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I was very much into Graham Greene in my late teens and early twenties, and have read very little of him since. I hadn’t previously heard of Pico Iyer at all, but like his father before him he is a cultural commentator - in fact, a travel writer, who has been a Graham Greene fan since his youth and has also had the opportunity to retrace a lot of Greene’s footsteps in various countries. Iyer is much more into Greene than I ever was, but I appreciate the depth and sincerity of his fannish attachment, and also his honesty in questioning the extent to which he has allowed his imagined Greene to take over the mentor role that his real father could or should have occupied. There’s a lot here about engagement and betrayal, participation and observation, loyalty and betrayal, fascination and destruction, and yet it is quite a short book. Very thought-provoking. ( )

Pico Iyer's 'The Man Within My Head,' is brilliant. Iyer explores the character of Graham Greene (both the moral character and the created mythos surrounding him as well) and how Greene's sense of longing, and perhaps ennui, relates directly to Iyer's life. Interspersed throughout are episodes from various Greene novels and anecdotes from Iyer's own travel and upbringing. Using travel and literature to explore Greene's life as well as his own, Iyer has written a book which chronicles our own journey through the pulls and pressures of life. For those who've 'suffered' from wanderlust, or who have sought escape through books, travel, or relationships, 'The Man Within Me,' provides deep, and I believe, hard-won insights from the author. There is real wisdom to be found in these pages, and while it is rare that I reread books at this time, I am keeping this book because I anticipate that in the future I will need it again.

While Iyer posits Greene as a spiritual father (but not a literary father), the presence of Iyer's own father and their relationship reflects the difficulties on writing about one's own family. The result is a work that feels very honest and true. As many young men do, we collect father figures, and this book speaks to the longing for acceptance we find throughout our life, especially towards our exemplars (professional, spiritual, and biological). A sense of restlessness is tangible, and solace though books, relationships, or places (or the lack of solace to be found in these) is constant throughout. For those interested in relationships, literary criticism, travel, self-reflection, and the writer himself, this book is a great read. ( )

THE MAN WITHIN MY HEAD is the first book I've read by Pico Iyer, although I have been aware of his work for years, having run across his books in the travel section of stores. I learned of this book through an excerpt from it that ran in The New Yorker. It picqued my interest enough to order the book, mainly because I've been a reader of Graham Greene for probably 40 years - have read six or seven Greene books, perhaps, and some of them more than once.

I expected more of a memoir here than I got. The book's blurbs suggested it was much about Iyer and his father, who had been a much respected university professor and lecturer in California, after achieving notoriety for his brilliance even as a college student in India and England. But there's not really that much about the elder Iyer, or much more, really, about the author himself. Nevertheless this is an at times fascinating account of the importance of Graham Greene as a role model and an influence in Iyer's life. I would classify it as a literary anyalytic work on a very personal level, as Iyer managed to find many parallels between his own life and that of the much older Greene, who he never met. But his knowledge of Greene and his oeuvre is encyclopedic, enhanced as it has been by not just close readings of his books but also by by talks with many people who knew Greene and also with some of Greene's family members.

So while I was a bit disappointed in the book as a memoir, it did manage to reignite my interest in Greene and his many books. Although I've already read THE QUIET AMERICAN, now I kinda want to read it again, given the emphasis Iyer puts on that one particular book. Other Greene books I personally loved were THE POWER AND THE GLORY, THE HUMAN FACTOR and A BURNT-OUT CASE. There are certainly plenty more Greene books to keep me busy for a long time and I may eventually get around to them. And who knows? I may take a look at Iyer's other books too. Recommended for Graham Greene enthusiasts. ( )

Pico Iyer's writing soothes me. The fluidity, the depth of his sentences are among the best constructed I've ever encountered. And, of course, I share his passion for travel, for depth, for seeking answers to the larger questions.

But in this exploration of the profound effect Graham Greene has had on him--he is nominally The Man, after all but as Iyer's wife points out, it could also be his father--I found, subconsciously expectedly while consciously unexpectedly, most moving his passages about the fathers we all seek:

"A son may choose never to listen to a father, but a father...is always bound to a son, and real disinheritance is hard." ( )