SOURCE: "Master Craftsman," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 209, No. 6, June, 1962, pp. 109-11.

In the following mixed review of Twenty-One Stories, Barrett praises Greene's craftsmanship but faults his inability to present realistic characters.

Graham Greene has never particularly favored the short story, yet it turns out that in his mastery of this form he is as sure and accomplished a craftsman as in the departments of drama and the novel. Twenty-One Stories gives us all the tales that Mr. Greene seems to want to preserve from his long and prolific career, and they bring out in very sharp relief all of his literary qualities, positive as well as negative.

The very conciseness of the short-story form, indeed, can give a greater intensity—like a harsh black-and-white drawing—to the macabre side of Mr. Greene's imagination.

In "The Basement Room," a boy's glimpse into the marital tragedy of his beloved...