being fashioned from Adam’s rib,nMethuselah living for nine hundrednsixty-nine years, and so on. This latternalternative is not required even for thosenwho are religious in the conventionalnsense; witness, for example, the intelligentlynwritten entry on evolution innthe Catholic Encyclopedia. With Neanderthalsnneither on the theological blacklistnnor implausible as a link to stillnearlier ancestors, on what grounds doesnAuel relegate them to extinction? Oneneasy answer is that the idea is no responsibilitynof hers; she is merely reflectingnwhat seems to be a majority viewpointnamong professional anthropologists whonshare the general cultural stereotypenof Neanderthals as part of a past wenhave moved beyond (indeed, they arenthe primary source of that viewpoint).nThe Clan of the Cave Bear is subtitledn”a novel,” perhaps in the hopenthat it will be spared such embarrassingnquestions about accuracy and verisimilitudenas long as it tells a lively story.nYet this is not the whole story. Manynof the details in Auel’s novel are basednon Shanidar, written by the anthropologistnRalph Solecki, who directed thenA Reluctant ReturnnGraham Greene: Ways of Escape:nAn Autobiography; Simon & Schuster;nNew York.nby Robert C. SteensmanXo go back far in time is alwaysna reluctant return (as one approachesndeath one lives a step ahead, perhapsnin a hurry to be gone),” Graham Greenenwrites in Ways of Escape, the secondnpart of a rather discursive autobiographynbegun in A Sort of Life (1971).nGreene has now been publishingnnovels for over half a century (his firstnwas The Man Within, 1929; his mostnDr. Steensma teaches English at thenUniversity of Utah.n28inChronicles of Culturenwork at that important site and hasnwritten insightfully about it. Auel acknowledgesnher debt to Solecki at thenbeginning of her book; indeed, he isnthe only anthropologist or archeologistnwhom she mentions by name. To quotenSolecki on Neanderthal, however,n”according to all of the proofs that cannbe mustered, he is still our ancestor.”nxerhaps Auel chose to treat Neanderthalsnas evolutionary relics, soon tondie out in competition with the newlynarrived modern humans, for literarynrather than scientific reasons. It wouldnbe difficult, after all, to write a novelnabout extremely gradual evolutionaryntransformations over tens of thousandsnof years. The cast of characters andnstructural complexity required wouldnmake even Russian novels seem likenClassic comic books. I suspect, though,nthat the choice was aided by the mesagesnwhich are so obviously telegraphednagain and again: cross a “modern”nwoman and you’re doomed; straightnlegs good, curved legs bad; you can’tnmake progress without breaking eggshapednheads. Dnrecent. Doctor Fischer of Geneva ornThe Bomb Party, 1980), and his reputationnas one of the finest contemporarynnovelists seems secure. As a writer ofnnovels, short stories, essays, plays, anfew poems (which he prefers to forget),nfilm criticism and movie scripts, he hasnproduced a body of distinguished writingnwhich continues to attract a large andnappreciative audience. Several of hisnnoYels—Brighton Rock (1938), ThenPower and the Glory (1940), The Endnof the Affair (19^1) and A Burnt-OutnCase (1961)—have achieved the statusnof minor classics, and the critical jurynis still out on several later ones.nWays of Escape takes up where AnSort of Life left off, with Greene at agen27 and having just published his firstnnnsuccess, Stamboul Train (1932; Americanntitle. Orient Express). Greene looksnback over the succeeding 48 years innnine chapters and an epilogue, some ofnthe material having been adapted fromnintroductions to volumes in thencollected edition of his works and fromnvarious pieces in periodicals.nThis material includes descriptionsnof his journalistic trips to Malaya, Indochina,nKenya and communist Poland;nselections from journals kept at variousnimportant points in his career; gentlenand fond portraits of close friends suchnas Carol Reed and Evelyn Waugh; andnshrewd comments on the art of thennovel, with occasional remarks on hisnown work. His account—for the mostnpart objective and serene—is occasionallynspiced with amusing anecdotes onnhis troubles with American immigrationnauthorities and with “The Other,”na man passing himself off as GrahamnGreene in several parts of the world.nAnd once in a while his political innocencenappears when he treats bully-boysnsuch as Allende, Castro, Torrijos, andnHo Chi Minh as men of integrity.nFor the biographer there is little innthis book that sheds any new light onnGreene and his work. But appearing asnit does in his 77th year (he was born inn1904) and at a time when he has againnbeen passed over for a richly deservednNobel Prize (very possibly because henisn’t noticeably and stridently anti-nAmerican), Ways of Escape providesna kind of perspective from which to viewnhis achievement. As he says in A Sortnof Life, his reason for “recording thesenscraps of the past… is much the samenmotive that has made me a novelist: andesire to reduce a chaos of experiencento some sort of order, and a hungryncuriosity.”nThroughout his career as a novelistn(23 books so far), Greene has provennhimself a perceptive and unsettlingnobserver of the human comedy and annacerb commentator on the quality ofnmodern life. As the contemporary novelnslips deeper into moral irrelevance andntechnical eccentricity, Greene’s char-n