The Lawless Roads is an unusual read for anyone who knows of Graham Greene’s other work. Here are snippets of the author’s recognizable tone – an acquaintance, for example, described as having taken a correspondence course in personality – but overall this book is presented as little more than an argumentative tirade, delivered from a singular perspective, a position that narrates in the rest of the author’s work do not usually occupy.
The Lawless Roads takes the form of a travel journal. Its journey is linear. Graham Greene is visiting Mexico in the 1930s and from the beginning he is a man on a mission. As a committed and practicing Roman Catholic, he seems to be looking for examples of how the Mexican Revolution has pursued repression and persecution of the Church. Unlike many other works by Graham Greene, Lawless Roads employs a consistently linear structure, as the author describes the sequence of his seemingly arduous travels across the country. He meets with locals and expats, little people, farmers and professionals, clergy and laity. There are related experiences that achieve the same doll of observation and expression that Greene achieves throughout his work, but these merely and occasionally punctuate the whole thing, rather grumpy.
Graham Greene clearly did not enjoy Mexico. It could be argued that he came with a decision already made. No, it can be assumed that he did, and proceeded to find exactly what he was looking for, as he had predicted.
A constant and repeated thread that apparently innocuously runs through the text is the author’s attitude towards Mexican food. It provided such memorably negative experiences that it seems to have prompted a description of almost every meal. As ‘chunks of meat’ are served alongside tasteless or vile concoctions, we begin to seriously wonder how Graham Greene managed to roam the world, tread every continent, during his writer’s lifetime finding nowhere else. similar problems or reactions. Mexico, it seemed, was on his target list and he stayed there.
The point he clearly wanted to make, and repeatedly, was that the Mexican Revolution had led to the repression of the Church. Apparently socialist, at least in his rhetoric, he identified the Church as an agent of repression and proceeded to do much, if not all that was in his power, to weaken the institution. Therefore, Graham Greene’s mission on The Lawless Roads was to find and catalog examples of this repression, describe them and cry badly, along with the disgusting food, the disgusting bureaucracy, the disgusting government, etc. As a result, and especially compared to Graham Greene’s other books, The Lawless Roads is nauseatingly one-sided, unsubtle, and ultimately predictable.
The book, however, gives a glimpse of the author’s religious conservatism and orthodoxy, a side of Graham Greene that is only glimpsed in other books. Elsewhere he may allude to his Roman Catholic faith, or even imply that we should take it for granted, along with his general Christianity and pent-up guilt, but here this is all out front for all to see. Most of the time, there is little else in sight. Graham Greene admitted to using drugs, often drinking too much and taking advantage of whatever sexual experiences he had on hand, making the confessional an explicit and regular requirement for him. In general, he was also sympathetic to popular movements and the revolution.
But not in Mexico, because there Our Lady the Church violated. Greene’s reaction, given the general socialism generally attributed to his outlook, reveals a deep idiosyncrasy, perhaps even intolerance. As we finish The Lawless Roads we feel like we know a lot more about the author’s enigmatic character, knowledge that will offer perspective on his other work.