Lots of realism and self-censorship in Graham Greene’s dream book

The occasion is propitious to confess the horrible truth. Placed at the beginning of an article which talks about “A world of my own” – the dream book of Graham Greene just published by Sellerio – the revelation will remove possible conflicts of interest, making us look great. Under other circumstances, the same words would have revealed us to the world as lame materialists. And you well know that there is no worse etiquette these days. We have never put up with people who get up in the morning and at breakfast tell their fresh night dreams. Whether they are friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, cohabitants, workmates with whom you occasionally happen to share the breakfast table. We have always found other people’s dreams very boring (and our worst, we don’t show favoritism and in fact we almost never remember them). We make an exception for Graham Greene, who kept a dream diary since he was 16 and was sent to London to see a psychoanalyst: human types who feed on dreams, and are also satisfied with invented dreams.