The Quiet American

by Graham Greene

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3148 ratings, 4.00 average rating, 294 reviews (more data...)

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published

August 31st 2004 (first published 1955) by Penguin Classics

binding

Paperback, 208 pages

characters

Thomas Fowler, Alden Pyle, Phuong, Vigot

isbn

0143039024 (isbn13: 9780143039020)

description

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious “Third Force...more

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Best Literature About the Vietnam War

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Alger rated it:

09/08/07

Read in October, 2004

recommends it for: The intelligent and the aware

Graham Greene is an artist of sarcasm and loathful protagonists. 'The Quiet American' follows in that tradition, but delves into what that means and turns the whole thing on its head. The main character, Fowler, is as foul as his name implies; swearing, drinking, smoking opium, and cheating on his wife with a nubile young Vietnamese girl. Conversely , we are shown the eponymous 'Quiet American', Pyle, who is quiet in that he is sweet, naive, doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, doesn't forni...more

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Adam rated it:

(review of isbn 0140185003)

02/27/08

I don’t know why Greene divides his books into “entertainments” and “novels”, when the novels are so entertaining. But I guess some are more light weight and only meant to entertain, while this book is packed with ideas. Mixing an absurd spy farce, a cynical “love” story, and prophecy of U.S. involvement in Vietnam which was set and written ten years before the hoi polloi of America could probably find Vietnam on a map. Filled with demented nuggets of Greene thought such as “Inno...more

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Elizabeth rated it:

(review of isbn 0140185003)

11/14/08

Read in November, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

having finished the book now, I shall add to the review below that about mid-way thru I went from feeling quite lukewarm about this book to loving it--to feeling so deeply sympathetic for the middle-aged, wounded and selfish narrator who is so *determined* not to get involved, and how broken his involvement leaves him in heart and body, even though he gets everything he wants at the end: the divorce, the girl, the job, the death of his rival--which he also gets away with, having engineered it hi...more having finished the book now, I shall add to the review below that about mid-way thru I went from feeling quite lukewarm about this book to loving it--to feeling so deeply sympathetic for the middle-aged, wounded and selfish narrator who is so *determined* not to get involved, and how broken his involvement leaves him in heart and body, even though he gets everything he wants at the end: the divorce, the girl, the job, the death of his rival--which he also gets away with, having engineered it himself--and yet, you know, he cares too much about the underhanded way he has achieved all these things to ever be happy with them. And even though you don't feel sorry for the slimedog of a rival (well, *I* don't, thank you very much, but maybe my sympathies were twisted to start with), you still know that the narrator won't be able to live with the guilt.

I wonder what makes me want to de-personalize these characters by not using their names? some kind of distancing technique?

Anyway, it's a great book.

---------------
It took me a while to get into... I was unfairly prejudiced against it thinking, OH GOD, another western journalist in love with a third world sweetheart in a country at war. But I like Graham Greene and of course this predates all the other "western journalist in love" books that I've read recently, and I'd never read a book about Vietnam which also made me keep going, and now I'm halfway thru and suddenly it's just pushing ALL my buttons: two men scrapping over the same girl, lying in a pool of freezing water at the end of their strength in a no man's land where they have no business in a war that isn't theirs, one of them with a broken leg and my sympathy as the jealous and jilted narrator, and the other with the moral upper hand AND youth AND the girl... it's fabulous. Greene is such a subtle writer; he doesn't use italics or exclamation points or, god forbid, ADVERBS (ahem), so you sort of have to extract the *intensity* of the situation by whispering everything aloud as you read to give it emphasis... like a script.

Well, I haven't finished it but you do have an idea of the end before you start, as it's told in flashback. Yet I've no idea how it will get there from here.

I'm loving it so much I had to write about it NOW....less

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Richard rated it:

03/19/08

Read in August, 2007

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

The Quiet American really is the best of Graham Greene’s novels, despite “The Power and the Glory” being widely held as his masterpiece. In typical Greene style, the local of Vietnam of the mid 50’s is painted vividly in its pages. The story is told through the eyes of Fowler, a British journalist covering the war in Vietnam when the only western powers involved was a crumbling colonial France.

Fowler is a vestige of what Rumsfield might have called “old Europe”. He is old, tir...more

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Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 0142001384)

06/30/08

bookshelves: british, film, historical-fiction, modern-fiction, war

Read in June, 2008

The Quiet American is a short novel (180 pages), but it packs a punch, both emotionally and politically. A masterful study of male rivalry and political engagement set in 1950s Vietnam, it pits against each other two very different men: Thomas Fowler, a jaded, world-weary, ageing British war correspondent, and Alden Pyle, an earnest and idealistic American who has just arrived in Vietnam to work at the Economic Aid Mission and hardly knows anything about the country except what he's read ...more The Quiet American is a short novel (180 pages), but it packs a punch, both emotionally and politically. A masterful study of male rivalry and political engagement set in 1950s Vietnam, it pits against each other two very different men: Thomas Fowler, a jaded, world-weary, ageing British war correspondent, and Alden Pyle, an earnest and idealistic American who has just arrived in Vietnam to work at the Economic Aid Mission and hardly knows anything about the country except what he's read in a book. Early on in the story, in a scene whose absurdity belies the increasingly dark tone of the rest of the book, Pyle informs Fowler that he's in love with Fowler's mistress Phuong and intends to have her for his bride, since, let's face it, he has more to offer her than does Fowler. Amazingly, Pyle then goes on to insist on being Fowler's friend, seemingly unaware that the other man sees him as a rival and doesn't really want anything to do with him. So their stories keep weaving in and out of each other, until Pyle is found dead. The question is, who killed him, and why?

The Quiet American is first and foremost a splendid portrait of an unlikely friendship between two men who are not what they seem. Adulterous, opium-smoking Fowler doesn't come across as very likeable at first, but as the story develops, the reader discovers that his cynical exterior hides an all too human heart. For his part, Pyle, whose innocence and naïveté seem delightfully absurd at first, turns out to be a dangerous character who is playing with forces he doesn't understand, with potentially dire consequences for many people. Greene expertly handles the strange relationship between the two men, adding just the right amount of wonder and bitterness to the proceedings. At the same time, though, he tells a story that is much bigger than a bizarre love triangle. Having been a foreign correspondent in Indochina in the early 1950s, Greene obviously knew Vietnam quite well, and it shows in his depiction of the country, a wonderfully vivid place where Communist forces are fighting for freedom, French bureaucrats are trying desperately to hang on to their colonial dreams and war correspondents like Fowler are not sure whether to remain impartial observers or to get involved in the fracas. In spare, minimalist prose, Greene shows what happened in Vietnam when the Americans got involved, and what generally happens when well-intending but badly-informed people start messing in other countries' political problems -- a lesson which over fifty years later still seems frightfully topical. Along the way, he tackles such universal themes as goodness versus selfishness, action versus laissez faire, moral conflict, and the nature of love. Initially, the writing may seem a little too detached to move the reader, but the carefully plotted intrigue, well-drawn explosive atmosphere and powerful ending more than make up for it, making this a well-told story with a message which hasn't lost any of its power in the half century since it was written.
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6 comments

Karen rated it:

12/11/07

Read in April, 2008

As a critique of American intervention in foreign affairs, the story was excellent. The "quiet" American (he never shuts up) steps into a world he knows nothing about and creates havoc.

My problem with the book was a problem common to many similar authors (DeLillo, I'm looking at you): it was very male-centric and I got annoyed. Phuong, the love/lust/possession interest in the book, was never given a character, described as innocent, childish, a sexual object, and a caretaker i...more

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Sarah rated it:

10/23/07

Easily one of my all-time favorite books, but it's hard to explain why. A naive American CIA operative, fresh from Yale, arrives in Vietnam and promptly steals the narrator's Vietnamese lover/prostitute, then gets himself and several Vietnamese killed. The narrator is a cynical British war correspondent who is a) addicted to opium, b) desperately in love with the Vietnamese prositute as only a drug-addicted war correspondent can be, c) wise enough to see the Yalie's folly and d) a surprisingly...more

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Michelle rated it:

01/07/08

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Everyone

Everyone I've talked to about Greene seems to like his work, and I was not disappointed. This was just a thoughtful novel, written in a plain, forthright style. The story was good - a little mystery - and I like how Greene alternated between starting at the beginning and working forward and starting at the end and working backward. That sounds confusing, but it wasn't. Greene's reflections on war - who is the enemy, who is good, who is innocent, occupation, the effects of the intervention of...more

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Ben rated it:

(review of isbn 0140185003)

05/07/07

bookshelves: favorites, fiction

My wife definitely doesn't agree with me, but I love this book. Usually I'm not all that into symbolism, but I loved the use of Fowler, Pile, and Phuong -- Fowler the old, crusty Englishmen who hates colonism but loves it's benefits; Pile the naive American who read an idea in a book and wants to put it to work in the real work, no matter the cost now; and Phuong, the woman trying to keep her dignity as she's exploited by all those around her.

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Mike rated it:

07/07/08

The best 1st chapter of any novel I've ever read, though, oddly, it was only on the second read that this became apparent.

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Ky rated it:

09/28/07

Read in September, 2007

Unfortunately, it's just as relevant now as it was in the mid '50s. That's a tribute to Greene and an indictment of us.

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Jessica rated it:

07/03/07

bookshelves: favorites

Brilliantly sharp, cold, and witty. Avoid the film adaptation at all costs...

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Aaron rated it:

10/15/08

At times, in this novel, Greene seems to be trying to be too overly literary and affectedly/authentically true to a situation that is secondary to the power of his protagonist's insights and "earned" cynicism. Greene's outstanding when he doesn't feel the need to ramble off into the weeds to authenticate a "backdrop" to let the action play out. His incisive wit, and ability to inspect the complexities of what we might call "the soul", are often, in this novel, compe...more

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Elizabeth rated it:

07/17/08

I love the writing style of Graham Greene! I found this book enjoying for a number of reasons. One, I love history. Two, it had some romance. Three, sometimes it was confusing. Four, I love surprise endings (especially when they are not really a surprise, but you were just hoping that it wasn't going to turn out that way).
It is not a very pleasant novel. The subject matter ranges from the gruesome to the nasty. However, many lessons may be learned from this novel. First, that relatio...more

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Tom rated it:

07/10/08

During a symposium on Vietnam hosted by our campus years ago, I had the opportunity to have dinner with George Herring, a prominent US historian of Vietnam war. When I mentioned Greene's novel, he commented, "It's all right there. Amazing how Greene understood back in the 50s what would happen!"

For all his popularity and acclaim, I think it must be said that Greene was not a great literary artist on the order of a Faulkner or Ellison, to name a few, but he did have a rare gift for...more

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Ben rated it:

07/08/08

bookshelves: recentreads

This is the story of the quiet American, Pyle, a young, naive, idealistic, "innocent" man who is dispatched to Vietnam, directly from graduate school, during a time of war with the French. Pyle meets Fowler, a rabidly neutral British reporter who has been there and done that. Pyle's only real understanding of Vietnam comes from what he has learned in academia, and he adheres to the romantic, idealistic vision of spreading democracy and combating communism. When Pyle begins to put hi...more

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Becca rated it:

06/17/08

Frighteningly prophetic, this brief but biting novel chronicles the life of an aging British journalist in French-ruled Vietnam in the 1950s. Selfish, hedonistic and jaded, Thomas Fowler is in self-imposed exile from his native England. While the French slowly lose their colonial grip on the feuding nation and foreign nationals begin to map out their vision for a new Vietnam, Fowler is content to sit back and smoke opium with his young native lover, priding himself on not taking sides.

It is...more

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Duluoz rated it:

06/29/08

bookshelves: novels

Greene's text is a prophecy of the destructive consequences of American political idealism (aka, the imposition of democracy) on other countries. Alden Pyle is the quiet American of the text's title. He's also simultaneously naive and crafty, gathering all his knowledge of the complexities of Vietnam from books but also organizing secret terrorist bombings that advance the American cause as "third-party interventionists." Pyle believes in the infamous Domino Theory that justified Ameri...more

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Beth rated it:

05/21/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

This book set in Vietnam in the 1950s provides a brilliant and achingly subtle characterization of the American character in Pyle, the "Quiet American". It's told from the first person point of view of a somewhat jaded, opium-smoking English correspondent in Saigon whom Pyle preemptorily adopts as his new best friend. Pyle then goes on, in the most naive and straightforward manner, to steal the narrator's sweet, conventional Vietnamese mistress in the interest of making an "hone...more

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Aaron rated it:

04/24/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: suzanne, drew

this novel deals directly with american foreign policy, and vietnam fiasco. it was also referred to in mike davis' book buda's wagon". the promise of an in depth exploration of one of the world's great car/bike bombers, lured me in (even though it is a fictiononal account). the plot line works along a thinly veiled metaphor, describing the great war in indochina. greene's narrator plays the world weary english man who has seen colonialism run its course. his lover phuong is the beautif...more

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"That was my first instinct - to protect...It never occurred to me that there was greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it; innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. " More quotes...

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The Quiet American

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