The Quiet American by Graham Greene
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
I'm very interested in learning more about the Vietnam War, and in better understanding both how the United States got entangled in the conflict and what has happened in the decades since we withdrew. Today, Vietnam has transformed into one of the most dynamic economies in Asia. I also hear that it's an amazing place to visit.
One book that came highly recommended is The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam, and I already have a copy sitting on my bookshelf. It is widely regarded as one of the most important historical accounts of the stunning hubris that led the United States to undertake such a catastrophic foreign policy. It's a large brick of a book, so I've put it off until I have more time to fully absorb it.
As an alternative, I selected a work of fiction: The Quiet American by Graham Greene. This 1955 novel eerily foreshadowed our military involvement in Vietnam and the tragedy that ensued. It takes place in Saigon in 1952, during the last vestiges of French colonialism and the beginnings of Ho Chi Minh's communist-backed Viet Minh guerrilla movement.
I was already familiar with the story, having seen the 2002 movie featuring Michael Caine as a world-weary, opium-addicted British newspaperman, Thomas Fowler, and Brendan Fraser as Alden Pyle, the "quiet American" of the title.
Pyle is a young, idealistic American operative filled with anti-Communist zeal who is dangerously naive about the unintended consequences of foreign intervention. He is also Fowler's romantic rival, as both men are in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Phuong. The plot culminates in a moral dilemma for Fowler, who has long tried to be a detached observer — the quintessential foreign correspondent.
"I'm not involved. Not involved," is his mantra.
The Quiet American can be read as a warning about the perils of American intervention in Southeast Asia.
When Greene wrote the novel, the United States was quietly providing aid to the South Vietnamese but was a decade away from sending in combat troops. Greene viewed Americans as neophytes who misread Vietnam from the very start.
Pyle is the embodiment of the misguided American. His north star is the fictional foreign policy thinker York Harding, who concocts the idea of a "third force" led by the United States that can rescue the Vietnamese from both colonialism and communism. Fowler, the book's narrator, warns Pyle that this view is overly simplistic, and that Vietnam is not a laboratory to test out Western political experiments.
The complex relationship between Fowler and Pyle adds another layer to the plot. Pyle is Fowler's counterpoint in every way. Fowler is aging, wry and selfish, desperate to keep Phuong by his side even though he is married to another woman back home in England who refuses to grant him a divorce. Pyle is youthful, fresh-faced and innocent, almost virginal, with "his gangly legs and his crew-cut and his wide campus gaze." He wants to marry Phuong and bring her back to America. At one point, Pyle saves Fowler's life, which makes Fowler feel indebted and leads him to despise Pyle even more.
It's a really good story and a compelling novel. I especially loved how Greene evoked Saigon so vividly. It's both beautiful and treacherous, heavy with monsoon rains and moral complexity. The city is almost a character itself.
I always enjoy reading books that feature journalists as characters, and Greene nailed it in capturing Fowler as a world-weary cynic who claims detachment but has also become more at home in Vietnam than in his native England. That's something a foreign correspondent is never supposed to do. His character is richly drawn and multidimensional. However, I found Phuong, who is caught between Fowler and Pyle, to be underdeveloped and a somewhat stereotypical depiction of a Vietnamese woman, although perhaps Greene wrote her this way to make her unknowable, just like he considered Vietnam itself for Westerners.
Greene's warnings about foreign intervention feel especially relevant today, with war now unfolding in Iran. And the same question may be before us once again: can another country’s future be engineered from the outside?
