Fiction – paperback; Vintage Classics; 208 pages; 2004. Who doesn’t love a Graham Greene novel? The Quiet American, first published in 1955, is regarded as his political masterpiece. Much has been written about it, so I’m reluctant to rehash...
Fiction – paperback; Vintage Classics; 208 pages; 2004.
Who doesn’t love a Graham Greene novel?
The Quiet American, first published in 1955, is regarded as his political masterpiece. Much has been written about it, so I’m reluctant to rehash what everyone already knows. But I want to point out how effortless it is to read and how much I enjoyed the way it shows how individual decisions and actions can play out across a larger political canvas.
It’s one of those rare literary novels where the importance of character and the importance of plot are given almost equal weight. The plot, which seems straightforward, is anything but: it’s layered with deception and betrayal. Which is how you could also describe the morally flawed characters at its core.
Saigon friendship
Set in the 1950s, against the backdrop of the French Indochina war, The Quiet American tells the story of a jaded English journalist, Thomas Fowler, and a much younger idealistic American undercover agent, Alden Pyle, who befriend each other in Saigon. The narrative centres on their entangled relationship with Phuong, an 18-year-old Vietnamese woman, who is Fowler’s live-in lover and Pyle’s intended bride.
The story, said to be based on Greene’s own experiences, explores American foreign policy and the consequences of interventionism which played such a pivotal role in the ensuing Vietnam War.
Worldly-wise 50-something Fowler, who narrates the story in a detached and cynical voice, serves as a foil to Pyle’s youth and naive optimism. He is not immediately likeable and is a liar, but he has a keen understanding of the political machinations involved in war and is interested in what makes people tick, all good qualities for a war correspondent.
I was a correspondent: I thought in headlines. ‘American official murdered in Saigon.’ (p10)
Pyle, on the other hand, is idealistic, opportunistic and the titular “quiet American”. He believes the answer to Vietnam’s power struggle lies in a political concept known as the “Third Force”, a neutral position that is neither aligned with the communist North Vietnamese nor the anti-communist South Vietnamese.
Fowler does not agree with this idea. But while the pair possess conflicting worldviews, they get along, socialise with one another and, at one point, Pyle is credited with saving Fowler’s life.
Yet Pyle is competing for the same woman’s love. He goes out of his way to track Fowler down in the field so that he can confess that he loves Phuong and wants to take her back to the US to marry her. It is perhaps reflective of the times and attitudes that Phuong’s wishes never come into it.
Unembellished writing
As ever, Greene’s writing is clear and concise. Using just a few carefully chosen words, he paints vivid pictures:
The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. (page 38)
Similarly, he evokes unsentimental portrayals of people and understands their weaknesses and foibles:
Where other men carry their pride like a skin-disease on the surface, sensitive to the least touch, his pride was deeply hidden, and reduced to the smallest proportion possible, I think, for any human being. (p100)
Throughout, the tone of voice is detached and the characters are carefully crafted. The non-chronological narrative zips along and can be enjoyed for its own sake, but scratch deeper and there is so much going on.
Not only is The Quiet American about the human cost of war, but it raises pertinent questions about personal morality, religion, foreign intervention and colonialism.
It has been filmed twice — in 1958 and 2002 — adapted for radio, and named on the BBC’s list of 100 most inspiring novels.
‘The Quiet American’, by Graham Greene, first published in 1955, is listed in Peter Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, where it is described as an “allegory for the end of paternalistic European colonialism in Indochina and the beginning of zealous American imperialism”. It adds that the novel “expands from this central allegory to offer a study of masculinity and responsibility”.