In the introduction to his massive 562-page Collected Stories, published in 1972, Graham Greene writes: "I remain in this field a novelist who has happened to write short stories, just as there are certain short story writers (Maupassant and Mr. V. S. Pritchett come to mind) who have happened to write novels."

About Maupassant and Mr. Pritchett, Mr. Greene may be right, but there is also a whole other subset of writers who are equally at home in the short story and the novel (Bernard Malamud and Flannery O'Connor come to mind). It is in this group, in spite of his demurrer, that I would place Graham Greene. So much for placement. The real trick is understanding this astonishing author at the stage of the writing life he now occupies. He is 86, has written more than 60 books—and is the world's most conspicuous nonwinner of the prize many, including this reviewer, think he clearly earned years ago, the Nobel.

From 1940 on, Graham Greene, in an unequaled display of productivity and creative originality, produced book after book that enriched our sense of what the modern novel could do in the hands of a quiet master of style and suspense (who also happened to be a tormented Roman Catholic convert and a left-wing sympathizer). That mixture produced narratives replete with irony and pity for the weak and the lost. It was the irony that saved the pity from becoming sentimental, as well as the fact that no one stood safely beyond it, not lovers, certainly not principalities and powers, not even Mr. Greene's extremely personal and ambiguous god. The result was a series of powerful novels: The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, A Burnt-Out Case, The Honorary Consul, to select just a few. For generations Graham Greene has been a central source of the literary air all of us breathe.

In addition, there is the achievement of the "entertainments" such as The Man Within, This Gun for Hire and Brighton Rock, starting in the 1930's and continuing with The Third Man, Our Man in Havana and others—each reader will, undoubtedly, have his or her favorite. This distinction between "entertainments" and "serious" novels, which Mr. Greene famously invented for himself early in his career, has become less and less useful; the serious novels were all entertaining in the richest sense, and the entertainments (they were frequently subtitled as such) often have a depth many a "serious" novelist would envy.

All the while Mr. Greene was producing a steady stream of short stories, including a minor classic, "The Basement Room" (from which the Carol Reed film The Fallen Idol, starring Sir Ralph Richardson, was made). The copyright dates for his stories start in 1935 and go to 1990, lastly, The Last Word: And Other Stories. This is a collection of stories that, for one reason or another, the author did not wish to include in previous collections. They date from 1923 to 1989 and only four have ever appeared before in book form, none in the Collected Stories.

The reasons Mr. Greene gives for the original exclusions range from several of them being too derivative from some of his novels, to concern over a new generation's understanding of some World War II events. His reason for including one story dating from 1929, "Murder for the Wrong Reason," was that, on rereading it 60 years later, he found he could not guess the identity of the murderer.

Only one of these additions to the canon, the last in the volume, called "An Appointment With the General," reads like vintage Greene. It has all the familiar hallmarks: the bitter beauty of language that keeps doubling back on itself in irony, the despair worn like a comfortable old suit, the unsentimental scorn when dealing with the left and the right. A French journalist is sent to interview a South American general of ambiguous politics and ambitions. She leaves on the eve of her marriage's collapse, and that personal event delicately colors her interview with the general. It is a small gem. Interestingly, it is a recent work, published in 1982. Like so many of Mr. Greene's works with an exotic locale—and like his nonfiction book Getting to Know the General—this story may be based on direct experience, in this case Mr. Greene's regular visits to Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera of Panama.

The vintage "Murder for the Wrong Reason" is interesting mainly because it prefigures Mr. Greene's enduring interest in the mystery story—but also because it contains, in miniature, every convention of that genre. Like the author, this reviewer could not tell who the murderer was until the very end. "The News in English" is a touching minor effort with a major backdrop; a Briton who is marooned in Germany at the war's outbreak broadcasts apparent propaganda for the Germans to the English back at home. The story is filtered through his wife's shame, an emotion altered by the revelation that something other than treason is afoot. The ending has a dying fall and Mr. Greene's voice is eloquently sustained throughout.

Less satisfying is the title tale. "The Last Word" is the story of the last Christian in a world in which a totalitarian proto-Communist order—in some Orwellian way—has completely eradicated the church. The hero of the story, a confused old man, turns out to be the last Pope, kept alive until the moment when even he is no longer necessary to the global regime. Though written with skill and style, this tale demonstrates the folly of second-guessing history. Since the churches of Europe have for the most part survived their former Communist oppressors, the final effect of the tale is one of a naïve, nostalgic backward look on Mr. Greene's part.

The group of stories written with a humorous, lighter effect in mind do not succeed so well here. At least they are not in a class with May We Borrow Your Husband?, Mr. Greene's brilliant execution of the light touch in story form. But if we follow the author's guidance (he says in his introduction to the earlier volume of Collected Stories: "I have never written anything better than 'The Destructors,' 'A Chance for Mr. Lever.' 'Under the Garden' and 'Cheap in August'") then the picture is made whole. On rereading Mr. Greene's entire oeuvre in this form it is clear that these stories are all worth a journey, not just a detour. Along with "The Basement Room," "The Hint of an Explanation," "When Greek Meets Greek," and with his masterpiece of quiet horror. "A Little Place Off the Edgware Road," in which the murderer and the corpse of his victim trade places, his short stories stake out a claim for Graham Greene that he refuses, with characteristic modesty, to make for himself—that of a genuine master of the short story.

If the stories in The Last Word are not examples of Mr. Greene working at the top of his form, they do give us a few new pleasures while sending us back to the often overlooked body of short stories waiting for us. There is now no doubt about one thing: over the long haul, in the short story as well as the novel, Graham Greene is the Master.