The Quiet American (1955)

What to say? Greene is a favorite, and this novel is one of his best--if you only know the film version starring Michael Caine a few years back, do read the book to appreciate Greene's insight and writing skill. Also to appreciate what a great job the film did adapting the novel.

I reread this for a book club shortly after rereading "The End of the Affair" and I guess now I'm going to have to reread a lot of Greene's novels. ( )

morality and motive, and how the two get muddled (in general, but specifically during times of war - inner and otherwise). this took me a while (in a book this short i thought far too long) to get into, but did enjoy it once it got going. i thought the main point of it took a bit long to get to, and then went by rather quickly. but i really, really liked how he wrapped it up in the last two pages, in a way i didn't really expect.

"That was my first instinct - to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."

"Unlike them, I had reason for thankfulness, for wasn't Phuong alive? Hadn't Phuong been 'warned'? But what I remembered was the torso in the square, the baby on its mother's lap. They had not been warned: they had not been sufficiently important. And if the parade had taken place would they not have been there just the same, out of curiosity, to see the soldiers, and hear the speakers, and throw the flowers? A two-hundred-pound bomb does not discriminate. How many dead colonels justify a child's or trishaw driver's death when you are building a national democratic front?" ( )

This is the first Graham Green I have read and won't be the last. The reader is thrust into the struggle of the French Indochina War (which as its aftermath divided the region into an unstable North and South Vietnam and eventually led to the Vietnam War.) In the Quiet American, a doggedly naïve, innocent and well intentioned American is out of his depth and understanding trying to manipulate a situation he is not equipped to grasp. Greene’s writing is spare and unsentimental.

I would recommend reading this with "Brief Encounters with Che Guevara", a wonderful collection of short stories I read last year by Ben Fountain. Brief Encounters deals predominantly with well-intentioned Americans who find themselves in countries such as Columbia, Sierre Leone, Haiti and Myanmar. They are idealistic and become entangled in situations of political and social conflict in countries they don't understand. ( )

Difficult to explain why I found this a rivetting read, but I did. Manages to depict the horror of war through two men with very different views on the fight. The journalist trying to remain at arms length at all times becomes involved and can't help himself but intervene. ( )

Greene tires me. I'm not sure why. I'm not saying this isn't good, just makes you weary of the world and war. ( )