About this title: Set in Vietnam in the 1950s, during the last days of French colonial rule, THE QUIET AMERICAN was based partly on Graham Greene's own experiences in Vietnam as a correspondent for the London Times. The book's narrator is an English journalist named Fowler who lives in Saigon with his Vietnamese mistress, Phuong, but is unable to convince his ...
read more
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2002-11-05
ISBN-13:9780142001387ISBN:0142001384
Description: Very good. Very minimal damage to the cover (no holes or tears, only minimal scuff marks), in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, minimal to no highlighting/under. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2002-11-05
ISBN-13:9780142001387ISBN:0142001384
Description: Good. Minimal damage to the cover, dust jacket not necessarily included minimal wear to binding, majority of pages undamaged, minimal to no highlighting/underlining of text, no missing p. read more
Description: Good. Good condition overall. Book curved. Light soiling and yellowing on cover. Remainder mark on bottom edge. Pages yellowed. Good solid copy. read more
Description: Fair. B000X70NSO 1965 printing of Viking Compass Books paperback; quite worn but intact and not torn; pencil marks in the text; writing inside covers. read more
"So I'm slowly making my way through the Graham Greene oeuvre, and most recent stop was The Quiet American. I didn't engage with this book as much as I have with his others, perhaps because the subject of war doesn't hook me, especially when the war is being described in an off-hand sort of way by an English journalist stationed in Vietnam reporting on the war for his paper. The story was hard for me to get into, and I found my attention wandering a lot throughout the book, but at some point I was captivated by the decision Fowler, the English journalist, makes with regards to Pyle, the American of the title, who is a naive idealist with no real understanding - if Fowler's spin on it is to be believed - of the consequences of his actions. The love triangle is strange in that the woman seems to have little romantic or sexual interest in either man, rather seeming to be merely looking for security, which I guess is understandable, but made the men's desire to have her all the more abstracted and impersonal."
"Taking place in French Indo-China (that's Vietnam, pre-war) at the beginning of hostilities, this is largely the heroic journey of an original anti-hero. Fowler is a lech and a journalist (I don't know which one's worse, but I know leches are more fun to hang out with), and has a concubine in Indo-China and a wife in England. He's just made friends with an American from Boston, a young, idealistic man named Pyle.
The prose here is excellent, and although a woman is involved, the story is neither saccharin nor cliched. In fact, sometimes it borders on exciting.
A really good book with a really good finish. But it didn't make me a screaming fanboy for Graham Greene.
I would recommend this for anyone who can read the English language. Not overly literary (read: prosaic), and not taking itself too seriously, The Quiet American should be read by people who wish to experience exotic climes and hostile situations without risking becoming a casualty.
Rating: 4 out of 6 Definitely a good read, but doesn't equal Martin on the scope or awesome scale."
"(FROM MY BLOG) In college, I read -- and re-read -- some of Graham Greene's best known novels: The Power and the Glory (1940), Brighton Rock (1938), The End of the Affair (1951), and The Heart of the Matter (1948), works that Greene himself considered "serious" novels, as opposed to his many popular "entertainments." One novel that I did not read at the time was The Quiet American (1955).
In fact, until this past week I had never read The Quiet American, although I'd seen the 2002 movie, starring Michael Caine in a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination as best actor.
My fascination with those Greene novels that I did read in college lay in Greene's examination, from a theological vantage, of the thoughts and actions of a number of very human characters who were either struggling to live virtuous lives, seemingly against all odds, in a complex moral universe; or struggling to escape from that moral universe and from God's "twitch upon the thread," as Greene's compatriot Evelyn Waugh described it in his novel Brideshead Revisited. I suppose that the theological component in The Quiet American did not seem sufficiently overt to draw my college-age attention to the book.
The references to religion are far less prevalent in The Quiet American than in earlier Greene novels. The book can be read simply as a period piece, a story of intrigue in Vietnam in the early 1950's, at a time when Vietnam was a French colony, France was fighting a colonial war against the Communist Vietminh insurgents, and the United States itself had no official involvement in the dispute. The narrator, Thomas Fowler, is a British correspondent who has lived in Vietnam long enough to feel at home in that country and to have shed his original desire to return to England and to his estranged wife. In Saigon, Fowler has picked up a mistress, Phuong, who serves submissively as his lover, but without failing to keep her eyes wide open with respect to her own welfare.
Fowler fears that Phuong will leave him eventually if he doesn't marry her, but his English wife, a Catholic, refuses him a divorce. His career as a newspaperman has become farcical: the French authorities provide correspondents only that news about the war they choose to provide, and his dispatches home must pass through French censorship. His life has reached stasis, a state of extreme passivity reinforced by his daily intake of opium.
The tedium of Fowler's daily life is interrupted by his relationship with a young American, Alden Pyle, the "quiet American" of the title. Pyle is the embodiment of one of the two principal mid-twentieth century British stereotypes of Americans (the other being the "noisy" American): earnest, sober, crew cut, boyish, likeable, idealistic, polite -- and wholly ignorant of the complexities of the human soul and of the sordid realities of political life. (Sort of a much younger, more likeable version of George W. Bush.)
Pyle has come to Saigon, attached to the American Economic Aid Mission. He brings with him little real knowledge about the country, but a strong commitment to a doctrine espoused by a much worshipped former professor at Harvard. Based on this "book learning," Pyle is convinced that a "third force" (neither French nor Communist) should be encouraged to seize power in Vietnam, and he has hit upon General Thé (an actual figure from those days) to head such a government.
Pyle falls in love with Phuong, despite his friendliness to Fowler, and Phuong leaves Fowler for the young American. Fowler despairs of his ability to compete with Pyle's youth and wealth, and remains inert. He discovers that Pyle is assisting import of material for plastic explosives, which General Thé's forces use for terrorist bombings against the civilian population -- thus undermining the authority of both the French and the Vietminh.
A Communist acquaintance suggests to Fowler that he invite Pyle to dinner at a favorite restaurant. Fowler senses that an assassination is being planned. Fowler is revolted by the carnage resulting from Thé's terrorism -- made possible by Pyle's assistance -- and, of course, Pyle has become inconvenient to him personally as well. He hesitates, issues the invitation, and then has second thoughts. Fowler finally encourages Pyle to skip the dinner, but does so vaguely, half-heartedly, and without ever actually warning Pyle of the danger he faces.
Pyle is never again seen alive.
Following Pyle's death, everything breaks Fowler's way. Phuong, having lost her opportunity to marry an American, quickly seizes the second best option and turns her affections back onto Fowler. Fowler unexpectedly receives a letter from his wife, granting him a divorce. Fowler can now take Phuong back to England, as has been her dream, where a promotion with his newspaper now awaits him. He has every reason for happiness.
Fowler is a totally passive man, the man supposedly archetypical of the 1950's. Throughout the book, he takes virtually no action of his own volition. He reacts rather than acts. Pyle, in his eyes, is a hapless fool. But Fowler, while far better attuned to the reality of life about him, is incapable of using his knowledge to help himself or others. Fowler's only act of consequence is his seemingly innocuous invitation to Pyle to join him for dinner. Lacking any real sense of morality -- any sense, as Greene would have put it in earlier books, of God's presence -- and confronted by the demands of his own self-interest, Fowler's genuine sympathy for Pyle is insufficient to compel him to rescind his invitation and warn Pyle of the danger. Fowler has too much to gain by Pyle's death.
""I thought of the first day and Pyle sitting beside me at the Continental, with his eye on the soda-fountain across the way. Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry.""
So ends the book. Fowler is the modern man whom Greene fears, a man almost too bland and too passive to be considered a human being.
A creature too lacking in virtue for Heaven, but too ignorant of the demands of moral conduct to merit Hell. And "no one," in any case, to whom he could say he was sorry."
"When one thinks of the Vietnam War, one thinks of the United States and the Soviets backing two rival factions of a civil war in a foreign land. The descriptions that transpired are often brutal, raw and ugly. Not much heed, however, is paid to the roots of this war, the First Indochina War, fought between the French and the Viet Minh liberationists.
The Quiet American was written and takes place during this war, before the United States had much of a presence in Vietnam. It concerns the relationship between Thomas Fowler, a British army reporter living in Saigon, his Vietnamese girlfriend, Phuong, and a young American, Pyle, who comes to court her.
Our narrator, Fowler, is a flawed hero with a history of using and leaving women -- and yet he remains sympathetic in the eyes of the reader, the voice of reason in a war in which he has no stakes. Neither French nor Vietnamese, he is neutral to either side of the conflict, but is forced to report only French victories, never defeats.
The modern-day connotations of the name Pyle notwithstanding, the character actually appears ignorant and naïve to the horrors of war and the ways of love. He manages to dodge armed conflict just by chance, and despite being one of the few friends Fowler has, is a constant thorn in his side in vying for the affections of Phuong.
Phuong is where the trouble starts. She doesn't really seem to exist as a real character, rather a subservient glue that holds the story together. She's fought over by the two men, but never really makes her own decisions. Even when she is made to choose, it is her sister that ultimately decides her fate.
It would seem, then, that the relationship of the three characters could be interpreted as a microcosm for the war itself. Phuong and Fowler have a steady relationship, but it is obvious that Fowler is less of an equal and more of an owner. Phuong does his every bidding, and never does he consider anything out of the ordinary. In a way, perhaps representative of the French occupation of Vietnam, though they exist in a kind of harmony, it is not a free harmony. He doesn't offer her marriage, a meagre extension of equality, but is perfectly happy to let her prepare his opium pipes night after night, and perhaps let her shop for scarves every once in a while. It is in the introduction of Pyle, however, that their relationship is flung into disarray. Pyle, the "Third Force" as he calls it, is not loyal to either party, but tears them apart. He purports to have Phuong's best interests at heart, but she, too is a casualty of their struggle. In the end, none are victorious, each having their own wounds to bear.
Greene's novel stands on its own as a piece of adventure fiction, a romance and murder mystery set across the sea in a foreign land. Deeper, however, it could be a poignant commentary on the development of the strife in Indochina at the time. Though all parties involved purport to have the best interests of Vietnam at heart, it is Vietnam that ultimately suffers along with the controlling parties that are to come."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
