Ruth's review
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Reading this book did not make me feel cheery, especially in these days when I'm struggling with a lung infection & low energy.
I didn't like either of the two main characters, Pyle & Fowler, but Greene did make me care about them. The book is talky, lots of debates exploring colonialism & North-South relationships way back before the U.S. was deeply involved in Vietnam. The points of view are exclusively those of British, U.S. & French outsiders in Vietnam (Fowler is a British journalist, Pyle a U.S. economic adviser; the French are the main occupiers, fighting the leftist insurgency/Viet Minh). Pyle is idealistically working with a "Third Force"--for a book published in 1955, this was eerily prescient of later U.S. backing of a puppet government in South Vietnam.
I am repelled by the consistently condescending attitudes expressed toward the Vietnamese people throughout the book. It's impossible to know how much of this viewpoint/attitude Greene shared/...more
I didn't like either of the two main characters, Pyle & Fowler, but Greene did make me care about them. The book is talky, lots of debates exploring colonialism & North-South relationships way back before the U.S. was deeply involved in Vietnam. The points of view are exclusively those of British, U.S. & French outsiders in Vietnam (Fowler is a British journalist, Pyle a U.S. economic adviser; the French are the main occupiers, fighting the leftist insurgency/Viet Minh). Pyle is idealistically working with a "Third Force"--for a book published in 1955, this was eerily prescient of later U.S. backing of a puppet government in South Vietnam.
I am repelled by the consistently condescending attitudes expressed toward the Vietnamese people throughout the book. It's impossible to know how much of this viewpoint/attitude Greene shared/...more
Just a minor nick-picky sort of thing, but Alden and Pyle are the same person. The British journalist is Fowler. Pyle's first name is Alden. You may remember Fowler mentioning in the book that he could never bring himself to call Pyle by his first name, Alden. You can check it out on IMDB's credits for the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt02...
No biggie, just nomenclature. :-)
Happy holidays and what not.
Thanks for the correction, Amber! I do care about that kind of thing. :-) I'm pretty sure I had returned the book to the library by the time I wrote this review, so I didn't have it on hand to check the names. I think the resistance army was called the Vietminh at that time too.Happy holidays to you too!
Yeah, I think you are right. It is the Vietminh. I currently don't have the book on me either. :-)
