- The Blurb...
As Pyle's naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as Fowler intervenes he wonders why: for the greater good, or something altogether more complicated?
- Our Review...
Set in Vietnam in 1952 when the Vietnamese forces were fighting the French colonial power before they went on to defeat the USA. The tale focuses on three people.
The old cynical English journalist Fowler, whose weapons of choice is a witty mind and a cruel tongue
His young local lover Phuong
An a newcomer to Indo-China. Pyle a young brash American. He is the human equivalent of a Labrador puppy. All innocent and bouncy but sadly lacking in nuance and decorum. He is working for the USA government in some pseudo industrial cartel/quango.
So the scene is set the males both want to be with Phuong. Phuong just wants a comfortable life. Pyle just turns up and oblivious to everyone else just blunders in and Fowler is just hanging on knowing his golden era is long gone but is just hanging on to the vestiges of life and love with Phuong. And so the three leads are obviously analogous to the politics of the time. ie the tug of war between the old powers and the new powers for countries that really just to be left alone. They have no interest in capitalism, communism or colonialism. They just want food, health and to be left alone.
Greene manages to create a romance book about political intrigue in an historical flash-point that includes a whodunit and all the while it is an anti-war novel. That takes some doing not only that, it is one of the best books that I have ever read.
In some ways Greene's novels are very diverse. Brighton Rock is about English Gangsters, The Power and the Glory is about the persecution of Catholic priests in Mexico, and the Quiet American is about political interference in Vietnam. However the backdrops may be different the same themes run through all. Morals, introspection, corruption both of the soul and the real world, loss, love and hope.
The book is 73 years old but unbelievably it is more of the now than ever. I was born in 1967 so 73 years before that would have been 1894. I can't imagine a book written in 1894 being relevant in 1973 as The Quiet American is now. It forewarned of the naive, USA getting itself involved in a draining war over decades, which it had brought on itself by interfering in a different part of the word and a very different culture to itself which it has no idea about. For Vietnam 1955-1975 see Iraq 2003-2011, Afghanistan 2001-2021.
Similarly a film version was made starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser in a classic case of bad timing it was test screened in Sept 2001 but after 9/11 it was shelved for a few years as it was thought to be anti American.
However to focus on the political landscape of the novel would be to do it a disservice. There is so much more in this novel as hopefully the selected quotes will show. It encompasses a huge range of emotions and dilemmas. There are no good guys just guys who do the things they do for different reasons with different outcomes. No black and white just grey and shades.
He just has an awareness of how emotions link into small lives that link into bigger actions that develop into political and moral concepts. How everything in life relates to everything else like a circular butterfly effect.
I know others will read Greene and think meh! 🤷 but he is just on my wavelength. I will read more Greene and look forward to reading his autibiography.
- Selected Quotes...
Vietnamese Sureté that seemed to smell of urine and injustice.
It’s always the same wherever one goes—it’s not the most powerful rulers who have the happiest populations.’
The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal-grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuck up out of the water like a buoy. There was no blood: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire, trying to get back, and I suppose every man of us along the bank was thinking, ‘Two can play at that game.’ I too took my eyes away; we didn’t want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously death came.
Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God—a being capable of understanding.
‘And if you lose Phuong, will you be sensible?’ ‘Oh yes, I hope so. And you?’ ‘I doubt it. I might even run amok. Have you thought about that, Pyle?’ ‘I wish you’d call me Alden, Thomas.’ ‘I’d rather not. Pyle has got—associations.
You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren’t interested.’ ‘They don’t want Communism.’ ‘They want enough rice,’ I said. ‘They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want.’
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