Occasionally Sharrock makes use of terms such as "fideism," a term perhaps more appropriate to theology than to literary criticism, but he does so to chart the moral and ethical spectrum that Greene acknowledges as he hones his characterization to particular ends. A Burnt-Out Case he sees as an epilogue to the interests and concerns of the major novels that precede it, and the works since A Burnt-Out Case as evidence of the incorporation of certain journalistic and private observations that justify the idiosyncratic tragicomedy of the more recent novels and novellas. The works from Brighton Rock through The End of the Affair he calls Greene's "Catholic" novels, meaning simply that Roman Catholic attitudes are implicit in the construction of character and the presentation of event. Sharrock examines the works as representative of a developing oeuvre, correctly assessing the secular stance that characterizes both the novels and entertainments, the latter a category that Greene no longer maintains, from The Man Within to the crucial Brighton Rock. Typical of much of the intelligent and sensible criticism on Greene since the early Sixties is Roger Scharrock's Saints, Sinners and Comedians.
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