A look at two writers, born the same year

The common legacy of Greene and Singer is an art that art was driven not by action, which is Hollywood’s ideal, but by an idea of human suffering and transcendence in morally ambiguous circumstances. Few writers today deal in such shades of grey. The overuse of irony and satire diminishes suffering and denies transcendence. The gimmick and the grotesque command attention. Simple, spell-binding storytelling is critically undervalued.

It will return. It always does.