Viking) by Graham Greene (1996-01-01) - The Quiet American (Critical Library

The relationship between Pyle and Fowler regarding Phuong seems improbable; however, for a student of Vietnamese culture, the story paints a subtle but insightful view into a time long past. I would have loved to have seen Vietnam before the heavy American involvement, and The Quiet American gives a glimpse of an era that is gone forever.

After having read this book in my youth many years ago, I enjoyed reading it once more after all these years. What Green predicted in his book happened shortly after at the tragic American-Vietnamese war!

After having read this book in my youth many years ago, I enjoyed reading it once more after all these years. What Green predicted in his book happened shortly after at the tragic American-Vietnamese war!

Great story and characters - especially considering everyone is essentially an allegory for world politics. I loved learning about a specific time and place but the story, predicaments and message make it timeless. Green schools in delivering a critical view of the world in a compelling way.

Beautifully written with powerful ideas that still have a contemporary message. The English journalist who narrates the story has an enviable philosophical outlook on life. Greene's use of language keeps the plot moving crisply and gives perceptive insights into the psyches of the main characters.

In short, the story is great but the introduction/political commentary by Robert Stone was senseless trash. At times I wondered if he had even read the book. Buy another version and avoid his rambling. Be sure to read up on the author. He had an interesting life, once working for British Intelligence and famously declaring that he would rather live in the Soviet Union than the United States.

This was summer reading for a ninth grade gr'son. I read the book, annotated it, and sent it to him to read. Then we discussed it. I was worried about his getting it, but he did. I remember Dien Bien Phu. My husband served in Viet Nam. When will we ever learn.

This book is a 1983 reprint, not a first edition, as the ad led me to believe. The Product Details say: "Publisher: Viking Press; 1st edition (June 1956)." Should have known the price was too good for a first edition, I suppose, but the seller should have listed the actual publication date of this edition.

The plot of The Quiet American consists of a love triangle and a slow-moving murder mystery. The theme is about morality and war, plus a bald political message about Vietnam. None of this conduces to great art, but the local color is fun. The narrator is a jaded British expatriate, and his romantic rival is the titular Quiet American (unlike the usual loud Americans). The police captain is Claude Rains, on loan here from Casablanca. Did I mention the use of stereotypes? Oh, and the pretty Vietnamese girl, who has about ten lines of dialogue.

We are supposed to identify with the narrator, because he is “right” about the war, but I couldn’t help seeing the conflict from the woman’s point of view. She is abused tragically by this selfish bastard, and she never learns the truth. I don’t want to say this is a bad book – I’ll give it two stars – but its stellar ratings owe entirely to politics, not art. If not for the war, it would be out of print.

All is fair in love and war
This truly awesome 1955 novel starts during the Korean War but is situated in French Indo-China, in particular in Vietnam, which struggled towards independence in a disorganised, almost ‘medieval’ way, full of competing warlords with double agendas, lumped together by US observers as Communists. The reporter about this sideshow is Fowler, an elderly, cynical British news hack with issues back home and excellent local contacts, incl. French colonial officials. He also maintains a beautiful, young girlfriend, Phuong.
The quiet American is Pyle, young, shy and naive, a virgin in almost everything, a fresh recruit to the massive US economic advisory mission operating from Saigon. Phuong’s matchmaking sister Hei dislikes Fowler. Phuong leaves him and moves in with Pyle. Not long after, Pyle is found dead (with mud in his lungs) near a riverside restaurant, fifty meters from where Fowler has dinner.
These are the bare bones of a Shakespearian tragedy involving millions of Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese, the French colonial administration and army, a contingent of US secret agents and neutral bystander Fowler (first name Thomas as in ‘Doubting Thomas’): selfish, unwilling and unable to commit himself to any creed or ideology, respectful of local hardship and suffering, sometimes wishing for death, sometimes crying out for help from the entity he does not believe in.
Pyle is a man of faith, trying to further democracy under the guise of a Third Way, protecting Vietnam from communism whilst undermining colonial rule by starving the French of weapons and supplying dissidents with materials to make IEDs. He saves Fowler’s life in extreme circumstances; their discussions are searing because of their differences in worldview, ambitions and hopes, or lack thereof.
“The Quiet American” took Graham Greene (1904-91) three years to write. He was short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966 and -67, inauspicious years given the US’ then-mounting involvement in Vietnam. Reading it late in 2017, seeing Caodaism the colourful, mixed religion he briefly described on TV today, my humble verdict is: fresh as never before, a work of great scope and brilliance, a true classic, a must read.
Finally, the names of Fowler and Pyle must be symbolic, the first for breaking rules aggressively. The second's plural form suggesting piles, haemorrhoids, a pain in the ass, a nuisance.

War mixes everything up. Or maybe everything is already mixed up and war just jumbles it around. Love and lust and vulnerability; ambition and power and youth. Ideologies and instincts, all shaken together and served upon a platter before a backdrop of steamy jungles or quiet dehydrated mountains in the third world.

War is a third world affair; it has been now for generations. Theaters collapsed in upon themselves; fire-bombed towns; grand old cities occupied by crisply dressed soldiers drinking Champagne and dancing with elegant ladies dressed in white – concentration camps filled with the college educated, those were the wars of our grandfathers. Our wars, the wars that our fathers started are the wars of villagers against peasants – the under-trained against the poorly armed. Child soldiers with bloodshot eyes pointing an AK-47 at a passing car; an explosion planted in a market to kill vendors sitting cross-legged in front of a pile of dried fish. With an occasional drone strike to accent the difference, making it somehow absurd.

The Quiet American is about this kind of war – war in third world Asia, Vietnam specifically. Rice farmers fighting street thugs. It is the story of a journalist and his love for a local girl which brings him into competition with a naïve young American. It’s a simple book – a simple story. Perhaps too simple, but well-enough written to elicit emotion.

I made common cause, because we all know the types – those of us who know modern wars. Four of them, I think, for me – the wars I have known. The camps full of fly-covered children, bodies heaped in a pile as their blood drains into a small river seeking an exit. The jaded journalist, the ambitious diplomat, grandiose plans of nations built upon a foundation of the imperfect; like an oil painter swiping away reality with each pass of the brush, making her painting plain; cellophane wrapped like the west sees its wars.

The book did take a surprising ending, especially for those who have seen the movie. I won’t spoil it; but I will say that sometimes a sad ending can also be happy, and vice versa too.

Thomas Fowler is an aging, cynical war correspondent covering the escalating Vietminh/France war of the early 1950's. He gets by with his atheism ,opium pipes and the young Vietnamese girl Phuong. Things change when he meets Alden Pyle, a young idealistic American with a naivete to match his cynicism. Supposedly in Vietnam to give medical aid, Pyle is involved in giving the war a "Third Force" (ie neither communist or colonial) and democracy as a force for good. But Fowler views things differently, more so as the quiet young American moves in on Phuong.....
This (for me) is easily Greene's best novel. A mere 180 odd pages, it is a hugely powerful political document that, in hindsight, America should have read more closely to avoid the hopeless war they themselves found themselves in in Vietnam.
So many ideas stick out; politics doesn't do gratitude; intellectuals invent a political idea or theory and bend every truth and reality to make everything fit into and "prove" their ideology.
I've always had a problem with Greene where he shoe horns in his Catholicism obsession into his novels where it has practically zero point in the tale. But here he has the atheist Fowler believing only in death having to reckon with the senseless slaughter around him; all for political interests that will fade into meaninglessness at a future time. This compares with Pyle, his belief in a God and his naïve but sincere belief in the 'third force'
A fantastic book; so pertinent a novel on war (and given that mankind fights perpetual wars for whatever reason) that it will never cease being a vital book.
Having read a number of Greene's books and finding fault, this is the one where I can finally say I understand why Greene is so lauded by so many. It just takes a book as good as this.

I've read incredible novels that convey the dehumanizing effect of war on its combatants, but I've never read one that paints so beautifully the even bleaker picture of war's dehumanizing effect on everyone else: turning us into hypocrites and complicit murderers and murderesses who naively believe our politicians are noble, and start wars for noble reasons.

Classic novels have timeless resonance, and Graham Greene's accusations of Western naivety and hypocrisy in war-mongering are just as true today as they were in 1955. It's the ultimate spy novel, love triangle, and allegory written in a fine gold chain of prose, tightly spun and gleaming.

Greene tells the story of a cynical British reporter who witnesses the death and destruction caused by an idealistic American who attempts "do what's best" for a Vietnamese woman in the micro, and in the macro, Indochina. Even when Pyle, the American, is spattered by blood from a staged bombing gone wrong (oh no, he thinks, women and children weren't supposed to be killed too!), he stays his righteous course, imperturbably expecting the lofty result to win out eventually, and somehow justify the bloodshed and chaos.

“You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren’t interested.”
“They don’t want Communism.”
“They want enough rice,” I said. “They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want.”

I loved the clarifying picture of ourselves that we don't get in elementary school curricula or on the weeknight news: that we don't understand what kind of a dangerous game we're playing when we simplify a cause to "communism must not prevail, at all costs." If we wanted to simplify a war we should conclude that we're sending our children to kill other children. That's the only root truth, because we end up betraying all of our other truths in the actual execution of war.

Some of my favorite lines:

“I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation.”

“A Chinese of extreme emaciation came into the room: he seemed to take up no room at all: he was like the piece of grease-proof paper that divides the biscuits in a tin.”

“The lieutenant said, “Have you seen enough?” speaking savagely, almost as though I had been responsible for these deaths: perhaps to the soldier the civilian is the man who employs him to kill, who includes the guilt of murder in the pay-envelope and escapes responsibility.”

“The helmeted Martian face looked wistfully out, down the golden groves among the great humps and arches of porous stone, and the wound of murder ceased to bleed.”

“said wearily, like a tourist glutted with churches.”

Much has been written about the politics rippling through this book, and rightly so. Indeed, they are what make this book essential historical fiction for anyone interested in the geopolitics of the twentieth century. Yet, what struck me often and most emphatically were the passages involving the character and description of Phuong via the attitudes, comments, and thoughts of both Pyle and Fowler.

While I realize that she is a representative of Vietnam, as Fowler and Pyle represent the UK and USA respectively, there is also a good bit of insight into the western attitude of Asian women. What I enjoy most about this author is how he dissects with such precision the darkness of the human heart. I think The End of the Affair was better, but there is still plenty to marvel at in TQA. In this novel, he writes eloquently of the appeal of Asian women, even if much of that appeal is rooted in dull stereotypes. Trust me, I get where these two men are coming from. My wife is native Chinese and during the four years we've built our relationship, I have come to realize how many of those same delusions, beliefs, and fantasies I once held. Reading the passages about Phuong, whether it was Fowler's inability to see her as anything more than a concubine or Pyle's naive assumptions that she is a "delicate flower" for whom he needs to provide a better life back in America, both men fall prey to their western arrogance. Furthermore, they never view Phuong as anything more than a creation of their own fantasies.

The Quiet American is a very good book for many reasons. Given it's relatively short length, it’s one I’d like to re-read again, searching for what may have slipped by the first time. There's much wisdom and beauty in this celebrated work as well as a prescience regarding foreign policy that is still razor sharp today.

Graham Greene's The Quiet American has an outsized reputation owing to its supposed prediction of the consequences of American involvement in Vietnam. I suppose that is natural as the book is set in Vietnam and was published in 1955 just as the conflict between the North and South Vietnamese was heating up, and just after President Eisenhower had sent the first American advisors to the region.

It also has a convenient set of characters just ripe for cutting and pasting into a politically correct Vietnam narrative: Fowler, the sage if cynical old world realist, who supposedly represents realpolitik common sense; Pyle, the Quiet American of the title who is naive and idealistic but also cynical in his own way with his blasé attitude toward what we now call collateral damage, and who serves as the stand-in for the Best and Brightest who would supposedly bungle the American Vietnam adventure; and Phuong, the young Vietnamese woman who represents the people of Vietnam caught between the opposing forces.

It's all too neat, in my view, and way too simplistic. I prefer to read this good but not great novel as a human drama confined to the situation of the characters. At that level it is basically a love triangle story, with Fowler the jaded old goat and Pyle the jiggy virgin battling over Phuong, the sweet, compliant young thing.

Fowler, through whose eyes the novel is written (and therefore whose prejudices we should be on the alert for), wants Phuong because she is the only thing (barely) keeping him from sliding down into the black hole of his world-weariness. He is a more cynical version of Scobie from Greene's The Heart of the Matter. Pyle, meanwhile, seemingly has never left high school, and his attitude toward both Fowler and Phuong is that of the totally sincere nerd in desperate need of a reality check.

Phuong is a cartoon character with little dimensionality. She is only there to be fought over by the two men, and is the novel's weak link. Compared with Helen in The Heart of the Matter or, especially, Sarah in The End of the Affair, Phuong is a wisp, little more really than the "piece of tail" described by the sybaritic Granger. Which is a shame.

I did like the dynamic between the two men, especially Fowler's exasperation over Pyle's bullheaded insistence on staying best buddies with the guy whose girlfriend he stole. But I just wish the girlfriend was more worth fighting over.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene is a novel about Vietnam set in the French colonial period, specifically from September 1951 to February/March, 1952. Thomas Fowler, a British journalist who is Greene’s alter ego, narrates the book. It focuses on the life in Vietnam of Alden Pyle, the Quiet American of the title, who is in Vietnam with the American Economic Mission. Pyle is portrayed initially as young, idealist and naïve, whereas the older foreign hands are portrayed as cynical. Another key character in the novel is a young Vietnamese woman, Phuong, who initially has a relationship with Fowler, but then falls in love with Pyle who loves her as well. Very early in the book Pyle is killed and the story goes back in time to cover his brief time there. As the story unfolds we learn that Pyle is not so innocent after all. He is in Vietnam after becoming convinced by reading the work of York Harding, an “expert” on Vietnam, that a third force can save the country from the French and Communists. Pyle joins with a General The to create this army which engages in terrorist acts that eventually repulse Fowler and he acts to end such actions.

This novel is useful even today, long after the end of the Vietnam wars, as a precautionary tale. Pyle can be seen as an exemplar of American foreign policy-- well intentioned perhaps, but ultimately causing death and destruction with no discernable benefit. I highly recommend it to all Americans concerned about American foreign policy and international actions.

Graham Green left me behind with mixed feelings.

The general outline looks interesting, a love triangle set against the France war in Indo-China, becoming the American war in Vietnam. The personal set against the collective.
At the same time to many details started to irritate me. The way the young and the old – both foreigners – bulls fight over the favors of a young Vietnamese woman. The absolute stereotype way of portraying the Vietnamese, it was a little too much and outdated.
Okay in the end the old bull – Fowler – gets the lady, which reassured me at least ;-) In his – Fowler/ Green - opinion love is a western idea, and observation which leads to one of the most beautiful sentences in the novel:
‘Love’s a western word. We use it for sentimental reasons or to cover up an obsession with one woman.’

Perhaps Graham Green even offers a solution for the way the Americans – or the international community – blunder their way into any international conflict, no matter if it is Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or Iraq. This leads us to the second most beautiful sentence in the novel:
‘Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child?’

So yes we can lend a helping hand, but not bring about solutions, after all we’re only human. Which rounds up the novel pretty well.

Thank you very much mister Green.

Just finished this book, and it continues to replay as a whirlwind in my mind. Rarely has a book made me think, reflect, and ponder as much as this one does. "The Quiet American" demands a lot from the reader: you must be intellectual, curious, and patient; ideally you have some historical background of the colonial situation in French Indo-China, and the machinations that led up to the Vietnam War. Having basic knowledge of the French language will help you out, too. Yes, this book is not for lazy readers. It doesn't give anything away; you have to work for it.

And that's why it's a masterpiece.

The characters are haunting - particularly Phuong, the beautiful object of two men's particular (and divergent) desires, possessed by both yet understood by neither of them. We watch the colonial way of life crumbling, even as a jaded British reporter does his best to write about it without "getting involved." And of course, the young American idealist, whose strict sense of right and wrong clashes so strongly with reality in Vietnam.

This book is absolutely to be treasured and kept on a favorite bookshelf, for generations to read, explore, and ponder. It's a piece of history, but most importantly, it's superb writing and a tense, perfectly-crafted story. Impossible to recommend this enough!

Thomas Fowler was a British war correspondent working in Saigon; his Vietnamese mistress Phuong would be waiting when he returned home from his daily mix of horrors and brutality with the opium pipe which gave him mental release. Alden Pyle, the “quiet American” was sent from Washington on a mission of secrecy – but when things went desperately wrong, Fowler found himself protective of Pyle. But what would happen when Pyle decided to take Phuong for himself?

The Quiet American by Graham Greene roamed back and forth in time, sharing views of the narrator (Fowler) and the protagonist (Pyle) while the triangle of Fowler, Pyle and Phuong was an involved and intricate one. There are many and varied ratings for this book – for me I was underwhelmed I’m afraid.

This short book essentially consists of two elements: a bit of editorializing about colonialism, communism, democracy etc. and about the "national character" of Americans, the British and the French (dressed as dialogue between the various characters standing in for these nations) and a story of romantic rivalry between an elderly, cynical, selfish (but still somehow humane) Brit with a young, clueless, idealistic (but ultimately dangerous) American over a sweet, child-like Vietnamese girl. The editorializing is not particularly interesting (e.g. Americans are shallow and materialistic and their good intentions end up hurting the people they were supposed to help) and the love story is unimaginative, predictable, and at times downright silly. The beginning and end of the book are decent, but much of the middle felt like a soap opera that was painful to go through. I don't know if the characters felt compelling to readers in 1955, but in 2017 they seem cartoonish and unrelatable. The book is considered politically prophetic (warning against American involvement in Vietnam at a time when this was still a French colonial war) and that may well be, making it a a book of mainly historical interest. There is little of timeless value in it that would make it valuable to read today.

I should have read "The Quiet American" decades ago, in part because I lived through the anti-Vietnam protests at Berkeley. And even more so, because I worked in Stanford's Hoover Archives with the Lansdale papers. Mostly I regret reading books I "should" read. While I'm ambivalent about Graham Greene himself, his troubling book should have been more attentively studied, when it came out in 1955, a clear warning. Greene's narrator Thomas Fowler is treacherously loutish, misogynistic, anti-American, and worst of all unappetizing. Yet: This book was chillingly prescient back then in 1955, clearly so now that the reality behind the story has played itself out. The craftsmanship of the plot and the seemingly plain language make the truth compelling and interesting to read. I've tried to read lots of true stories, just couldn't bear the banality, but Graham Greene knows how to weave a tale. Some writers have a periscope and can see what's really going on above the waves, and in this book Greene's periscope is functioning perfectly. The roots of the American tragedy in Vietnam are plainly revealed, even before it all happened. Like Tolstoy's "War and Peace," this book is equally about the tragedy of war and the mystery of marriage. Sounds weird but he makes it work. There is a Madama Butterfly thing going on. Not my favorite part of the book.

Back to Lansdale. Greene was adamant: Alden Pyle was not based on Lansdale. The manuscript was almost completed by 1952 before Lansdale was officially stationed in Vietnam. Yes, but it came out in 1955 when he was officially there. Lansdale saw himself in Pyle. Lansdale was adamant: Pyle has a pet dog, Lansdale was the only "GI" allowed a pet dog. Pyle is close to General The. Only Lansdale was close to General The. Pyle advocates a "third way." Lansdale was the major proponent of a "third way." Lansdale was famous in intelligence circles (where Greene was a privileged guest) before 1952 for putting down a communist (Huk) rebellion in the Philippines. And the Americans wanted Lansdale to repeat his success in the next hotspot, Vietnam. Greene knew it wouldn't work in Vietnam the way it did in the Philippines. But he denied Lansdale's role in his novel. Most fictional characters are composites from various sources and not literally "true." But Lansdale's contribution to the portrait of Pyle and his role in the early days of the Vietnam engagement are pretty self-evident. There are differences of course. Lansdale survived for one thing. The personality clash between Pyle and Fowler had a real life continuation with the conflict of egos between Lansdale and Greene. Greene may have lied, but his fiction was true.

This book is quietly stunning. Littered with glimpses and literary visions of beauty and thoughts of powerful effect, this work of written art will move and entertain the reader in ways unseen for generations.

By the end of chapter one, we learn that the American in question (Mr Pyle) is found dead with mud in his lungs under the bridge to Dakow. The one true friend of the deceased - who is also the tale's narrator - is questioned by the local police who speak in an almost incomprehensible combination of French / Vietnamese. He is soon released after identifying the body but even that scene, despite its macabre overtones was hugely entertaining and had strong elements of suspense. Pyle's local girlfriend is compelling in her silence. I look forward to learning more of her (as do the local police, I imagine).

So, is the book a whodunit, then? You will have to read it yourself to find out. But is certainly a classic. It is a book for the ages. It is populated by truth, love, vulgarity and brings home the horrors of war and the effect it has on the human condition. I was going to borrow this book from my local library. I weakened at the last minute and purchased it for my e-reader.

It has turned out to be the best eleven dollars I have spent for ages.

Graham Greene was a genius and has demonstrated his full understanding of what it means to be human.

BFN Greggorio!

There is already a fair amount of material about Greene's political views and his Catholic heritage. Despite the fact that Greene minimized the importance of religion and his conversion to Catholicism in his life, he very much defended a society with social justice inspired by the essence of Jesus preachings. Catholic left-wingers (even the self-proclaimed agnostics or secular) have considerable intellectual influence in Europe and Latin America and are in part responsible for the shape of these continents.

"The Quiet American" was built according to this ideology. The bad guy is the ignorant ivy-league educated American. The good guy, the British reporter, is more subtle. Fowler is the British version of Rick in Casablanca. As Rick, he started just as an observer ("My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action--even an opinion is a kind of action.") but eventually the superhero put his mask on to bring justice to the world.

For someone to the right side of Greene's political spectrum, he might have been perceived as naive or romantic, but it is undeniable that Greene was right on target with Pyle. This book was written on the earlier 50s and at that time Greene already sensed the future of Vietnam. I am very careful with visionaries. In this case, hats off to Greene. It is impressive indeed. The truth is that since then, there are no shortage of Pyles around.

I cannot recommend the introduction written by Robert Stone for the Penguin edition more vehemently. Although I suggest reading it after the book.

This was my second experience with Greene, but I read The Human Factor so long ago, I hardly remember it. Greene's life fascinates me and The Quiet American presents the sort of paradoxical feelings and relationships with which I imagine Greene himself would've struggled. Here we encounter Pyle, the American willing to sacrifice Vietnamese lives for what he considers the greater good, that American ideal centered around rational self-interest, and Fowler, the purportedly wise, old world British journalist with his manipulative, self-serving ways, his typical contempt for the American Pyle, and his own eventual willingness to allow an end to justify underhanded means of his own.

Two bits of narration from Fowler that struck me were:

"I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken by the innocent for unselfishness, when all I am doing is sacrificing a small good - in this case postponement in attending to my hurt - for the sake of a far greater good, a peace of mind when I need think only of myself." (105)

"Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel." (175)

In consideration of the above quotes, it follows that Fowler's comfort derives at least partially from that of his friends, and that the plight of one person could equal, in his estimation, the plight of many. And yet Fowler eventually compromises his ideals, conflicted as he is over the decision, and the personal benefit he derives from his own deceitful, hurtful action, along with his justification in furthering what he believes to be a greater good, leave him happy but for a slight tinge of regret which for Fowler, seems to me about as peaceful of a result as he could've attained.

So it seems to me that whatever statement Greene attempted to make in this novel about America's global political goals, he didn't necessarily offer any alternative, in fact showing his individual British anti-hero to fall victim to the same sort of logic behind all that he seems to despise about his nemesis.

Greene's smooth prose, which I thoroughly enjoyed on every page, may have put me over the edge to give this book five stars, but I think he could've dug deeper in developing Pyle and Phuong (the novel's paper thin heroine). A very enjoyable read, though.