{"id":413,"date":"2011-01-17T20:18:23","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T20:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/?p=413"},"modified":"2011-01-17T20:33:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T20:33:58","slug":"greenmantle-by-john-buchan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/greenmantle-by-john-buchan\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Greenmantle&#8221; by John Buchan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019ve ever heard of John Buchan, it\u2019s probably because of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B002CQUCDK?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=mjtate-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B002CQUCDK\">Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s movie adaptation of his novel <em>The Thirty-Nine Steps<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Buchan was an amazingly productive author of over 100 works of fiction and nonfiction, averaging five books a year from 1922 to 1936. He wrote a 24-volume history of World War I during the war, at a rate of about 40,000 words a month, while also working for the Foreign Office, the Edinburgh publisher Thomas Nelson, and Reuters news service, as well as writing novels. He was also a devoted husband and father of four children and a faithful member of the Presbyterian church.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the recommendation of George Grant\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingsmeadow.com\">King\u2019s Meadow<\/a> humanities curriculum, my 9th-12th-grade homeschool literature co-op class read Buchan\u2019s novel <em>Greenmantle<\/em> (1916), a sequel to <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0199537879?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=mjtate-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0199537879\">The Thirty-Nine Steps<\/a><\/em>. Hitchcock considered filming <em>Greenmantle<\/em> but decided not to because of \u201cmy respect for a literary masterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=mjtate-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0199537852&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Buchan wrote this World War I spy novel while the war was in progress. He focuses on the obscure political background of the relationship between Turkey and Germany and explores the strategic significance and threat of the Muslim world. In fact, the <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/19867.html\">BBC canceled its planned broadcast<\/a> of <em>Greenmantle<\/em> as its classic serial after the July 7, 2005 terrorist bombings in London.<\/p>\n<p>The brief but sympathetic depiction of the Kaiser, who was commonly considered the personification of evil, reflects narrator Richard Hannay\u2019s shifting attitudes toward his enemies as the novel progresses. When Hannay seeks shelter in a woodcutter\u2019s cottage straight out of a fairy tale, he relinquishes his dream of \u201cgiving the Huns some of their own medicine.\u201d He reflects:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI was for punishing the guilty but letting the innocent go free. It was our business to thank God and keep our hands clean from the ugly blunders to which Germany\u2019s madness had driven her. What good would it do Christian folk to burn poor little huts like this and leave children\u2019s bodies by the wayside? To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beasts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hannay takes his undercover task seriously, yet he often describes the war in terms like stark lunacy, farce, idiocy, and crazy folly. Still, he finds it a thrilling adventure. He says the guns \u201cintoxicated me\u201d and \u201ckept me cheerful.\u201d The sound of artillery fire reminds him of the first time he heard it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThen I had been half afraid, half solemnized, but every nerve had been quickened. Then it had been the new thing in my life that held me breathless with anticipation; now it was the old thing, the thing I had shared with so many good fellows, my proper work, and the only task for a man. At the sound of the guns I felt that I was moving in natural air once more. I felt that I was coming home.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This double perspective reminds me of Robert E. Lee\u2019s comment at the Battle of Fredericksburg: \u201cIt is well that war is so terrible; otherwise we would grow too fond of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At a point when Hannay is facing almost certain death, he reflects:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI fancy it isn\u2019t the men who get most out of the world and are always buoyant and cheerful that most fear to die. Rather it is the weak-engined souls who go about with dull eyes, that cling most fiercely to life. They have not the joy of being alive which is a kind of earnest of immortality.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some readers criticize the novel for being too full of coincidences, and Buchan addresses this issue in the novel\u2019s dedication:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cLet no man or woman call its events improbable. The war has driven that word from our vocabulary, and melodrama has become the prosiest realism. Things unimagined before happen daily to our friends by sea and land. The one chance in a thousand is habitually taken, and as often as not succeeds.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>George Grant identifies the novel\u2019s \u201cstrange and sudden providences\u201d as \u201cits greatest attribute\u201d that shows the intervention of God.<\/p>\n<p>The Richard Hannay series includes:<br \/>\nThe Thirty-Nine Steps<br \/>\nGreenmantle<br \/>\nMr. Standfast<br \/>\nThe Three Hostages<br \/>\nThe Courts of Morning<br \/>\nThe Island of Sheep<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019ve ever heard of John Buchan, it\u2019s probably because of Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s movie adaptation of his novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. Buchan was an amazingly productive author of over 100 works of fiction and nonfiction, averaging five books a year from 1922 to 1936. He wrote a 24-volume history of World War I during the &#8230; <a title=\"&#8220;Greenmantle&#8221; by John Buchan\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/greenmantle-by-john-buchan\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about &#8220;Greenmantle&#8221; by John Buchan\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classic-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}