Green, Julien Hartridge

▪ 1999

      French-American writer (b. Sept. 6, 1900, Paris, France—d. Aug. 13, 1998, Paris), was the author of numerous novels, plays, and essays that reflected his lifelong conflicts emanating from his attempts to reconcile his sexual desires and spiritual side. Born in Paris to American parents from the South, Green spent most of his life in France. Although Protestant by birth, he converted to Roman Catholicism as an adolescent. During this time he also recognized his homosexuality, an event that precipitated in his writings evidence of his struggles and the parallel themes of spiritual devotion and carnal desire. After serving in World War I as both a soldier and an ambulance driver, Green entered (1919) the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and studied there until 1921. After a year of teaching (1921-22) at the university, he returned to France. His first novel, Mont-Cinere (1926; Avarice House, 1927), was melancholic and infused with disturbing sexual undertones, like many of his novels, and written in French, the language in which he wrote all but a few of his works. He claimed that writing in English was for him like "wearing clothes that were not made for me." Although most of his novels were set in France, two of his most highly regarded works, Moira (1950; translation, 1951) and Chaque homme dans sa nuit (1960; Each in His Darkness, 1961), took place in the United States. His most acclaimed play, Sud (1953; South, 1955), which served as the basis of a 1973 opera by Kenneth Coe, was also set in the U.S. Among his other works were his multivolume Journals, which he kept from 1926 until 1996. In 1971 Green, who never relinquished his American citizenship, was elected to the Académie Française; he was the first American to receive this honour.

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