Graham Greene's despairing, prophetic novel, The Quiet American (1955), was met in the U.S. with, above all, anger at the author’s anti-Americanism and pointed criticism of U.S. interventionism in Vietnam. This didn't go over well in Cold-War, McCarthy-era America. Greene, an Englishman born into the elite professional middle class that was bitter about the post-WWII erosion of its worldwide power as American influence blossomed, wasn’t a fan of Americans, who he saw as crass materialists whose inherent belief in their own goodness masked a darker side their confidence blinded them to.
According to the author, Americans were too preoccupied with their own exceptionalism to understand other people. Thus, America’s well-intentioned interventions in the affairs of other nations were destined to produce disasters like the Vietnam War. Looking back on it, The Quiet American was the first anti-Vietnam war novel, written before the first American soldier was sent there to fight in a proxy battle against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.
The book's narrator, Thomas Fowler, is a mouthpiece for Greene, who was a war correspondent in Vietnam reporting on the French Indochina War in the early-1950s. Fowler’s co-protagonist is an American named Alden Pyle—the “quiet American”—a Harvard graduate who's high on his own supply of Harvard Square ideas on how to fix a complex nation that had been studied from afar. Pyle continually cites a fatuous political theorist—York Harding—whose foreign policy ideas, reflective of any number of Ivy League, pro-interventionist thinkers at the time, are his guiding light. Fowler's a 50ish, opium-smoking cynic with a much younger, beautiful Vietnamese girlfriend, Phuong.
Pyle’s the sort of naive and idealistic American that Greene despised, and it's not a coincidence that Greene chose that name—”piles” is slang for “hemorrhoids”—for this character. Fowler refused Pyle’s request to call him Alden because, as he put it, he liked the “associations” of the name Pyle, an insult that the young American didn't pick up on. Graham took delight in portraying American characters in his many novels and “entertainments” (what he called his less serious books) as buffoons. That's one of his faults as an author. It was an indulgence the author couldn't resist at the time, although he was later to soften his approach to Americans, acknowledging that he'd been too harsh in his depictions of them.
Fowler and Pyle, a CIA agent in Vietnam whose cover is working for the American Economic Aid Mission, become inextricably linked after Pyle falls in love with Phuong. The American sees an opening because Fowler can't marry Phuong because his wife in England won't give him a divorce. The American, a strong proponent of fair play, treats his rival with great deference. Fowler puts on a front of civility while stewing under the surface. But when the truth about how a tragic explosion in Saigon that killed innocent women and children was linked to Pyle’s covert actions, Fowler then feels free to act on his jealousy, even though Pyle saved his life one evening after communist troops had attacked them.
This sort of moral ambiguity is the theme that runs through the novel. Fowler becomes complicit in the murder of Pyle at the hands of the communist Viet Minh, who were fighting the French colonialists to get their nation back. This isn't a spoiler, as Pyle gets killed at the beginning of the novel, with the rest of the story told in flashbacks.
The aging, drug-addled Fowler, who refuses to take sides in the anti-colonialist uprising against the French, is a stand-in for the decaying British empire. Pyle, the strapping young upstart with designs on Greene’s girls, represents the U.S. in its post-WWII ascendence. The under-characterized Phuong, the “disputed territory” is the prize. She's the only one of the three central characters who's certain, from the beginning, to come out a winner. Phuong will go with whoever can best take care of her. This concerns Fowler, who sees his rival as holding all the cards. Pyle’s 32 and single, determined to marry Phuong, and presumably not afflicted with the impotence attendant with opium abuse.
Consistent with his role as the innocent American, Pyle’s still a virgin, which he admits to Fowler. To retain Phuong’s affections, Fowler knows he can't fight fair. He's the realist up against the idealist. The fresh-faced Pyle, with his “wide campus gaze” is, however, determined to make the fight fair, but he ended up dead under a bridge, with the prize—Phuong—going back to Fowler without a moment of hesitation.
The Quiet American is, on the surface, a murder mystery based on a love triangle. Greene uses this familiar fictional framework to tell a cautionary tale about the faulty thinking at the heart of American foreign policy. “God save us always from the innocent and the good,” is what Fowler says to Pyle after the American refuses to acknowledge the immorality of bombings that kill innocent civilians.
This portrayal of Americans as murderers abroad incensed American critics when the book came out. It's a challenge for any American to get through this novel without feeling defensive at times. But if the reader is able to overcome this reflex, Greene reveals many truths about American interventions in Vietnam, Central and Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Seeing America as a negative force in the world is a sentiment held mainly by the Left, which is where the author was, politically. And just as the American Left looks down upon liberals, so did Greene, whose MI6 supervisor was once Kim Philby, British double agent for the Soviet Union. "I have been in India, Pyle," Fowler says, "and I know the harm liberals do.” Greene wrote the introduction to Philby’s memoir, in which he rationalized his former boss’ treason.
Graham Greene brings all of his craftsmanship to this novel, whose prescience makes it as relevant today as it was in 1955. His pacing builds slow-burn suspense, with nary a wasted word in offering keen observations from everyday scenes. The author captures the tone of life in Saigon as the French cling on to a place in society they'll soon lose. There’s sex and drugs, and the Saigon hotels where diplomats mingle with boisterous, hard-drinking journalists. A sense of decay permeates daily life.
The Quiet American predicted 20 years of mayhem and death in Vietnam, all for naught. One of the tragedies of that war was the veterans—many of them broken, both physically and spiritually—who returned home and met with derision. This is what happens when, as Greene suggests, American idealism isn't accompanied with humility. That's what destroyed Alden Pyle, even before he made it back to the States. This, despite what Fowler had said about him: “He was in his element with the whole universe to improve.” Fowler, the impartial cynic, emerged from the melodrama with all he needed out of life—his girl and opium pipe.