Rating: 
Summary: Hauntingly Beautiful
Review: The Quiet American is about the Vietnam that nobody knows about. It is set as Vietnam is in the last vestiges of Colonial French occupation, as a war-torn fractured country is split into so many competing groups that none can effectively stand up to the French. Our Narrator, Fowler is a British Correspondent who is jaded and somewhat cynical, not only with the hypocrisy of the events which he observes but also about his own life and a bitter split with his wife who remained in england. The only vestiges of happiness he gets are from a young Vietnamese girl, Phuong whom he is involved with and the opium he periodically smokes. In a way, both are similar in that they merely provide an illusion of happiness - opium in its fragmentory swiftly fading dreams and Phuong whose love is founded on pretence. Despite the fact that his happiness is founded on illusion, fowler is a rather dispassionate observer of events very unlike a rather quiet young American he meets one day called Pyle. Pyle is a naive young man straight out of college convinced that his actions can change things for the better. He begins to meddle in an already complicated political situation by channeling aid to a "Third Force" hoping that it will resolve the situation. Pyle however despite his good intentions is like an errant knight who unleashes forces which he cannot control and leads to his downfall. Fowler, despite his insistance on merely fulfilling a role as a reporter which comes with a refusal to get involved finds himself inextricably tangled in the situation. We eventually begin to wonder at Fowler's neutrality and indifference, especially when Phuong leaves him for Pyle. Graham Greene is a writer whose use of language is sparse, spare but always graceful. Not a word is wasted as the writing is beautiful in its simplicity. Greene was a journalist besides being a writer and the hallmarks of his chosen profession are there - the stark observations of human behaviour as well as a firm grounding of events in reality. it is a testament to his ability that the book seems as relevant today as it was when it was first published. A must read for anyone interested in vietnam and definitely one of Greene's best.
Rating: 
Summary: Kind of Prophetic
Review: Graham Greene is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors since I recently read The Power and the Glory, The End of the Affair, and now this masterpiece. The narrative is wonderfully entertaining, the characterization of Fowler is deep and insightful, and Greene's grasp of America's political outlook seems prophetic (particularly considering the recent Iraqi "war"). The story is of Fowler, a middle-aged English journalist, who is covering the civil war in Vietnam (pre-US war), and he is involved with a young Vietnamese beauty Phuong. Enter Pyle, a naive American who sets out to take Phuong and sets out to pursue naive American political interests. The novel works on a lot of levels. For one, it is very entertaining; I can see how they wanted to make a movie out of it. It also develops an interesting moral commentary as Fowler is forced to handle a moral quandary. The reporter is forced to "take a side," is forced to grasp some type of belief structure. The political commentary Greene gives to this post-colonial world is also highly intriguing. This should be required reading for politicians (particularly in these times). The Quiet American is one of Greene's best novels and will certainly go down as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction.
Rating:
Summary: More important than ever
Review: This is an excellent book. Greene's observations on the American character are still valid. A must-read for anyone caring about America and the world.
Rating:
Summary: "Malpractice of Heart and Illegitimate Process"
Review: The excerpt comes from a quote from the poet Arthur Hugh Clough that serves as one of THE QUIET AMERICAN's two epigraphs. Graham Greene thrusts us into one of his moral quagmires in which the crabwise scuttling of his narrator comes up against the straightforward thrusts of the dangerously naive. Thomas Fowler is a British journal in Saigon during the 1950s, when the French were fighting Vietnamese Communist insurgents before the United States inherited that mess after the battle of Dien Bien Phu. He comes upon Arden Pyle, the Quiet American of the title, a man almost too innocent to live. (At one point, Greene writes that "innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.") While purporting to be an economic consultant, he is actually an American agent attempting to apply simplistic principles to a tangled situation that is beyond his understanding. In the process, he snags Fowler's Vietnamese mistress while pretending to remain the journalist's friend. Although he seems to be invulnerable in his innocence for a while, the quagmire finally claims him as a victim. He is very like one of Conrad's "pilgrims" in THE HEART OF DARKNESS, cool and elegant in their pursuit of nefarious colonial pursuits to the very end. The "illegitimate process" may be a good description of Pyle's work, but Graham Greene's ever-present "malpractice of heart" is seen in Fowler, the French police inspector Vigot, the mistress Phuong's sister, Fowler's fellow journalist Bill Granger, and the suspicious Mr Heng. At one point, Fowler wonders, "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, I might add, of forgiving. This is one of Graham Greene's most outstanding works, on a par with THE POWER AND THE GLORY, THE HEART OF THE MATTER, THE END OF THE AFFAIR, and A BURN-OUT CASE. Curiously, it seems almost as current as if it were written yesterday instead of half a century ago.
Rating:
Summary: Prophetic !
Review: There are lot of striking aspects of QuietAmerican. First, it is a good gripping story which grabs the attention of even the lay reader who is not intrested or aware of the politics underlying the plot. Second, for a story of this far reaching magnitude, it is hardly 100 pages which shows the mastery of Greene's craft. It needs skill and mastery of language, a knack of fleshing out characters who standout in the story and a clear vision of what is being propagated to come up with such clarity as Green's Quiet American does. Third, the story itself - it flows at two levels , the personal romantic triangle between Fowler, Pyle and Phuong is a microcosm of the politicial tension and clash of the ideologies surrounding the war in Vietnam. Not the American-imposed vietnam war, but the one presaging it in the early 50's. Fowler's weary cynical character stands out in the story. Pitted against/with him is Pyle, the idealistic, naive American who believes in half-baked ideas of freedom and democracy and the ways to achieve it on the hapless populace of Vietnam. Phoung is the silent mute witness, the metaphor of Vietnam, the object of passion and attention in two contrasting ways from an old Colonial who has learnt the hopelessness of ism's and 'acies and a new imperial who is full of vigor and verve to bulldoze his way through. The most amazing aspect of Quiet American is - it is *still* prophetic. Vietnam war proved Greene's stringent opinion about the dubiousness of American policy. Now, the invasion of Iraq proves yet again, the naivette of those immature American public who believe in the hoax of "liberation and democracy" led by the corrupt cabal in Power who have their own selfish intrests. Don't miss this book. It's entertaining and thought-provoking.
Rating:
Summary: An open-ended book
Review: The newest film version has attracted alot of attention, casting Pyle in a more sinister light. However, it seems that Noyce has made Pyle into a decidedly different character than that which exists in the book. Pyle is a naive young man with his Asian sense coming largely from the books of "York Harding," his college mentor. Greene seems to be skewering the American sense of chivalry which so dominated our international relations in the 1950's. Like the knight errant, Don Quixote, we seemed to be chasing after windmills but had much more firepower at our disposal and therefor were much more dangerous. Pyle never develops beyond an American caricature in this novel. He doesn't speak French or Vietnamese, carrying out a fantasy largely of his own construction. The book can be read as political allegory, but I think this is largely due to the way things turned out in Vietnam. At the base of this story is a love triangle that uses the escalating tensions in Vietnam as a backdrop for its action. The time is the waning days of French colonial rule. The battlle of Dien Bien Phu looms on the horizon. There is one scene were Fowler and Pyle are stuck at the front but for the most part the action takes place in the sinister streets of Saigon. It is indeed a very entertaining a story. However, I question how much Greene was reporting on the war but rather using the war to create the tension necessary in this love story. Fowler is the best realized character. The others read as caricatures taken from the fictitious mind of Fowler. It has much cinematic appeal but Noyce seems to have tried to "correct" the 1950's anti-communist film version, but has gone so far in the opposite direction as to make a similar mistake.
Rating:
Summary: "Sooner or later, one has to take sides."
Review: Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American" is set in Vietnam in the early 50s. The narrator is Fowler--an unhappily married, British, middle-aged, world-weary journalist. Fowler lives with Phoung, a beautiful Vietnamese girl. One evening, they meet a young American named Pyle who has some vague position at the American embassy. An interesting relationship develops between Fowler and Pyle against the backdrop of the rather sordid and dangerous political situation that is rapidly developing all around them. Fowler and Pyle seem complete opposites. Fowler is a jaded atheist who loathes "isms and ocracies." Pyle is naive, idealistic, patriotic and driven by ideology--including the Domino Theory, and he hopes to initiate a plan through the introduction of a "Third Force" to prevent the spread of communism in SouthEast Asia. Both men project their interpretations of Vietnam and its inhabitants onto Phoung. To Fowler, Phoung is simple--pure function and quiet self-fufillment. She is a warm body in the bed next to him, the woman who prepares his opium pipe, and as he advances towards old age, Fowler intends that Phoung will become his nurse. Pyle on the other hand idealizes Phoung and wants to 'save' her as he hopes to 'save' the country. And it is over the possession of Phoung that Fowler must made a choice that has resounding moral consequences. Fowler is a perfect Graham Greene protagonist--the man who has no particular moral, religious or political beliefs who finds himself perched on a moral precipice--with moral redemption on one side and the moral abyss on the other. Fowler finds himself in the questionable position of making the most powerful decision a human being can ever face. How does a man who stripped of beliefs make an irreversible moral decision? And what if that decision involves self-interest? Fowler's final decision leaves a powerful impression. Graham Green is an artist, and within this novel, he created two remarkable characters--Pyle and Fowler--and they are really both sides of the same coin. Pyle's ideology perhaps fills the void in his soul, but the ideology is just a "mental concept" that is in itself yet another void. This novel was written in 1955, and I found the analysis chilling and prophetic. Graham Greene is indeed a masterful storyteller.
Rating:
Summary: A great story set in the events before the Vietnam War
Review: An intriguing novel about a British reporter and a young American man who are on a collision course over a young Vietnamese woman and, more importantly, the future of Vietnam. The young American is not really who he says he is, and the reporter is not emotionally detatched from Vietnam like he pretends. A great book!
Rating:
Summary: Sooner or later one must take sides...
Review: While Graham Greene's writing is noticeably without flashiness, it is also without flaws. Always subtle and graceful, with each novel he wrote he quietly established himself as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. The Quiet American is no exception. It is a perfectly balanced novel. Greene expertly juxtaposes the character of Fowler, the British journalist, with Pyle, the American aid worker. Fowler is older, more reserved, more experienced. Pyle is young, more ambitious, and seemingly more naive. Fowler lives his life by the journalist's number one rule - stay impartial, don't take sides, just report what you see. Pyle, by contrast, is passionate about making a difference in the struggle against communism in Vietnam. They serve as beautiful foils for one another, and together they guide the reader through a profound exploration of the importance of being committed to a cause. As Greene writes, one must eventually take sides in order to truly live. This book is also an elegant comparison of two different cultures. One learns lots about Vietnam within minutes of arriving, Greene points out. And it is also a tender love story, though not a traditional one. Greene masterfully blends this love story with a powerful and morally complex political scenario in a way that few modern writers could pull off. As with all of Greene's work, this is excellent fiction.
Rating:
Summary: A subtle thinker...and insight into Viet Nam conflict
Review: Graham Greene's "The Quiet American" was published in 1955, but it has an almost eerie prophetic quality about what was to happen in Viet Nam. This novel will soon be a film featuring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. While the French are trying to stave off the Chinese and Viet Minh communist threat and hold on to their colony in Indochina, a young American idealist enters the scene. Pyle, with his prep school values in hand, begins to fund a "Third Force" based on writings by his intellectual idol, York Harding. We see the action through the eyes of Fowler, an aging, cynical British reporter, determined not to become engaged or emotionally involved in the conflict. Fowler has plenty of issues. He's trapped in a loveless marriage to a woman back home, smokes too much opium, and has a convenient relationship with a young Vietnamese woman named Phuong. Phuong becomes the object of contention between Pyle and Fowler, and the conversations the two men have regarding the woman and her country provide amazing insights into the attitudes about Indochina. Greene's novel is very character driven, yet there is also plenty of action, as well as discourse on the nature of the conflict. Fowler is a vivid personality, undergoing some intense changes throughout the story, leading to key events that cause him to become involved. The book is less than two hundred pages, but it leaves the reader with plenty to think about upon completion. A very satisfying read.
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