In a tribute to British author Henry Green (1905-73) titled “A reintroduction to the poet of modern fiction,” Danny Heitman begins with an observation and a quote from John Updike:
“Green’s books haven’t remained reliably in print, evidence of his limited popular appeal. But those who like Green’s novels really like them, and his following, though small, has been distinguished. John Updike, not prone to jacket-blurb hyperbole, celebrated Green’s novels with almost religious zeal.
“‘For Green, to me, is so good a writer, such a revealer of what English prose fiction can do . . . that I can launch myself upon this piece of homage and introduction only by falling into some sort of imitation of that liberatingly ingenuous voice, that voice so full of other voices, its own interpolations amid the matchless dialogue twisted and tremulous with a precision that kept the softness of groping, of sensation, of living.”