The Quiet American [Hardcover]

Graham Greene (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 249 pages
• Publisher: A Modern Library Book; First Modern Library Edition edition (1967)
• ASIN: B000I1RBJY
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,312,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible, complete treatment of Greene's Indochina, October 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Quiet American (Critical Library, Viking) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Viking Critical Library's version of Graham Greene's "The Quiet American" is an indispensible text for full appreciation of Greene's perceptions of Indochina, France's war there, and America's budding involvement. The editor, John C. Pratt carefully selects criticism of Greene's TQA that creates a complete and rich discourse on Greene's life and writings that serves as a backdrop to his novel. Added to that backdrop are histories, such as Frank Futrell's thirteen-page explanation of how the United States became involved in Vietnam, and official documents from the State Department, to interviews with former South Vietnamese generals and Ho Chi Minh.

TQA itself a wonderful book that,to an American, probes at our treasured notion high-minded idealism and our "can-do" spirit that has served us well at times and not so well at others. Greene's symbolism is telling and insightful, given that it was published well before the United States' full-blown involvement in that region of the world. While Greene relates many things that he experienced or felt in Indochina as a journalist, the book is not solely a "war novel". TQA, like many of Greene's books, takes the readers on the author's journey of personal morality and matters religious.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intriguing piece, April 17, 2001

By 

J. Rabideau (Stuck in the Loser State) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Quiet American (Critical Library, Viking) (Mass Market Paperback)

(This review refers to the Viking Critical Library edition, edited by John Clark Pratt)

Graham Greene's novel of Pyle, the "quiet American", employed by a barely-disguised fronting organisation of the CIA, narrated by Fowler, a British journalist who comes across by turns as weary and worldly, is immensely interesting. In it, Greene offers up perhaps his most incisive and insightful political commentary, treating the danger of allowing people guided solely by ideology and schools of academic thought to be responsible for intelligence fieldwork. Pyle, a graduate of Harvard, goes into Indochina, believing intensely in the necessity of enabling a "third column", General The's men, and employing them as an American proxy force.

Whether or not Pyle himself sees the implicit incompatibility of this abstract idea and reality is never quite clear: certainly Pyle plays witness to the destruction that his attempts to mobilise a third column bring about. He is not subject, though, to the gross revulsion at the wanton destruction of life that Fowler is. Equally certainly, Pyle's political views cost him his life: open to question, still, is whether or not Pyle himself was ever conscious of his fallacies, or if he remains blinded throughout. Rather than being a novel of a man's moral revelations, or telling of his relationship with the Divine, "The Quiet American" is far more a parable.

Greene's structure, his combined simplicity and complexity, and the thematic relevance of this novel, render it a deserving read. Additionally, the chronologies and commentaries upon foreign involvement in Indochina/Vietnam are both valuable and blessedly concise, and the collected reviews and critcal commentaries upon the novel serve as valuable tool for understanding.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some Politicians Should Have Read this book Years ago!, February 25, 2001

By 

Shogun Len "tokieyasu" (Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Quiet American (Critical Library, Viking) (Mass Market Paperback)

In preparing for my summer trip to Vietnam a number of people suggested reading The Quiet American. The story also caught my interest when I heard film crews are currently in Vietnam shooting a remake of the film. A remake which will hopefully be more loyal to the book and its message unlike the earlier version.

Talk about foreshadowing. Greene writes and makes a strong case against American involvement in Vietnam. And he makes this case back in the 1950's towards the end of French involvement in Indochina.

The book is well written and easy to read. The story is not dated at all. I only wish President Kennedy and LBJ and their advisors had looked at this book... the books message was all too true.

The Viking critical edition comes with some awesome extra stuff including works about and by Greene, great primary sources on Vietnam, and some great background info.

As a movie buff, I enjoyed some of the writings that compared the book and the movie.

This is a book that deserves the title of classic.