The Quiet American by Graham Greene

(Book Review)

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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