The Quiet American in Espionage Aficionados

Oct 06, 2014 Doubledf99.99 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites, historical-fiction, classics

A very good read about love, friendship/companionship, and reporting in early 1950's Vietnam, and why certain individuals fell in love with the country and never wanted to leave, had a good feel and tone for the clubs and nightlife of Saigon.

“I can’t say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman’s voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you’re looking for, you will find here. Th ...more

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Jul 20, 2020 cool breeze rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Graham Greene was a skilled writer, but this is a bitter, repulsive book ("the sight of Oedipus emerging with his bleeding eyeballs from the palace at Thebes would surely give a better training for life today"). It is full of broken and repellent characters. The protagonist/narrator is a liar, coward, cheat, cynic, misanthrope, bigot, opium addict and (view spoiler). Greene was a lifelong manic depr Graham Greene was a skilled writer, but this is a bitter, repulsive book ("the sight of Oedipus emerging with his bleeding eyeballs from the palace at Thebes would surely give a better training for life today"). It is full of broken and repellent characters. The protagonist/narrator is a liar, coward, cheat, cynic, misanthrope, bigot, opium addict and (view spoiler). Greene was a lifelong manic depressive and this was obviously written in a depressed period, when his marriage and his affair with another woman were both on the rocks and his wife refused to grant him a divorce. Those circumstances all find a place in the book.

The book is further marred by a mean-spirited anti-Americanism ("the poverty of American literature, the scandals of American politics, the beastliness of American children", "Nothing that America could do was right", "as ill-designed as the Statue of Liberty and as meaningless"). Less than a decade after the end of World War II, Greene apparently felt a great need to sneer derisorily at Britain’s unworldly, callow "country cousins". I suppose that when your country has lost its empire, its wealth and most of its standing in the world, it may be some comfort to pose as if there are still others at whom you can look down your nose. Of course, if it wasn’t for those naïve, idealistic Americans, Greene would have spent his last few years learning to write in German.

The book is reflexively anti-Western in general ("European duplicity") and the French and even some of the Vietnamese are libeled. Only a few Vietnamese get a sympathetic, but patronizing, "noble savage" treatment. Greene’s MI6 career was directly supervised by communist traitor Kim Philby and it is no surprise that he naïvely idealized communist third-world despots like Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh. As he writes in the book, "Sooner or later… one has to take sides", and Greene chose communism. He may have had some valid points, but his vitriolic, heavy-handed, one-sided treatment of them diminishes their strength.

In terms of writing skill, this book is 3.x stars, but there is only one goodreads rating choice that accurately describes how I really felt about it: "1 star – did not like it". ...more

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Jan 19, 2019 Michael Martz rated it it was amazing

Every once in awhile, I'll seek out a 'classic' novel I somehow missed. This time it was Graham Greene's "The Quiet American". I read a lot of Greene back 'in my youth' (as did probably 90% of the kids who attended Catholic high schools in the 60's and 70's) and always appreciated both his writing and the morality he championed. The Quiet American is a fine example of those qualities and is a bit more secular than his other efforts.

The American referenced in the book's title is Alden Pyle, an id Every once in awhile, I'll seek out a 'classic' novel I somehow missed. This time it was Graham Greene's "The Quiet American". I read a lot of Greene back 'in my youth' (as did probably 90% of the kids who attended Catholic high schools in the 60's and 70's) and always appreciated both his writing and the morality he championed. The Quiet American is a fine example of those qualities and is a bit more secular than his other efforts.

The American referenced in the book's title is Alden Pyle, an idealistic, fairly naive and inexperienced US spy, working undercover as a business person in Saigon. The narrator is Thomas Fowler, a British journalist who is cynical, realistic, and highly experienced in the intrigue and fighting happening in the 1950s in Southeast Asia. The book opens in the aftermath of Pyle's assassination and flips back and forth between the account of his arrival and integration into the local scene and the investigation of his demise.

Fowler and Pyle came together in competition for a young Vietnamese woman who had been living with Fowler. They became semi-friends and much of The Quiet American is comprised of conversation between the men as they try to hash out their different views of life, war, love, and many other issues. Beyond the moral issues that are kicked around constantly, it's an interesting view into the SE Asia situation that America was just beginning to increase its involvement in.

The Quiet American succeeds in examining some big topics in a sort of minimalist setting. A journalist, a 'Quiet American' who is sort of thrashing around, and their joint love interest may not necessarily be the parties you think about when the War in Viet Nam is discussed, but Greene succeeds in using them to show the lack of clarity around the entire situation.

The writing in The Quiet American is stellar and the entire novel is rife with quotable passages. Although it was written decades ago and some of the lingo and conversational content may seem dated, the story line seems to be almost ripped from today's headlines. It's a low-key, yet awesome accomplishment. ...more

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Mar 04, 2014 Jenny0985 rated it it was amazing

I'd never heard of or read any of Graham Greene's books before I read The Quiet American. I have become a fan and will add more of his books to my reading list. I remember thing after the first chapter it could have stood on it's own as a short story. I thought it was beautifully written. ...more

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Aug 21, 2017 Thomas rated it liked it

Second Graham Greene novel that I've read. I like the hard boiled nature of the Fowler character, which paired with the innocence, but self-assured correctness of Pyle makes for an interesting relationship. Of what I know of the Viet Nam conflict, the analogy of the story is difficult to ignore, but the book was written way before America's involvement. Good plot and story that I felt may have been a model for several more recent espionage novels I've read. Pace of Greene's novels are ploddingly ...more

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