Why
I Read This Book/ My History With Graham Greene
Like
George Orwell, Graham Greene is another one of those writers that I’ve
read a little of, and have always been meaning to read more of, but never quite
seem to get around to it.
My
first experience with Graham Greene was The
Power and the Glory, which was assigned reading for a college literature
class I took way back in my undergraduate days. I read This Gun for Hire back in 2006, and reviewed it on this blog.
And I count The Third Man as
one of my favorite films of all time.
(In addition to his novels, Graham Greene did some work for Hollywood, and he wrote the screenplay for The Third Man.)
I’ve
always been meaning to read more Graham Greene, and so I was probably due to
get around to The Quiet American sooner
or later. But since I’m currently living in Cambodia, and The Quiet American
seems to be required reading for everyone passing through former French
Indochina, I decided I might as well read it sooner rather than later. (Among the expat community, The Quiet American is one of those books
everyone over here seems to have read.)
I
have seen the movie of The Quiet American
(W), back when it first came out in 2002, but as that was some years
ago now, and as the memory of the movie has mostly faded from my memory, (I
couldn’t even remember how the movie ended), I was able to enjoy this book as a
mostly new experience.
The
Review
Graham
Greene is one of those rarities: a classic author who’s actually fun to read.
Often
when I’m reading through the classics, I’m doing so with a sense of obligation,
rather than enjoyment. But Graham Greene
is an exception. Who else can write readable
international spy stories, and still get into the canon of respectable
literature? It’s perfect for a
middle-brow intellectual like me—someone who can’t handle Joyce or T.S. Elliot,
but can read Graham Greene all day long.
The Quiet American is very
readable. And, like much of Graham
Greene’s stuff, the plot involves around international intrigue.
Greene
also shows considerable skill in bringing to life the world of 1950s French
Indochina: I got immersed in the world of opium pipes, cynical foreign
reporters drinking cocktails at European clubs, the French soldiers playing Quatre Cent Vingt-et-un at the cafes,
the heat and the mosquitoes, and the beautiful women walking by. (Even though I’m currently living in the
region, and know full well that life here is as dull and boring as anywhere
else in the world, I still got swept up in the whole exoticism of it. There’s a tendency to imagine that older
times must have been more glamorous and exotic than our own time, and I
imagined this about the 1950s in Southeast Asia.)
So,
as far as creating an atmosphere, and readability, I give this book full marks.
My
big complaint with this book was the complete lack of subtlety.
The
book revolves around the relationship between British reporter Fowler, and
American State Department Official Pyle.
Pyle represents everything that is wrong about the attitude of the
Americans towards Southeast Asia. He’s read lots of books about the region, and
he thinks he understands what’s going on and can help the people, but he doesn’t
really understand the realities on the ground, and his attempts to get involved
in Vietnam’s
politics ends up just creating misery for the people there.
As
an indictment of U.S. policy
in Southeast Asia, it’s spot on. But as literature, it’s problematic. The character of Pyle is never allowed to
evolve into a real person. He’s just a
walking cliché. And Graham Greene is always emphasizing how honest, earnest, and completely naïve Pyle is, in a way that really hits the reader over the head. (It reminded me a bit of an Ayn Rand novel,where all the characters aren’t real people, but just symbols of different ideas. And I don’t mean that
comparison as a compliment to Graham Greene.)
Often,
this over-the-top portrayal of Pyle would pull me straight out of the story,
and prevent me from getting immersed in the exotic world that Graham Greene had
created.
There
is, for example, one scene where Fowler, as an embedded reporter with a French
army unit up in North
Vietnam, is sleeping in an abandoned barn in
the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden Pyle walks into the barn. It turned out Pyle had travelled all the way
up from the South, somehow tracked down Fowler’s unit and found them in the
barn, all because Pyle just wanted to talk to Fowler about a girl. It was nothing that could have ever happened
in real life, and it pulled me right out of the story and reminded me very
clearly that these characters were not real people and that I was just reading
a fictional novel. After that, I had
trouble taking any of the characters or situations seriously again.
All
that being said, although the book lacks any subtlety, it is a very eerily
accurate prediction of what American involvement in Vietnam would look like. (The Englishman Fowler keeps trying to make
Pyle realize that the people in Vietnam just want to be left alone to live in peace, but Pyle
keeps talking about “martyrs for democracy”, and is remarkably untroubled by
the civilian casualties.) This book was
published all the way back in 1955, so Graham Greene had a lot of foresight to
recognize what is now universally acknowledged with hindsight—American involvement in Vietnam would be a disaster.
[The
book was published in 1955, after Dien Bien Phu, but was written
when the French War in Indochina was still
ongoing. Although the French were doing
the actual fighting during that time, the American government was funding much
of the war, and providing aid, expertise, and probably (as Graham Greene
imagines) taking an active but covert role in influencing South Vietnamese
politics. According to Wikipedia
(W), Graham Greene based the character of Pyle on an actual American
official who once gave him a lecture about a third force in Vietnam. At that time, the fighting was dominated by
the French colonialists on one hand, and the Vietnamese communists on the
other, but the American officials imagined there was a third force in Vietnam—a
grass roots prodemocracy movement, which wasn’t yet visible, but could emerge
with the proper encouragement. Like his
real life counterpart, the character of Pyle talks incessantly about the
potential of this “third force”. Graham
Greene was smart enough to realize way back in 1955 that this “third force” was
purely a figment of the American State Department’s imagination.]
Religion
Graham
Greene is famous as a Roman Catholic writer, and many of his books contain a
religious emphasis.
I
consider myself skeptical of religion, but I didn’t object to any of the
discussion in The Quiet American. Instead of being dogmatic about religion,
Graham Greene simply raises questions about religion without providing the
answers. And although I suspect the
answer that Graham Greene is sympathetic to might be different than the answer
I would arrive at, I didn’t object to the questions being raised.
In
fact, had I not known Graham Greene was Catholic, I would never have guessed it
from the book itself. The kind of
probing questions could just have easily been asked by an agnostic.
However,
as with the politics, the religious themes of the book did boarder on being too
much. The first couple times the
question of God came up, I didn’t have any problems with it. Halfway through the book, though, I got a
little bit sick of it.
Vietnamese
Politics
I took a
course on the Vietnam War back in my college days. One of the things I remember from that course
was that although the Americans viewed the Vietnamese political situation as
simply communists versus democrats, in reality there were a lot of different groups
vying for control in South Vietnam—various nationalist armies, armed religious
groups, Buddhist armies, and ambitious independent generals.
All
of this is shown very clearly in The
Quiet American.
Are
Americans Quiet?
So the
whole premise behind the title, The Quiet
American, is that it’s being used somewhat ironically. The assumption is that it’s unusual to
describe an American as quiet, because Americans have a reputation for being
the opposite.
And
if you couldn’t pick that up from the title alone, Graham Greene hits you over
the head with it in the text of the actual book. “He’s a
good chap in his way. Serious. Not one
of those noisy bastards at the Continental.
A quiet American,” I summed him precisely up as I might have said, ‘a
blue lizard’, ‘a white elephant.’ “ (p.
17)
Living
as an expatriate abroad, I run into this assumption all the time. And if you’ll excuse the digression here, I’m
going to take a few minutes to try to set the record straight.
I
don’t know how this stereotype of loud Americans got started, but it is not
true. Or at the very least, if we
Americans are loud, we’re not the only offenders by far. Of all the loud obnoxious foreigners,
Americans are pretty low down the list.
Here
in Southeast Asia, the loudest most obnoxious
expatriates have got to be the Russians.
The Russians are followed by drunk European backpackers, followed by
Israeli backpackers. Then among the
English speaking countries, the Australians are much louder and more obnoxious
than Americans.
When
I used to live in Japan,
anytime a foreigner ended up causing trouble for being drunk and obnoxious, it
was invariably an Australian. (See
examples HERE, HERE and HERE).
Also,
having lived in Australia
for a year, I can attest that they’re not a quiet people in their home country
either.
And
in Cambodia in Southeast Asia, loud drunk Australian backpackers in
muscle shirts are a very common sight.
The
British aren’t quite as bad as the Australians.
And actually most British people are
pretty quiet, but I’ve known some loud ones in my time. Also Britain
has much more of a drinking culture than America does, and the alcohol does
cause them to sometimes noisy displays of drunkenness.
We
Americans, dare I say it, are actually quite quiet and demur and respectful
when we travel abroad compared to the citizens of Oceania and Europe. (This may somewhat be due to the fact that we
know much of the rest of the world hates us, so we try to be on our best
behavior when abroad.)
And
yet, you would not believe how often an Australian will make a comment to me
about loud Americans, without any sense of shame or irony.
[When
discussing this book with my Scottish friend, I told him, “You know,
I’ve got to say it, we Americans actually aren’t all that loud. Australians are much worse.”
“Well
of course Australians are much worse,” my Scottish friend said. “But that’s not saying much. You might as well say Australians are more
sunburned than Americans. Australians
are the worse possible comparison you could make.”
“But
half the time it’s Australians who are the ones complaining about loud
Americans,” I said.
(Which
is true. I get a fair amount of flack
from Australians for the “loud American” stereotype. The other half of the time it’s the
British. If the British complain about
loud Americans, I usually let it go.
When Australians try to give me grief for the same thing, I usually try
to make a protest. Of course, the
comments aren’t always said to me in a confrontational manner. Some of the time the comments are made half
in jest, and much of the time the comments are expressing surprise that I don’t
fit the stereotype of a loud American.
But I still think Australians have no business making these comments.)
“Yeah,
Australians have no business complaining about loud Americans,” my friend
agreed. “Of course you Americans are
very arrogant.”
“Yeah,
I’ll give you that one.”
“I
mean you’re very sure of yourselves.”
“Yeah,
I’ll give you that as well.”
“And
you can be very ignorant.”
“Well,
I’ll give you all the rest of it. We’re
arrogant, and ignorant, and overly sure of ourselves. But we aren’t particularly loud.”
At
last, my Scottish friend conceded. “No,
you’re not loud,” he said. “In fact,
none of the Americans I’ve met have ever been loud. They’re mostly quiet and usually polite.”]
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2 comments:
It'd be cool to see the '02 movie again. As I recall it, Brendan Fraser played Pyle as someone who spoke the nationalist cant, but entirely without emotional investment, as if he didn't really care if it was right or wrong. Michael Caine's Fowler took it all in, and once the girl's affections were at risk, it became an issue of which character was more cynical and effectively manipulative.
It is a little odd that this book has had the longevity it's enjoyed. Hardly Greene's best work, as you point out. I'd say The Comedians tackles similar issues more successfully, but I should probably take it off the shelf and give it another read before committing. Anyway, I suspect its popularity has to do with the title, which, like The Ugly American gives readers with sympathies so inclined a wide open invitation to come on in and revel.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll try and track down The Comedians one of these days.
If I had to guess, I'd say the longevity of this book was due to the trauma of the Vietnam War. Since this book was first published in 1955, for a period of about 20 years since it's publication it must have looked about more and more prophetic every year. Some books that can tap into current issues enjoy popularity disproportionate to their literary merit. And I'm sure a catchy title doesn't hurt.
Just looked up the Ugly American just now. That was also published back in the 1950s, I find. which makes it also very prescient.
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