Hearing the traditional Easter Gospel reading (John 20) always reminds me of Graham Greene’s reaction to it – that it is reportage, a factual account of something that was presumably experienced by the writer.
“I remember again in St John’s Gospel,” Greene wrote to his friend, the Spanish priest Fr Leopold Duran, author of the best book about him, Graham Greene: Friend and Brother, “the run between Peter and John towards the tomb, Peter leading the way until he lost breath and then the younger man arriving first and seeing the linen clothes but afraid to go in – it’s like reportage.”
