Rating: 
Summary: A must-read book.
Review: This novel written between 1953 and 1955 has been made into a new film, which has been recently released by Miramax. This is the story about the early stages of the American involvement in Vietnam. Although simplistic, it captures the essence of the political turmoil of Vietnam in the fifties: the French trying to hang on to their colony, the Americans trying their hands in a new country, the "third force", the communists, the peasants, and so on.It deals with an American idealist, Pyle, who without knowing its true colors tried to help the "third force" fight the communists in Vietnam. Fowler, a seasoned English reporter questioned Pyle's real motives. He suspected, like the British had done in Burma years earlier, the Americans would soon get tired of the involvement, leave the natives fight for themselves, and let them be slaughtered by their enemies. This was a fascinating prediction, which came to be true 30 years later. How Graham Greene could predict that event back then still puzzles me? The plot, however, thickened as Pyle tried to lure away Fowler's Vietnamese mistress. I have to concede the novelist had more insight than many of our politicians. Since the novel raises important issues, it should be a "must read" book for many Americans.
Rating:
Summary: And yet another Great Greene
Review: The Quiet American by Graham Greene is a typically great Greene novel. The more I read by Greene, the more I admire and respect and LOVE to read his work. This novel is set in Vietnam during the Vietnamese fight against French rule (before heavy American involvement). The main character, and narrator, Fowler, is a British reporter, going through the motions of filing his reports, living with his Vietnamese girlfriend, Phuong, and, basically, living. He has a wife in Britain with whom his relationship is irretrievably broken down, but his wife refuses on religious grounds to grant him a divorce. Alden Pyle, the "quiet American" is a young man he meets from the American Legation, an idealistic and sort of willfully naïve man who seems to believe everything he reads in books about Vietnam, but doesn't seem to notice the life around him. Fowler, his opposite, seems dulled and soggy by his complete acceptance of the pain of reality, but even then the horror, violence and disregard for human life of full-out warfare does break in on him. This book was recently made into a movie with Michael Caine as Fowler and Brendan Frasier as Pyle, which is why we picked it up to read aloud just now, but it is so wonderfully and timelessly Greene. It has the unreliable moral atmosphere of most Greene novels that I've read, with the antihero narrator that one dislikes while one empathizes with him. This is another Great Greene!
Rating:
Summary: Among Graham Greene's Best
Review: Graham Greene wrote the definitive tale of the myopic and moralistic American interloping in the years leading up to its full-blown involvement in Vietnam. The narrator of this book reminds the reader of many of Graham's other characters: An upper-crust Englishman abroad -- Fowler, the Saigon-based journalist, whose friendship with Pyle, the American embassy's 'Economic Attaché' becomes the tool that moves the narrative along. Parts of Graham's book, especially the sections describing the fighting between the Viet Mihn and the French, read like journalism. But most of its greatness (this is a great novel) can be attributed to Greene's masterful hand in describing the narrator's mixed feelings for Pyle, an ostensibly wholesome Harvard-brow, whose intentions are good but whose methods and assumptions are based on pure American naivety. These feelings grow more complex when the narrator's Vietnamese girlfriend warms to Pyle -- the obvious metaphor for the relative decline of British colonial power to American dynamism. Writing about these metaphors may seem cheesy, since most writers come off as cheesy when they attempt them. But Graham Greene is so skilled, and so subtle, that the little human personifications of his big ideas come off flawlessly.
Rating:
Summary: Can you give MORE than 5 stars???
Review: I'd heard of this book for years just as "Greene's Vietnam novel," without knowing when it was written or anything else about it. So when I saw it in a bookstore in Saigon at the conclusion of a three-week tour of Vietnam in 1997, it seemed appropriate to snap it up, and I started reading it in a cafe not too far from the street where Fowler had his flat (now renamed, of course, but I don't remember what the new name is). So maybe that's why it had such an intense effect on me, but I was absolutely stunned by it. It really pulled me into a feeling of what it might have been like to be in Vietnam in 1954, and the characters were clearly portrayed (if not always nice). Among the fascinating things is the (relatively) sympathetic treatment of Pyle. Greene makes it clear that by any measure of "private" morality, Pyle is a much better person than Fowler, but in his political actions he is utterly, totally, completely wrong -- not from bad motives, but because he does not know what he is doing. AFter I finished it I looked at the copyright date and was stunned again to see that it was written in 1954, before the French got out of Vietnam. Hell, yes, it's a prophecy of what would happen with the US involvement there. I'd love to get my hands on whatever crystal ball Greene was using, and I wish he was still around so he could write an Afghanistan novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Dark
Review: Greene's classic is superbly dark, not obvious, and refreshing because of its setting in Pre-US-Combat-Troops Vietnam. The glimpse into the country, the colonialism, and the culture are fascinating. Much like "real life", I found it hard to "like" any of the characters, yet I could still identify with them. A good read, but not one to leave you with warm fuzzies.
Rating:
Summary: The First Vietnam War Novel
Review: Graham Greene is the sort of writer with very broad appeal. He deals with important ideas, and his fiction has real substance, but at the same time his novels are virtually effortless reads; they are action-packed, exciting, and wonderfully entertaining. "The Quiet American" is by no means his best novel, but it is still a damned good one--certainly in the top ten of the Greene ouevre. The story, set in French-occupied Vietnam around 1953-54, is rather simple. The narrator, an aging, cynical war correspondent (Thomas Fowler) tells us how his little Asian paradise was ruined by the arrival of an American military advisor (Alden Pyle) sent to help the French fight Vietnamese communism. Fowler went to cover the war in Vietnam, and as sometimes happens with war correspondents, fell in love with the country and its people. He fell in love with a beautiful young Vietnamese girl (Phuong) and discovered the pleasures of opium. Ignoring the inevitability of the French defeat and the seizure of the country by the communists, Fowler believes he can make a home for himself there in Indochina to live happily ever after with his girl. Pyle arrives. Ostensibly, his official mission is to provide advisory support to a clumsy French army that knows nothing of guerilla warfare. He is much younger, much more naive (seemingly) than Fowler. The two develop an odd sort of friends-but-rivals relationship as Pyle openly declares his intention of marrying Phuong and taking her back to America. Fowler gradually discovers that Pyle's real purpose is the covert support of a "Third Force" (in real life, this was Ngo Dinh Diem) which will replace the French-backed emperor Bao Dai. Pyle, he discovers, was also involved in a terrorist bombing which killed several innocent bystanders. At this point, goaded by jealousy and fueled by anger at Pyle's (and America's) presumption that the West knows what is best for Vietnam, Fowler betrays Pyle (this is never made completely clear, but that is my reading) and helps some Viet Minh thugs ambush him. Pyle is killed, and the authorities find his body in the muddy river. Fowler briefly struggles with his guilt over this complicity at the end of the novel but we are left with a sense that Pyle's death would have happened sooner or later regardless of Fowler's interference. The book was attacked as anti-American and pro-Communist when it was published. Greene was no communist, but he made no secret of his feelings about the American presence in Vietnam. In many ways the book really does illustrate 1950s-early 60s America's failure to see Vietnam as a unique country with its own unique problems rather than another "domino" in danger of toppling to Sino-Soviet aggression. Read the biographies of Graham Greene and Edward Lansdale (the real-life character on which Pyle was based) for details on Lansdale's activities in Vietnam and Greene's reaction to them.
Rating:
Summary: one of the master's best
Review: This book is one of the best examples of Graham Greene's gift of weaving a personal story, usually centered around a rather ordinary and unattractive character, into the events of a country in conflict. Resist the temptation to read too much about the U.S. effort in Vietnam (or, if you prefer, the current Iraq situation) into Greene's description of the French-Vietminh conflict; it's a great novel, not a prophetic political analysis. What does apply is Greene's scorching characterization of Alden Pyle, the title character, a young Foreign Service officer (or more likely an intelligence operative under diplomatic cover) who too enthusastically applies his classroom-only theories to a nation and culture he does not understand, with terrible consequences. As the protagonist/narrator, Fowler, remarks, in one of Greene's perfectly turned phrases, "I never knew a man with such good motives for all the harm he did." Working in Washington, I've met Alden Pyle's near-clones all too many times. So, apparently, did Robert McNamara, who said in his book, _In Retrospect_, that one of the biggest causes for the U.S. debacle in Vietnam was that the analysts who really knew Southeast Asia had too much trouble making their views heard at the decision level. Doctrine, often inapplicable, prevailed over knowledge. This book should be required reading for prospective diplomats, intelligence analysts and military officers about to be posted overseas. Ignorance and arrogance make a dangerous mixture, anywhere, any time. What makes this novel more than a political polemic or an ordinary love triangle story is Greene's deftly leading us into looking over Fowler's shoulder as he wrestles with a difficult moral judgment, confounded by his own admittedly selfish motives. In Greene's portayals of the world, nobody is perfect, but moral choices still get made, with real consequences. Those who think there are nice neat theories that explain everything should read Greene and learn. And, by the way, the story is entertaining, as well, and the descriptions of places most of us have never seen are riveting.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Entertaining
Review: A capsule summation of "The Quiet American" doesn't do justice to this tremendous novel. In brief, a young American idealist and a cynical middle-aged journalist vie for the allegiance of an Asian female during the French Indochinese war. And, as they compete, the actions of the American force the journalist to confront the moral issues in his life. Throughout, Green tells this story with concise brilliance and his descriptive writing is absolutely first rate. Here's a quick example, with Fowler, the journalist, on patrol with French troops: "...we ran on a shoal of bodies and stuck. He pushed away with his pole, sinking it into this human clay, and one body was released and floated up all its length beside the boat, like a bather lying in the sun." Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: End of Empire
Review: Some people hate this book, but what they really detest is the antihero protaganist, Fowler, a jaded and decaying British journalist observing a naive American, Pyle, slowly immersing himself in Vietnam. Written in the fifties, it can be seen as a prophetic symbol of the futility of our Southeast Asia policies, as well as an indictment of latent American messianic romanticism. The two characters are apt symbols of his nation, although peripheral characters should also be thought of as relevant when considering the novel's characterization of national characters. The toothless collapse of the European imperialistic mission, and the beginning of the end of ours.
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Summary: Stands on it's own
Review: At this point in time to speak of the prophetic quality of this novel set in Vietnam in the 50's probably has been done to death. I recently reread this book and enjoyed the plot for it's own sake despite the obvious metaphorical characterizations described so well below by others. The story has a Casablanca-like quality and in an earlier time would have made a fine Bogart movie.
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