite writer; he pricks holes in Catholicism &amp; yet his fallen, errant, sinning Catholic priest becomes a hero because he refuses to flee when his dying mother needs his priestly ministration--I noticed that the only reliable &amp; constant enemy in all of his work was, in fact a version of himself. Greene could write with harrowing compassion for every character except the one who might be taken as Graham Greene.</blockquote><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1586293518i/29250438._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>Throughout <i>The Man Within My Head</i>, there are vestiges of Pico Iyer's father, including his response to his son's books, not always positive but the shadow of Graham Greene always seems the preeminent force. <br><br>There are examples of rather quizzical behavior on the part of Greene, as when the author enters a Graham Greene parody contest in a magazine, and wins! It seems that Greene very often parodied himself in his novels. But always, according to Iyer, the author's "great theme was innocence, because he could never disguise how much he missed it." Pico Iyer, in looking for clues to his own identity, considers the two cultures where he spent the most time, England &amp; America and concludes that...<blockquote>No one can be defined by the roles he plays onstage. I watched my neighbors n California embark on lifelong excursions into the self, while seeming baffled by the world; I saw my friends in Britain more or less take over the world, but only by never looking too closely within. <br><br>Greene, I felt was always in his books hoping to give us a sense of responsibility--of conscience--in part by bringing himself before an unsparing tribunal. At the heart, he offered me a way of looking at things &amp; the way one looked became a kind of theology, a preparing for a way of acting. It didn't matter if the man within my head--this one at least-- was carefully edited or artfully fashioned; his unearthly, unflinching blind man's eyes gave me an image of attention, and the spirit that lies behind it.</blockquote>Pico Iyer's well-crafted narrative conveys how the books we read can stand as a guiding force in our lives, even beyond that of a parent's influence, fostering a kind of tandem kinship with one's own genetic inheritance. <br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1586375730i/29255319._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>*The 1st photo image within my review is of Pico Iyer, the 2nd of Graham Greene &amp; the 3rd of Pico Iyer with his wife Hiroko Takeuchi &amp; the Dalai Lama.

"A man within your head whispers his secrets and fears to you, and it can go right to your core, accompanied by flesh and blood; accompanied by flesh and blood, it comes up to the surface..."<br /><br />I know a certain friend of mine on Instagram, a fine young writer and poet by the name of Subhadip Majumdar, to be an ardent admirer of Ernest Hemingway. He calls him his "greatest inspiration" and I wonder, sometimes, what does he mean by that - does he mean that Hemingway's famed "iceberg" prose style and penchant for storytelling has captivated him to the degree that he has been inspired similarly to write like him or does he mean, on another dimension, that he is awe-struck by the sheer overwhelming personality of the man and the mythos behind him - his wanderlust, his rugged personality of machismo and brooding pathos, his compulsive alcoholism and furious envy about his fellow writers and his own gritty sense of poetry which seeped in his spare words. I cannot understand if it is the latter - I have never found Papa compelling in the same way as I have followed the meandering, relentless trail of another writer, who perhaps deserves to be considered in the same league as him. But then, it is true that the literary fathers that we choose are ours to own, ours to understand and only ours to hold close to our heart. <br /><br />"The Man Within My Head", for Pico Iyer, himself a skilled and dexterous chronicler of being forever on the prowl like a traveller across the breadth and space of the world's far-flung outposts, is none other than the same man within my own head - Graham Greene - and while that alone explains why this book was a reading experience so dear to my heart and soul, the mere connection that I share with Iyer, as a fellow wandering soul who has been enthralled and mesmerised by the English writer, it is not the only reason why the book haunted me and mesmerised me in its strange, mystical power and its resonant eloquence. <br /><br />Yes, it is about Greene, unabashedly so, as he looms like a hypnotic, yet always enigmatic father figure in Iyer's mind, giving shape to his inspirations, his own observations and character sketches mirroring in the unpredictable tumult of Iyer's own life. Indeed, Greene, as the writer puts it so succinctly and affectionately, had this rare gift of leaving indelible traces in the souls of his readers, of getting under their skin with his gift of piercing understanding and plucking their heartstrings with his boundless compassion, even more so for the fallen and downtrodden, and it is this gift, it is this extraordinary skill that links many, as it has done, to him in such an uncanny way. He is, after all, our all-understanding, all-forgiving patron saint - the storyteller who speaks to our mischievous yet chivalrous, adventurous yet jaded, cynical yet compassionate self all at the same time. <br /><br />But even more than that, as the book flips beautifully across time and countries, from the dizzying snowy heights of Bolivia to the electric street-life of Saigon, from forest fires raging in Californian hills to the trail of the devotees in the wilds of Ethiopia, from the constant danger of civil-war in Sri Lanka to the humdrum suburbia of Berkhamsted, this is about fathers, both real and virtual and how they both contend for that place within our minds, influencing us even beyond their graves. This is about, on a lesser but no less essential note, about Iyer's father and his carefully groomed confidence pitted against Greene's own self-doubting moral dilemma and this is about whom we choose - the real father, posturing like a self-assured, erudite gentleman or the vulnerable, flawed, even self-loathing wanderer who bares his tormented heart out to us through his words. <br /><br />It is also about Iyer questioning, thoughtfully, about where does he belong. Does he belong to the free-wheeling, upbeat world of America and California where he had spent his holidays and much of his youth and even adulthood, without the tough realities of his English schooling to haunt him for too long? Or does he belong, eventually and even grudgingly, to the quieter, more taciturn, desultory and even traditionally wise world of that same English schooling which has also instilled in him the sense of wanderlust that fills his books? Is he more preening and cocksure as his father or does he, more to the point, resemble that "other" father figure - jaded, self-critical, painfully honest and never at peace?<br /><br />"The Man Within My Head", rendered in a beautifully measured, lightly nuanced prose that takes in the littlest and simplest of details and paints them in vivid strokes, answers that question at the end of its length and the answer that comes is unexpected but then wholly admirable and resonant to us all. Because Iyer's allegiance to Greene is not just something that we, fellow admirers of the English writer who taught us all to question our own claims to goodness and forgive all evil, share in - it is something meant for every reader out there in the world who has felt some kinship, at sometime or the other, with a voice speaking to her or him through the words printed on a yellowing page of a paperback. It is about fathers and sons, about the legends that live on forever in our minds and it is about how storytelling or a storyteller can, more than the people we have always known or loved, still understand us better than ourselves. Essential reading for all.

Just bought this book through Indiebound, just got the phone call, it's in!!!! WOO HOO!!! STAY TUNED<br />**************<br />I had been looking forward to reading this since I met Iyer several years ago at the LA Festival of Books. He was touring with the Dalai Lama book, but what we spoke about was Graham Greene, and the book he wanted to write. A great conversation, far ranging--we talked about Maugham and Greene and Chandler and Anthony Burgess, Long Day Wanes... And every year since then, we've met and had these wonderful discussions, always circling back to Greene. Once we were in a restaurant and I'd brought The End of the Affair, in case he was late (but he's always early)--the waitress saw the bookcover and exclaimed that she was reading Greene too! Such a subterranean Greene cult! Not to mention a Pico Iyer cult, in which I'm deeply invested. <br /><br />**************************<br /> Aaaahhhhhh.... Everything I could have wanted. A dream city of twisted alleyways which loop around and connect in surprising ways--motivic rather than chronological-- a meditation by Iyer on his own travels and paternity, his education, his life between worlds, as his unique path overlaps and is illuminated by (and illumnates) the person and works of his literary forebear and 'the man within my head'--the novelist Graham Greene.<br /><br />What a subtle writer Iyer is! I love the oblique sneaky ways this story unfolds--how modest, how sly-- I find myself paging backwards to tease out the answer to some dropped clue into the mystery of Pico Iyer, as he searches for the mystery of Greene. Like Greene, Iyer likes to reveal things aslant--the mystery of a life and especially, a life in literature--the way in which a reader discovers soul-deep affinities with an author one will never met. <br /><br />Fascinating. I can see another tour of the Greene canon coming on--as well as a dip in Maugham as well. I so admire the compass of this book--from Japan to Santa Barbara to Bolivia, Chile, Bhutan and the green fields of England--and its depth, psychologically, spiritually, as he describes his relationship to Greene, one that could only be described as a haunting. Such disasters and serendipities. <br /><br /> <br />

It is always interesting when an author like <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/75520.Pico_Iyer" title="Pico Iyer" rel="noopener">Pico Iyer</a> succeeds in channeling another author, in this case Graham Greene. <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/12688827.The_Man_Within_My_Head" title="The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer" rel="noopener">The Man Within My Head</a> deals with Iyer's lifelong obsession with Greene, an author he never actually met. Yet there were intersecting points and interesting parallels in their respective lives. <br /><br />A Tamil, Iyer was especially drawn to Greene's <b>The Quiet American</b>, about the encounter between a world-weary Brit and an idealistic American who knows exactly what Viet Nam should have been like if it weren't the way it actually was. It is also the greatest novel written about the American experience in Viet Nam.<br /><br />If you like Greene -- and I idolize him -- or if you like Iyer (as I do), then this is a book you should consider reading.

I really enjoyed this book, hence the four stars. It is about Graham Greene for one; it is about the effect books have on our perception of the world as well and those twi would have been enough. However there is more. It is brilliantly well-written, flowing sentences, elegantly structured chapters and a narrative that encompasses English public school life, California's spiritual heartland, Bolivia and if course Greeneland. It is so far ranging it leaves you a bit breathless, like the oxygenless atmosphere of La Paz, but also so internal you feel your own life experiences battering at your mind as you make connections between what Iyer writes and what you have thought and felt.<br /><br />It is a man's book in lots of ways. I is written by a man who acknowledges that he was brought up to deal with school life not family life and all the implications that has for building strong relationships with women. He is in turn writing about another man, brought up in a similar way, who had close and lasting relationships with several women, but none of them conventionally 'happy' ones.<br /><br />But I liked it, I felt I learned things about Greene as well as about the author,; it has made me want to read other books of his about places I have visited.<br /><br />I hesitate to recommend it, but if you like Greene and you like good writing ... give it a go.

The Man Within My Head is an examination of Graham Greene’s role in the author’s life (a man he’s never met but whose novels remarkably intersect with Iyer’s experiences and inner life). It’s about Greene’s life, Iyer’s life, and the life of the author’s father, about the themes of Greene’s work (foreignness, displacement, innocence, detachment) and much more. It’s a thoughtful and fascinating book, one that left me, frankly, gasping.

Graham Greene is one of my favourite authors, so I am bound to be biased by anything written about him. And I found this book to be startling in Pico Iyer's insights into Greene and into that in-between country of guilt, doubt, compassion, faithlessness, inscrutability and betrayal we have come to call "Greeneland."<br /><br />Greene's many recurring themes are called out: (1)the visiting foreigner vs. the resident foreigner in an offbeat country, both out of touch with the mother country(2) The relationship between the local woman and the visiting foreigner, and its sexual subtext (3) the Catholic atheist (4) the Do-gooders (usually Americans) in a country that does not want to be saved (5) the compassion of the wounded towards the wounded. Greene's private life is also interesting: he stayed married to his first wife despite leaving her 43 years ago, and living with a string of mistresses afterwards. And there is an exact count of the number of prostitues he had been with. He did not drive a car, and preferred to live in a small 2-room flat despite spending his enormous royalty payments on buying houses, ranches and cars for those he cared for. He was the perennial outsider of the literary establishment despite being a a popular writer; I think the establishment had a problem in welcoming a spy and a lapsed Catholic into their midst although they did not have any problem in embracing alcoholics and suicides openly. But after his death, we can't seem to get enough of Greene - now elevated to a Christ-like figure, albeit with a mortal stain on it.<br /><br />Iyer tries to marry his own life and pregrinations along roads less travelled as a journalist in more recent times, his own father's life as an academic and philosopher living in the US, and Graham Greene, the man who lives within his head. It was this juxtaposition of the three strands that never quite wove together for me. I think that Iyer's travels and adventures would have made for a fascinating traveloge in its own right, and his insights into Greene and his work could have been extended to carry a separate book of literary crticism on the celebrated author. As for fathers, well, we all have issues in reconciling with them; they are the subject of memoir or introspection, not very interesting when displayed in the public arena, and fathers rarely fit between travelogue and literary observations. There is also a danger in using the name and work of a literary lion such as Greene to sanctify one's own life - it smacks of pretension.<br /><br />All that said, I'll look forward to the next book by Iyer on "The Lawless Roads - travels with myself"<br /> <br />

I usually try to see the positives in a book, and I usually end up buying or picking out that books I like. This time however, will be an exception. This is the first book I've bought in the last 2 years that I feel was a waste of my money. Watching Iyer's TED talk on identity and home a few months earlier had made me interested in what he had to say, since he too is of Indian descent, loved to travel, and introspected during his travels.<br /><br />To start off, the blurb on the back of the book stated it was about Graham Greene, and Iyer's habit of drawing comparison between their lives. I had barely read any of Greene's work, so I didn't have much to draw from. Strike one.<br /><br />I told myself that it'd be fine, I'd learn along the way, reading Iyer's description of his life. And that didn't work out. Why? Because I sensed no struggle, no hardship in his story that could myself know what it felt like to be him. It didn't communicate to me at all. Iyer had a pretty privileged background in every sense of the word, and his ramblings seemed too caught up in that. There was no 'grit' that made me feel what he had to say. Strike two.<br /><br />The pacing made utterly no sense either. Tying into my previous point, there were sections where he'd randomly go off to some exotic location, and then promptly navel gaze. They were tied together rather haphazardly. Strike three.<br /><br />Dissapointed, I put the book down. The first time I did that with a book I bought.<br /><br />As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, I tend to see the positive in books as far as possible. And in this case, it was his writing. For all the book's faults, Iyer's writing is refined and uses just the right words, painting (yet ultimately soulless) vivid images. I will probably read the book again someday, to give it another chance, but somehow I don't think it'll stand up to that.

As someone who follows new modes of writing memoir and mixed genres, and as a fan of Pico Iyer who has read all his books, I was captivated by his new braided biography-memoir about Graham Greene and his influence on Iyer's life. This indirect autobiography through the mirror of another writer's life and work provides insights that, I think, are more nuanced than if stated directly. A note of inevitability carries the pairing, for the two writers lived near each other though they were born at least a generation apart. Greene's travels and the international setting of his novels parallels, not coincidentally it turns out, Pico Iyer's global life and work as a boy born in India, educated at elite schools in England, a trans-Atlantic commuter to his parent's home in Santa Barbara. Certainly it helps to have read some work by Greene or Iyer--whether Iyer's books like Global Soul or his travel essays for Time magazine and other publications--so in praising this book I'll assume a reader has already taken a taste by way of prerequisite. Reading The Man Within My Head is rather like going to an art exhibition, a retrospective, where you see the influences and eras and styles an artist passes through on their creative journey.<br />

<i>From BBC Radio 4:<br />The travel writer Pico Iyer (author of Video Nights in Kathmandu, Falling Off The Map) has always wandered the world with a mentor 'looking on'. Whether it be Bogota, Cuba, California, Japan, the man inside Iyer's head, as he puts it, is always Graham Greene. And it is Greene's fights with faith, his reservations about innocence, his generous spirit, that are really inspiring. In the course of five episodes and from various destinations the author describes his fascination for the great man..</i><br />