The Quiet American

A layered and intricate novel that makes you want to weep in its prescience regarding the fate of Viet Nam in the following decades. On the one hand a story of a love triangle and a murder, on the other The Quiet American is a political treatise against the dangers of naive idealism. Both the eponymous American, Pyle, and our British narrator, Fowler, are flawed and troubled individuals, although in wildly different ways. Fowler is an upper-middle class snob whose dislike of the presence of Americans is a metaphor for Europe's reaction to the decline of their empires, rather than an objective critique of American policy in Indochina. Pyle's flaws become glaringly clear throughout the book.

This is a book that will stay with you; I'm show more drawn in to debating with myself how Anti-American Greene really intended the book to be and to what extent such Anti-Americanism is a by-product of Fowler's warped worldview.

It's a short read, and I would definitely recommend it. show less

SO, SO, SO ENTHUSIASTICALLY GOOD verging on the cusp of Great. Greene has a way of crystallizing a huge typhoon of a colonial conflict into the small, petty, whole-hearted machinations of a small trio. He's an exquisitely careful writer who whittles away, perfecting all the small gradations of hurt and cruelty. Granted, the story can feel a touch musty but Greene manages to make you feel a big, gushy, raw pulsating empathy for every single character. That's not easy.

PS: We can have a big, brawling, fisticuffs discussion of Greene's characterization of Phuong! I know sometimes it comes off as queasy and greasy but I will argue! Loudly! That Greene knows exaaaactly what he's doing and her quietness and isolation is a sort of protective show more opaqueness and, what's more, really stems more from his narrator's inability to poke through her defenses. She's impregnable! Not shallow! show less

I was too young to have heard any of the criticism of this book when it was published in 1955 ("Anti-American!"), and I never encountered Greene's work in school later on...yet I somehow feel like I've always known it was controversial in its day, and down-right prophetic in hindsight. Set in Viet Nam during the first Indo-China war, before partition, at the very beginning of America's covert involvement in the country's affairs, it presents a most unlovely picture of the not-so-quiet American, of nearly all the other foreigners caught up in the conflict between French colonialists and independence factions, and many of the local players as well. As it had something of a Hemingway tinge to it in my mind, I never felt inclined to read it show more until two very perceptive LT'ers brought it my attention separately, a couple years apart. I found it compelling on multiple levels, heart-breaking as almost any decent novel set in time of war must be, and disheartening in its confirmation that the human race simply never learns anything from history. Ever.
Reviewed August 2019 show less

The setting, period and publication date for this novel are all fascinating. Greene was interested enough in Vietnam in the early 1950s to write a novel about it, when it was still a French debacle before it became an American one. He was also interested in the American presence that was already making itself felt, the press corps but also the not-so-secret signs of American military support.

The story is fascinating too. Greene did not write long novels but very condensed and full of power. There is a lot to unpack here, about the vagaries and selfishness of love, blind loyalty to ideals at all costs, the turmoil of guilt, and (most interesting to me) the nature of objectivity and how long it can be prolonged under extreme conditions. show more Fowler thinks he is an aloof observer, as his role demands of him, but the pressures of remaining human are ever growing.

Fowler insults Pyle's love for the historical Black Prince, citing the massacre of Limoges. Research since 1955 suggests the massacre was overstated. Innocence sometimes does win in the end. But the definition of innocence, and its intersection with guilt, can and should be debated. show less

This is a wonderful little novel. Set Saigon in the early 1950s when Vietnam was called French Indochina. On one level, this is love triangle told by one of the three. Thomas Fowler is an over-the-hill English newspaper reporter reporting on the guerrilla war the French are fighting against the Vietnamese communists. Fowler has a wife in England, but they have been separated for years, and he has now built a comfortable life for himself in Saigon. Comfortable because he has a young Vietnamese mistress, Phuong, who seems to live only for him.

Things change when a handsome young American, Alden Pyle, arrives in Saigon working for some aid mission through the US embassy. Pyle has been educated at the best Boston universities, and is full of show more energy and ideas on how Vietnam can be saved from the communists. Fowler and Pyle meet and develop a friendship where they discuss their conflicting ideas over the future of Vietnam. But when Pyle meets Phuong, he is stunned at her beauty and disturbed that this young girl has to demean herself by living with the aged Fowler.

Believing that he has fallen in love with Phuong, he tells Fowler that he intends to offer himself to Phuong as her husband, and take her to the United States. Pyle does convince Phuong to leave Fowler and take up with him. But then strange political incidents begin to occur, and it appears that the quiet Pyle has something to do with these changes, and Fowler begins to suspect that there is more to Pyle than he has revealed.

The book ends with an ethical challenge to Fowler: Pyle's life is endanger, and Fowler is in a position to save him, but if he does, he will lose Phuong.

I found the book especially interesting if you view the three characters as representing their countries. Fowler represents the old colonial powers: knowledgeable but tired and a bit corrupt. Pyle represents the Americans: young, bright, energetic and believing Americans have all the answers. And finally, Phuong represents the Vietnamese people: beautiful, exotic and unable to control her own destiny. I highly recommend this book. show less

If I had to choose a word to describe my experience of reading Graham Greene, it would be “refreshing.” As I consider that, it strikes me how oddly such a word sits as a description of a writer whose stories orbit around moral and religious collapse and are filled with characters who can best be called “weary of life.” All of Greene’s characters, it seems, struggle…with faith (or acting on their faith)…with love (or with being genuine in that love)…with compassion (or with trying not to pass off self-interest as compassionate). What makes Greene’s characters so gripping is that these struggles are never peripheral but always essential to their identity. They are souls on the edge of conversion, toeing the line of show more transformation without stepping all the way over. I suspect, in many ways, Greene’s characters are elaborated self-reflections.
There are probably any number of simplistic and unhelpful ways to describe The Quiet American…a “love triangle”…a “story about the Vietnam War”…an “exposé of American interventionism”…but none of these get at what I think is the story’s core. At root, it is a treatise on Doubt and Faith. Aging British reporter Thomas Fowler stands in for Doubt, while young American attaché Alden Pyle stands in for Faith. That Pyle insists on referring to Fowler by his given Christian name, “Thomas” it seems cannot be read in any other way than as an echo of the famed biblical figure of “Doubting Thomas.”
Fowler doubts that resolution to the conflict is even possible, doubts that his life will ever be what he wishes it could be, doubts Pyle’s understanding of the world’s working as untested idealism, doubts Phuong’s ability to fully and truly love. This is the doubt produced by a slow wearing-down of a once vibrant faith. Without saying as much, the story reveals that Pyle is as Fowler once was.
What’s amazing is finesse of Greene’s expression of these complicated emotions. In such a story, it would be easy for the emotions to become caricatures of true feeling, but Greene doesn’t let that happen. (If he had, it would have ruined the story.) Fowler true cares for Pyle and for Phuong but is also jealous and petty and vengeful and selfish. In other words, human.
But—and here I think is the real genius—so is Pyle. Sure, he’s idealistic and introverted and wonder-struck and, well, “quiet” but he is no simple foil for the main anti-hero. He represents an entirely alternative way of viewing and living life that Fowler could access…if only he wasn’t Fowler.
I only know Graham Greene’s story in bits and snatches but from the little I’ve caught, Greene is much nearer Fowler than Pyle, a real-life “doubting Thomas.” The disdain that Fowler expresses in the book for Pyle’s point of view is a touch too personal to be merely literary. Faith and idealism and hope for Fowler/Greene have become the one thing he desperately desires and ultimately cannot have.
So, how is this story of jealous lovers, conspiracy, assassination, and a failed war we’d rather all forget “refreshing”? Because it’s an honest story, one of those fictions that is the more true because it’s “just a story” rather than “what really happened.” Because it brings us to the precipice of Doubt and Faith but refrains from the feather’s touch that would tip us one way or the other. In theological terms, we would say it brings us to the point of “conversion”—that moment where we have to decide to believe or not.
If you’re looking for a story that’s more than a story (while still being a finely-written story), then you will not be disappointed. It is gripping because it speaks openly and forthrightly about the most basic human needs and desires. While being honest about who we really are, there is also a call for us to become better than we are…to move past Fowler’s doubt into Pyle’s faith. And that is a “refreshing” call indeed. show less

In this accomplished literary thriller, Graham Greene pairs the personal and the political more efficiently than any other book I have yet read. Set in French Indochina during the 1950s, we follow the love triangle between Phuong, the innocent young Vietnamese girl and her two admirers, Fowler, the cynical ageing colonial Englishman and Pyle, the 'quiet' young idealistic American of the title. Without meaning to oversimplify what is a cultured book, each of these three characters represents their respective countries and mindsets.

The unintended threat posed by idealism and innocence form Greene's central theme, and his analysis of the United States' well-meaning but naïve intervention in Vietnam is extraordinarily prescient (the book show more was written nearly ten years before the Gulf of Tonkin incident). Not only in the geopolitical aspects of it but in the nature of the ground war ("A war of jungle and mountain and marsh, paddy fields where you wade shoulder-high and the enemy simply disappear, bury their arms, put on peasant dress." (pg. 16)) and in the simultaneous media campaign that would have to be fought ("… have to fight Left-Wing deputies in Paris as well as the troops of Ho Chi Minh" (pg. 56)), Greene's book was a Cassandra-like warning to American policymakers.

But this prescience does not come, of course, from prophecy or divine revelation, but from a hard-nosed assessment of the geopolitical situation in the country from one who had been there and experienced it first-hand. I feel hugely privileged to read a book by someone who had such a tight grip both on the subject matter he dealt with and on the writing talent he deployed. For aside from its timeless geopolitical relativism, the book is also a fine thriller. The plot retains some of its mystery and suspense – which is remarkable considering that the book's non-chronological order means we know some of what happens quite early on – and the book skips along well despite its detail. It is elegant and accomplished but with a sideline of cynicism and dark wit, like inviting a raconteur mandarin to a dinner at a fine restaurant. show less