Review of The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Before I get too far along, if you're the sort of irresponsible reader who (like me) has gone this far without reading The Quiet American, be advised that this review contains spoilers. Normally, I don't get too worked up over ruining the suspense of something over fifty years old, and canonical (or if it's not on the short list, I agree that it deserves to be), but here's one where the ending caught up to me late. It took the author's hand to make me realize that there was depth to the mystery of Alden Pyle's death, and I'd offer another reader the chance to still get that feeling of awakening as Greene bolts his so theme neatly into place. But that theme is a lot of what I feel like discussing, so consider yourself duly warned.

The novel takes place in Viet Nam during the French occupation, rather notably before the American one, and it's a nation whirling in colonial and civil conflict, with bloody front lines protecting unsteady cosmopolitan zones of Vietnamese urbanites, Chinese businessmen, French authorities, American missions of various types, and any number of international correspondents. Pyle, as the title says, is a quiet American, a bookish, well-bred kid from Boston who is set apart from his loud, uncultured countrymen by what the narrator, Thomas Fowler, repeatedly calls innocence. Part of Greene's brilliance is in setting up a contrast between what's shown and what's told, and to pick apart Pyle as a character (about half of my scribbles are attempts at dissecting him) takes some serious wringing of that noun. Pyle is far from guiltless, and if he's deluded, he's got unusual blindnesses, it's not right to say he's naive about human suffering. Here's Pyle poling his barge alone in the dark up a river swollen with floating corpses, here he is wooing Fowler's girlfriend, there he is reducing lives to bloody bits exactly as planned. Pyle does those things competently, and without damage to his self image. His ego is not fragile, and if there's innocence, it lies wrapped up in childish beliefs about the value of love, chastity, friendship, the magic of growing up, and, perhaps especially, of Democracy. His courtship must be played out on a fair field with unspoken rules, a friendly competition, but the lives of soldiers and bystanders are beneath his notice. If Pyle were written as a caricature, he'd be funny, but he's taken seriously by Fowler and certainly taken seriously by himself. If his warped morality is an affectation, Greene never lets the shell break, not even under the force of Fowler's exquisitely bitter verbal assaults.

Pyle's interest in war is an academic one, some febrile understanding of grand currents of ideas (democracy and communism, a "third force"), and Greene is good at pointing out how reputed grand designs reduced to practice: young soldiers huddling in a guard tower, casually murdered families, a peasant boat obliterated without warning from the sky, the banal lies about necessity of murder. There is no countervailing notion of nobility of the soldier's duty, and the stronger message comes from the fact that Fowler has a better view of the civilian sphere, both in terms of policy and of consequences, he can see how the former is empty, and the latter is hopelessly violent. Fowler is a reporter, a professional cynic, and maintains a stated neutrality on the conflict. He witnesses horrors with a steady eye, but every one adds up and weighs on him. On the outside, it could be believed that his betrayal of Pyle (there's the spoiler) was over romantic contention, but it's clear by the text that the man had seen one too many children killed for idealistic ends. Pyle is not the man that's forced to grow up in this novel.

The political and the romantic are not separate conflicts. It's important here that Pyle is American, Fowler is English, and Phuong, their mutual love interest, is Vietnamese. I read it as representing a larger contention between the old colonialists (as Pyle calls the British) and the new, and a great deal of the mixed-up love and contempt that Fowler feels for the young man is brotherly. They share some common traits, their bad dancing overlaps in their respective pursuits of Phuong, they keep themselves apart from their peers (from other reporters and other Americans respectively), and undertake a patronizing sort of love for Phuong, neither quite able to understand her character. And they are undeniably drawn to one another. Pyle feels a depth of friendship for Fowler that is incongruous with how the men treat one another, and Fowler, in his personal asides, takes more protective notions about Pyle's evident guilelessness than the young man earns. Together, they sniff and bat paws like contenders for alpha male status, but remain members of the same pack. If Phuong also represents her nation, her character remains unpenetrated by either of the overly intellectual men, and for the abuse she receives, she remains lovely and simple. But surely Fowler is as wrong to regard Phuong as innocent as he is Pyle.

On that allegorical plane (sorry Kevin), it can't have been lost on Fowler (who'd reported in India) that Britain has as bloody hands as any Empire. Indeed, his self-awareness is his misery. While Greene, through the journalist, makes brilliant rhetorical points on the American character, the difference between the older and younger world-spanning brothers is one of style, the distaste is for the particular set of lies Americans tell themselves as they repeat another bloody cycle of imperial history. Fowler's cynicism is based on experience, his contempt is for youth as much as for anything else, and not just Pyle's youth, and maybe not just America's. Near the end of the novel, Fowler finally sees fit to reminisce on his own idealism in context of the dead young American's. Fowler claims neutrality in the local events, but it's really just a different version of Pyle's put-upon innocence, a more developed, grown-up version of it. Fowler's neutrality, his love, his very horror at the conflict, also have the consequence of murder.

At the heart of a cynic, you'll often find a broken romantic. Greene's touch is often droll, and while love, pain and guilt are what this novel is about, the main characters habitually hide these things behind various masculine (and probably undiscovered feminine) disguises. It's spare, it's bitter, it's witty, but it's not that Hemingway he-man crap, there's no hidden nobility in the pose. When Fowler admits that he hurts, that he causes hurt, it's the more powerful. This is a novel to break through detachment.

ADDENDUM: Okay, so I haven't seen the most recent movie adaptation, but I'm interested. Michael Caine is a brilliant choice for Fowler--I can't think of anyone who could better communicate the cynicism, the emotion, and the killer arguments--but unfortunately he needs to be about thirty years younger. I like the idea of Brendan Frasier as Pyle, he looks right, and he may even be an underrated talent. I mean, he really carried Encino Man.