Book Review: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
A Vietnam novel that predicted the Vietnam War.
William Heinemann London, 1955, 180 pages
Alden Pyle, an idealistic young American, is sent to Vietnam to promote democracy amidst the intrigue and violence of the French war with the Vietminh, while his friend, Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, looks on.
Fowler's mistress, a beautiful native girl, creates a catalyst for jealousy and competition between the men and a cultural clash resulting in bloodshed and deep misgivings.
Written in 1955, prior to the Vietnam conflict, The Quiet American foreshadows the events leading up to the Vietnam War. Questions surrounding the moral ambiguity of the involvement of the United States in foreign countries are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.
The Quiet American is a cynical novel written by a cynical author who was known as a very British and very Catholic writer. The protagonist, Thomas Fowler, is a British journalist covering the French Indochina War in the 1950s. Fowler is the sort of lapsed Catholic that such Catholic writers are fond of: he's a bit of a reprobate who claims not to really believe in anything, but you know those nuns are still rapping his knuckles in his dreams.
Fowler has a wife back home, from whom he is separated (she won't grant him a divorce, because she is a very unlapsed Catholic), an opium habit, and a mistress in Saigon named Phuong. Fowler loves Phuong, but Phuong's older sister is trying to set her up with a better (i.e., more prosperous) match.
He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.
Enter Alden Pyle, the "quiet American." Pyle is a clueless, almost offensively ingenuous twit who is full of ideas he read about in his Ivy League schools about how to rid the Vietnamese of French colonialism without falling to communism. Pyle, working for the OSS, is going to arm a "third force" that will bring freedom and democracy to these poor ignorant peasants.
He's so sincere about it. He's equally sincere when he falls in love with Phuong and wants to marry her.
This novel is both a love triangle and a prescient warning about Americans epically fucking up in Vietnam, written a few years before Americans started epically fucking up in Vietnam. Graham Greene was apparently inspired to write this book on a jeep ride with an American who was spouting the kind of rhetoric about a "third force" that Alden Pyle repeats.
The story is simple but layered, and Greene subtly builds up the interpersonal and political tension at the same time. It would be easy to read Phuong as just an inscrutable Oriental of the sort that white dudes in the 50s wrote about, a sex object lacking agency, yet while she has few lines and both Pyle and Fowler frequently remark on their inability to really know what she's thinking, the reader can infer a great deal in her quiet maneuvers to secure a future for herself, unencumbered by the sentimentality of the two men competing for her affections.
"They were only war victims," he said. "It’s unfortunate, but you can’t always hit the mark. Anyway, they died for a just cause."
The love triangle isn't the real story, though it's the framing device that keeps Fowler and Pyle in conflict. It's about Fowler gradually becoming aware of what Pyle is up to, and having to decide if he can stay neutral. The fact that the guy who is, with the best and most sincere of intentions, engineering a bloodbath also happens to be the guy who's stealing his girl is not missed by either Fowler or the reader.
This was a taut little novel that didn't feel dated despite its age. It may have become a modern classic in large part because Greene so accurately foretold what bumbling American interventionism in Vietnam would wreak, but you can appreciate it on many levels, as a book about a morally gray protagonist wrestling with his conscience, as a tragic love story, as a political novel that was perfect for its time.
There have been two movie versions made.
The Quiet American (1958)
The 1958 film was actually filmed in Vietnam, but cast an Italian actress in the role of Phuong. Decorated war hero Audie Murphy played Alden Pyle, and the book's anti-war message was turned into a pro-America, anti-communism story.
Dig this trailer!
"Caught in the shadow world of the Orient!"
"Torn between the man who owned her, and the stranger who loved her!"
The Quiet American (2002)
The 2002 version was more faithful to the book. It starred Brendan Fraser and Michael Caine, and an actual Vietnamese actress as Phuong. Michael Caine received an Oscar nomination, though it got a limited release because its "anti-American" message did not play well immediately after 9/11.
My complete list of book reviews.
William Heinemann London, 1955, 180 pages
Alden Pyle, an idealistic young American, is sent to Vietnam to promote democracy amidst the intrigue and violence of the French war with the Vietminh, while his friend, Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, looks on.
Fowler's mistress, a beautiful native girl, creates a catalyst for jealousy and competition between the men and a cultural clash resulting in bloodshed and deep misgivings.
Written in 1955, prior to the Vietnam conflict, The Quiet American foreshadows the events leading up to the Vietnam War. Questions surrounding the moral ambiguity of the involvement of the United States in foreign countries are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.
The Quiet American is a cynical novel written by a cynical author who was known as a very British and very Catholic writer. The protagonist, Thomas Fowler, is a British journalist covering the French Indochina War in the 1950s. Fowler is the sort of lapsed Catholic that such Catholic writers are fond of: he's a bit of a reprobate who claims not to really believe in anything, but you know those nuns are still rapping his knuckles in his dreams.
Fowler has a wife back home, from whom he is separated (she won't grant him a divorce, because she is a very unlapsed Catholic), an opium habit, and a mistress in Saigon named Phuong. Fowler loves Phuong, but Phuong's older sister is trying to set her up with a better (i.e., more prosperous) match.
He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.
Enter Alden Pyle, the "quiet American." Pyle is a clueless, almost offensively ingenuous twit who is full of ideas he read about in his Ivy League schools about how to rid the Vietnamese of French colonialism without falling to communism. Pyle, working for the OSS, is going to arm a "third force" that will bring freedom and democracy to these poor ignorant peasants.
He's so sincere about it. He's equally sincere when he falls in love with Phuong and wants to marry her.
This novel is both a love triangle and a prescient warning about Americans epically fucking up in Vietnam, written a few years before Americans started epically fucking up in Vietnam. Graham Greene was apparently inspired to write this book on a jeep ride with an American who was spouting the kind of rhetoric about a "third force" that Alden Pyle repeats.
The story is simple but layered, and Greene subtly builds up the interpersonal and political tension at the same time. It would be easy to read Phuong as just an inscrutable Oriental of the sort that white dudes in the 50s wrote about, a sex object lacking agency, yet while she has few lines and both Pyle and Fowler frequently remark on their inability to really know what she's thinking, the reader can infer a great deal in her quiet maneuvers to secure a future for herself, unencumbered by the sentimentality of the two men competing for her affections.
"They were only war victims," he said. "It’s unfortunate, but you can’t always hit the mark. Anyway, they died for a just cause."
The love triangle isn't the real story, though it's the framing device that keeps Fowler and Pyle in conflict. It's about Fowler gradually becoming aware of what Pyle is up to, and having to decide if he can stay neutral. The fact that the guy who is, with the best and most sincere of intentions, engineering a bloodbath also happens to be the guy who's stealing his girl is not missed by either Fowler or the reader.
This was a taut little novel that didn't feel dated despite its age. It may have become a modern classic in large part because Greene so accurately foretold what bumbling American interventionism in Vietnam would wreak, but you can appreciate it on many levels, as a book about a morally gray protagonist wrestling with his conscience, as a tragic love story, as a political novel that was perfect for its time.
There have been two movie versions made.
The Quiet American (1958)
The 1958 film was actually filmed in Vietnam, but cast an Italian actress in the role of Phuong. Decorated war hero Audie Murphy played Alden Pyle, and the book's anti-war message was turned into a pro-America, anti-communism story.
Dig this trailer!
"Caught in the shadow world of the Orient!"
"Torn between the man who owned her, and the stranger who loved her!"
Click to viewThe Quiet American (2002)
The 2002 version was more faithful to the book. It starred Brendan Fraser and Michael Caine, and an actual Vietnamese actress as Phuong. Michael Caine received an Oscar nomination, though it got a limited release because its "anti-American" message did not play well immediately after 9/11.
My complete list of book reviews.