Customer Reviews

The Quiet American

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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.

(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.

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.

Graham Greene spent four springs of his life as a journalist in Indochina and this fine, intelligent novel is an account of his experiences there. It's also a disturbing prophecy of the awful mess that was to be American involvement in Vietnam. It's also a study of friendship and betrayal, of youthful American idealism and mature British jadedness,of indifference and commitment. It is written in spare, elegant prose and the gaunt style has a journalistic immediacy that perfectly fits the subject and the characters without diminishing the emotional complexity.It is a major novel by one of the century's major writers and it hasn't dated; on the contrary,it has a disturbing contemporary feel.

I was extremely fortunate last week to meet Michael Caine, the star of Miramax's new movie of The Quiet American. Much to my surprise and delight, Sir Michael told me that he had found my edition "invaluable" during the filming. He had other nice comments as well about the background material and letters. The film has received some very good reviews at pre-screenings and will be in theatres in early February, 2003.

One of the most amazing things that jumped out at me about Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American," was the copyright date. 1955. How many years BEFORE America found itself mired in the nightmare of the Vietnam War?
Why didn't anyone in power or policy see the warning in this novel?

I'm still reading through all the extra material but I feel confident enough about the book itself and what I have read that I can definitely give this book five stars (the novel is over a third of this book).

Alden Pyle, Greene's "quiet American," clearly represents America in this cruel world. He's young, strong, sure of his beliefs and willing to act on his own convictions--but in this world of deceit and corruption, he doesn't have a chance. And quite a few people have said the same thing about America in Vietnam.

Beyond the deeper meaning of the setting and story (more powerful since it was written BEFORE the USA got stuck in Nam), the characters really make for some fiction. Pyle, the clear-eyed Yank looking to do good in Indo-China, runs into the narrator Fowler, an opium-smoking old Brit journalist who's seen too much and forgot how to care about anything--except the Vietnamese woman who comes between them.

At the end of the 1970s, "Apocalypse Now" got a lot of kudos for its dark humor ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning!") but Greene had written along those lines in the 1950s: Fowler rides along on a bomb run and, after a village is blown to bits, the pilot points out the beautiful sunset on a nearby river.

Up to this point, my favorite Greene novel had been "The End of the Affair," but now it's "The Quiet American." I also want to see the Michael Caine movie they made a couple years back.

Greene's The Quiet American is powerful and moving and anyone who desires to better understand the mindset of American policymakers at the outset of the United States' deepened involvement in Indochina. Greene writes with the candor and insight of a seasoned overseas correspondant and shows the ideals and idealism that propelled Vietnamese and American interests to tragically clash. Greene portrays the characters in the novel in a manner in which they are complex and very real and not soundbytes and stereotypes that confront us in other books and in the current news media.

A valuable bonus of the Viking Critical Library edition are the essays at the end of the book that provide additional detail to Greene's story. In addition to reviews of the book in the context of US diplomacy, espionage and counterinsurgency, of particular worth is the brief history of American military involvement in the late 1950s/early 1960s in Indochina by Frank Futrell, former Historian of the Air Force. Futrell is knowledgeable and a prolific yet very readable writer, and his 14-page essay at the end of the book serves as a stark epilogue to the novel.

When this was published in the 50's, very few people had any idea of the depth of involvement of the U.S. Gov't in other countries' political processes/revolutions. Today, the covert operations and imperialist conceits of Greene's novel read, though much more interestingly written, much like so many newspaper stories of fact written since. Few novelists can compare to Greene; in weaving webs of bureaucratic and personal deception, and showing the sad effect on humanity.

On second reading 40-plus years after original publication, Graham Greene's short and masterful novel "The Quiet American" seems profound and prophetic. (To many of us it seemed arrogant, stereotyped and anti-American in 1957). Alden Pyle, the quiet American,has been said by Greene biographers to be a takeoff of Edwin Lansdale, the model for William Lederer's "The Ugly American," a favorable account of America in Asia written contemporaneous with Greene's novel. Today Alden Pyle could be seen as a character based on the Robert McNamara, Maxwell Taylor, Henry Cabot Lodge or Robert Komer of the 1960s. Greene's moral vision is as keen here as in any of his novels.

If you plan to buy this book by all means get this edition. The novel is very readable and Greene is a real wordsmith. The thing is this edition has news articles by the author about Indochina,
critical reviews (the good and the bad), interviews with Ho Chi Minh and American generals, a plot summary of the film and documents about the war. It also has topics for discussion or school papers. The text is less than 200 pages and readable so there is time to read the additional material. This book has the last chapter first such that you know the final result and the rest is leading up to the events in the first chapter. It is a gimmick but it works. I had to re-read the first chapter when I finished; couldn't help it. Find this edition, Viking Critical Library.