Greene Day
By Margaret Hicks in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 31, 2007 4:32PM
For this month’s Convince Us we asked you to recommend a classic. We decided on The Quiet American by Graham Greene and — oh my — are we happy we did.
After reading through the book once, we thought, “hmmm, what an interesting love story.” Admitting our lack of knowledge about then Indochina, Vietnam and the like, we did a little reading, studied Greene, and read some essays about the book and the history behind it. Then we did something we very rarely do, we delved right in and read the book again, and thought “hmmm, what an interesting love story.”
The story of the quiet American, Alden Pyle, and his suppressed and jealous English mentor, Thomas Fowler, is even better the second time around. Greene is a master of metaphor and simile; his phrases are so beautiful. When discussing his Vietnamese mistress Phoung he says, “She was the hiss of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest,” and “Sometimes she seemed invisible like peace,” and our favorite description of an emaciated opium smoker: “He seemed to take up no room at all; he was like the piece of greaseproof paper that divides the biscuits in a tin”. Ahh … lovely.
Even though the book relies on some historic events, including a bombing that finally motivates Fowler to action, we couldn’t help but think the story was still about love, denial, jealousy, loss and humiliation more than it was a political story about America’s involvement in the war. Greene is obviously criticizing America’s stance in the Indochina war, and its interest in creating a “third force” to battle communism and the French, but Fowler’s anger with the Americans seems to stem from one American in particular.
In the beginning Fowler tells Phuong “I like that fellow, Pyle”, but as Pyle starts to fall for Phuong and confronts Fowler bluntly with his feelings, Fowler thinks “For the first time he had irritated me.”
It is Pyle who messes up Fowler's plan to live in Saigon, to die in Saigon, and to live happily ever after with Phuong, even though Fowler is married, has a job to return to, and a death wish he wants to live out. (“Who the hell asked you to save my life? I came east to be killed .... Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying.”) It is Pyle he blames for messing up his future.
Fowler is deluded, he’s in denial about responsibility for himself and the war, he states over and over again “I’m not involved. ‘Not involved.’ It had been an article of my creed.” But Pyle ruins Fowler’s creed, and it angers him, and his jealousy becomes political: “It was though she were being taken away from me by a nation rather than by a man.”
We could honestly discuss The Quiet American all day; we're still contemplating its true themes, surely the mark of a wonderful book. Thank you to ChicagoJMan for recommending it — we would have hated going through our life having not read it. So, for those of you that might have read along, what do you think? Was it a war story, a love story, or because all is fair and love and war, was it both?