GREENE, Graham. Two typed letters signed to Gavin Young. Antibes. May 14 and July 24 1990.
8vo., 2 single sheets of Greene's La Residence des Fleurs headed paper. Both letters folded once otherwise on very good condition.
Greene's first letter dated May 14th is a reply to a letter Gavin Young had sent to him on April 21 (a photopcopy of Young's letter is supplied). Young's letter reminds Greene that they had met for an interview a few years earlier (the interview was published in the Observer in March 1978, reprinted in Worlds Apart , 1987). Young goes on to explain that he is planning to write a book about Joseph Conrad and his travels and asks to meet Greene to have "a quiet gentle chat about places and people which I believe you are interested in - and by which I am quite enthralled."
Greene offers a warm reply "Many thanks for your letter. Your journeys sound of great interest and I shall look forward to your book. I think the only parts where our paths crossed are Bankok and Singapore. I would like to hear you speak of it all over a drink, but alas my drink would be orange juice, as I am struggling with anaemia".
The second letter comes after Young and Greene had met. "It was a great pleasure for me too to see you again. I never thanked you properly for all those books you left with me...I have of course read yours which I enjoyed thoroughly and I'm sure was the best of the bunch. Djuna Barnes strikes a note in my memory and I shall read he next when I get back to Antibes... I'm afraid I would have been a bad companion on your trip round the world. I haven't got sufficient patience!"
Sold with paperback copies of Gavin Young's World's Apart which includes on pp. 290 - 294 Young's article Pink Gin and Panama recording Greene and Young's first interview, and also In Search of Conrad, the book about which he and Greene met to have "a quiet, gentle chat".
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