Introduction

This preface to Green seems to set aside the notion, championed by Frank Kermode in his Norton Lectures, and thence subscribed to by a large part of the critical community, that Green's work is anomalous in not including any unifying principle and relying instead on a kind of charismatic caprice. Instead, the article shows that the whole work is driven by the fear of losing identity, whether in death, love, or simply the fog, the plot element that becomes easily emblematic of all that threatens the novel's feckless characters. It is suggested that the many so-called idiosyncracies of Green's style can all be connected to this anxiety of losing clarity, losing control.