I had seen the 2002 movie based on the book when it had come out.
But Greene’s novels I had, for some unfathomable reason, allowed to pass me by.
Greene was one of my parents’ favourite authors, along with AJ Cronin, Somerset Maugham and John Steinbeck. But, until two years ago, I had failed to read a single Greene novel. One wonders why. They are short, easy to read, beautifully written and on subjects that grab my attention. There has been, in recent times, a Graham Greene reading rush among my spouse and at least two of my children. But there it is. I have failed to get aboard.
After my famous trip to Mexico for Seb and Beca’s wedding, my chamber colleague, Robbie, lent me his copy of The Power and the Glory, a novel about an alcoholic priest in the free and sovereign state of Tabasco in the 1930s when being a priest in Tabasco was not good for one’s longevity. That was my introduction to the Greene novel. It should have been enough to have me attacking the whole anthology.
The Quiet American is set in Saigon, post General Lattre and prior to Dien Bien Phu, perhaps, 1952. It commences at its conclusion and is, accordingly, told in retrospect by its British journalist narrator, Fowler.
The Quiet American is a love triangle taking place against the background of a vicious and complicated war. Fowler’s woman, Phuong, which means Phoenix, leaves him for Alden Pyle, the eponymous quiet American. This is happening, however, amid a strange and accidental friendship between the two men: Fowler, the “reporter” who withholds judgement and refuses to commit to position or side and Pyle, the innocent ideologue, who means good to all but blunders into creating a savage mayhem.
Zadie Smith calls the set of relationships a shady triad. Ms. Smith points out that the three characters’ contrasting lives and personalities are balanced, one against another, such that the reader never feels comfortable to make a final judgement upon, or in favour of, any one of the three characters.
I stumbled upon Zadie Smith’s excellent essay on Greene and The Quiet American. My friend, A., and I often chat in a coffee line or a lift. We seldom chat about books. It was an inspired idea then for A. to ask me what I was reading when I was still only half way through The Quiet American. I told him. He had finished it a few days earlier and it was A. who recommended Ms. Smith’s essay which was the introduction to the edition of the book he was reading.
Ms. Smith emphasises the subtle lines which are used to portray the characters in a Greene novel. She compares Greene’s work to that of Henry James, apparently, a favourite author of Greene’s childhood. Certainly, the reader of The Quiet American cannot trust Fowler’s descriptions of himself. Throughout the novel, Fowler describes himself as a reporter, not a leader writer. He does not take sides. He does not commit to ideas or people. Though eschewing cynicism, he is a reporter who simply calls the action as it happens, without blame or justification.
If the novel is the chronicling of a finding of commitment by Fowler, the reader is no less convinced of the innocence (or quietness) of Pyle by the end of the novel. Is Fowler one who not only fails to know himself but one who gets it wrong even when he is simply calling the action? The unreliable narrator places the novelist and reader at worse than arms’ length. No judgement can be trusted and the reader is left still puzzling, weeks and months after the final page is turned and read.
Perhaps, Ms. Smith’s most useful insight concerns the journalistic style with which Greene relates his novels. Critics should stop denying the journalistic nature of Greene’s novels, she says, but, rather, claim him as the greatest journalist of all time.
I am drawn to Greene’s turn of phrase. I fall in love with the quotable sentences that permeate the book and are capable of turning up in quotation books everywhere.
The innocence thesis is set out early in the book. Pyle is innocent but Fowler, as narrator, is aware of the dangers that innocence brings: “It never occurred to me that there was greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm”.
And on time and revenge: “Time has its revenges, but revenges seem so often sour. 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?” What chance does a reader have on that premise?
Zadie Smith said that, reading the novel again, she was made conscious of all the Pyles of the world and the dangers they pose and the evil they do.
Though I grew up in confronting the Vietnam War, I felt I obtained a better understanding of that (later) conflict and the country, itself, from The Quiet American than I did from any of my reading of the time.
If, like me, Greene somehow slipped past you, rectify that wrong next chance you get. If you are an old friend, re-visit the pages of this novel, at least. Among all the subtleties and uncertainties of characters and morality, we take plenty away from Mr. Greene’s writing. Maybe, he is, indeed, the great journalist.
Almost uniformly, the Blokes loved The Quirt American. Maybe, they, also, had inherited their appreciation from their parents. And we endured the four point loss in the football game. Maybe, we had learned that life is complex and winning streaks that extend to nine cannot be expected.
One more happy phrase to carry with you through the day: “There was starlight, but no moonlight. Moonlight reminds me of a mortuary and the cold wash of an unshaded globe over a marble slab, but starlight is alive and never still, it is almost as if someone in those vast spaces is trying to communicate a message of good will, for even the names of stars are friendly.”
Even when your team loses.
Stephen Keim
