The Quiet American (1955)

I've never read any Graham Greene before. I really enjoyed this. His ability to portray characters with very few words is outstanding. The tension is superbly maintained. An interesting period of modern history, that is rarely talked about; the situation in Vietnam before the intervention of the Americans but clearly showing the build up and that philosophy that they always 'interfere' for the greater good despite regrettable casualties along the way. ( )

I found this book interesting in that it deals with the lives of people in Vietnam during the "time of turmoil" back in the 1950s, i.e. when the Vietnamese were trying to expel the French colonials. My phrase, "time of turmoil", sums up what I knew of Vietnam when I was a kid. In third grade, the Weekly Reader informed us that there was "turmoil" in Vietnam. Miss Hill pointed out the location of Vietnam on the world map she used to teach us geography. Of course, now some 60 years later, I know a bit more about the country.

Anyway, it seems that Thomas Fowler is a British journalist who is living in Vietnam. He has taken on a young woman named Phuong. An American named Alden Pyle shows up. Allegedly, Pyle has something to do with commerce and trade. Actually, he is trying to "help" foment trouble in Vietnam. He sees a "third way", rather than the Communists under Ho Chi Minh, or the French colonials, he is trying to find a non-communist, Vietnamese to take over governing the country, and is subsidizing a second-rate war lord.

Well, anyway, Pyle becomes enamored with Phuong and wants her for his own. But he's very honorable and asks Fowler's permission to have her. He says he'll marry her and give her babies. Fowler can't do that because he's married to a woman in England, a woman who makes exile in Vietnam seem preferable to being back home. Something like that.

So, anyway, we have mostly the finaglings of the love triangle to work out, with a bunch of scenes of the "turmoil" in Vietnam as background. [3½*s] ( )

couldn't help reading Pyle with a British accent. ( )

An insightful glimpse at the beginnings of the Vietnam War, contrasting British and American values against a Vietnam background. This is not my favorite Greene, but it's interesting and worth reading. A note: the audiobook has one flaw. The British narrator interprets East-Coast-Boston accent as HEAVY SOUTHERN DRAAAAWWWLLLL. Very distracting. ( )

This is Greene's famous novel that foretells America's coming disaster in Vietnam. Alden Pyle is a young and idealistic American who is sent to Vietnam in the waning days of French colonial rule to ostensibly promote Democracy. However, he runs into a web of intrigue and violence that he is unequipped to handle, and ends up doing much more harm than good.

Graham Greene's alter ego is the journalist Fowler, whose beautiful mistress is the object of jealousy and competition between the two men. The novel is steeped in questions of America's moral ambiguity in its relations with foreign countries, and it's no surprise when things don't end well. ( )