Books I think you should read: The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

From The Paris Review interview with Graham Greene, Autumn 1953:

INTERVIEWER

You made Scobie say in The Heart of the Matter: “Point me out the happy man and I will show you either egotism, selfishness, evil or else an absolute ignorance.” What worries us is that you yourself seem to be so much happier than we had expected. Perhaps we are being rather naive but the seventy-four miniature whiskey bottles, the expression on your face, so different from the fixed, set look of your photograph, the whole atmosphere, seem to be the products of something much more positive than that very limited optimum of happiness that you described in The Power and the Glory in this passage: “the world is all much of a piece: it is engaged everywhere in the same subterranean struggle . . . there is no peace anywhere where there is life; but there are quiet and active sectors of the line.”

GREENE

(With a smile) Oh yes, I see what troubles you. I think that you have misjudged me and my consistency. This flat, my way of life—these are simply my hole in the ground.

INTERVIEWER

A moderately comfortable hole.

GREENE

Shall we leave it at that?

Books I think you should read: Voices from the Plains, Gianni Celati

I had a fierce admiration for these little stories. And probably my highest recommendation these days-- they made me want to sit down and write. Good translation by Robert Lumley:

He went on writing stories at night, but after he had written about fifty he realized he didn't like them. He thought that only in the desert or close to death was it worth writing something.
from "A parable for the disenchanted"