WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — When Graham Greene and his brother Hugh put together "The Spy's Bedside Book," they did something unusual for an anthology. Usually, anthologists use fairly long excerpts, the better to give a good sample of the writer's tone. But the Greene boys went short — most of the selections are only a couple of pages at most, and there are quite a few that only run for a couple of paragraphs.
The result is that the book feels more like a glittering mosaic than most anthologies, even though some of the authors are the expected — Maugham, Buchan, Ambler, etc. But the Greenes showed their mettle by interpolating the unexpected: T.E. Lawrence, W.H. Auden, Colette, Thomas Mann and a certain full-time writer, part-time spy named Graham Greene. (Hugh Greene was a journalist who served with the RAF during WWII, and eventually became head of the BBC.)
"The Spy's Bedside Book" was published in 1957, and has, astonishingly, been out of print for decades. Stella Rimington, the former head of MI-5, and a novelist since retiring from the great game, contributes a new introduction. The tone throughout is nimble, witty and surprising - there's even a recipe for invisible ink. Bantam has done us all a favor by reprinting it, and I don't expect to be more delighted by an anthology this year.
In the Pipeline...
Thomas French of the St. Petersburg Times will publish "Zoo Story" through Hyperion. It's the story of the reinvention of Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, and will be out in 2010... David Bianculli has written a book about the Smothers Brothers called "Dangerously Funny" that Touchstone will publish next year.
Mike Browning's Word of the Week. . . pudent: experiencing or showing shame.