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Title: The Quiet American: Text and Criticism (Viking Critical Library) by Graham Greene, John Clark Pratt ISBN: 0-14-024350-X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An intriguing piece
Comment: (This review refers to the Viking Critical Library edition, edited by John Clark Pratt)
Graham Greene's novel of Pyle, the "quiet American", employed by a barely-disguised fronting organisation of the CIA, narrated by Fowler, a British journalist who comes across by turns as weary and worldly, is immensely interesting. In it, Greene offers up perhaps his most incisive and insightful political commentary, treating the danger of allowing people guided solely by ideology and schools of academic thought to be responsible for intelligence fieldwork. Pyle, a graduate of Harvard, goes into Indochina, believing intensely in the necessity of enabling a "third column", General The's men, and employing them as an American proxy force.
Whether or not Pyle himself sees the implicit incompatibility of this abstract idea and reality is never quite clear: certainly Pyle plays witness to the destruction that his attempts to mobilise a third column bring about. He is not subject, though, to the gross revulsion at the wanton destruction of life that Fowler is. Equally certainly, Pyle's political views cost him his life: open to question, still, is whether or not Pyle himself was ever conscious of his fallacies, or if he remains blinded throughout. Rather than being a novel of a man's moral revelations, or telling of his relationship with the Divine, "The Quiet American" is far more a parable.
Greene's structure, his combined simplicity and complexity, and the thematic relevance of this novel, render it a deserving read. Additionally, the chronologies and commentaries upon foreign involvement in Indochina/Vietnam are both valuable and blessedly concise, and the collected reviews and critcal commentaries upon the novel serve as valuable tool for understanding.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Pitfalls of Idealism
Comment: Greene's The Quiet American is powerful and moving and anyone who desires to better understand the mindset of American policymakers at the outset of the United States' deepened involvement in Indochina. Greene writes with the candor and insight of a seasoned overseas correspondant and shows the ideals and idealism that propelled Vietnamese and American interests to tragically clash. Greene portrays the characters in the novel in a manner in which they are complex and very real and not soundbytes and stereotypes that confront us in other books and in the current news media.
A valuable bonus of the Viking Critical Library edition are the essays at the end of the book that provide additional detail to Greene's story. In addition to reviews of the book in the context of US diplomacy, espionage and counterinsurgency, of particular worth is the brief history of American military involvement in the late 1950s/early 1960s in Indochina by Frank Futrell, former Historian of the Air Force. Futrell is knowledgeable and a prolific yet very readable writer, and his 14-page essay at the end of the book serves as a stark epilogue to the novel.
Rating: 5
Summary: Perhaps Mr. Greene's Best, along with "The Third Man"
Comment: No doubt Mr. Greene is among the very best politcial writers ever, and this is probably his best political novel, eerily predicting events of many years later. His locale descriptions, and psychic feel for his characters make all his books worthwhile. The "Quiet" American, a young and naive Ivy Leaguer, is convinced his modern ideas can save Vietnam from inevitable chaos. Needless to say, he comes to a very rude awakening. Another great classic in the world of Graham Greene!
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Title:The Quiet American ASIN: B00005JLXB Publisher: Miramax Home Entertainment Pub. Date: 29 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.99 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $26.09 |
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Title: The Quiet American (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) by Graham Greene ISBN: 0140185003 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Learning for a Diverse World : Using Critical Theory to Read and Write About Literature (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) by Lois Tyson ISBN: 0815337744 Publisher: Garland Publishing Pub. Date: August, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War by W. D. Ehrhart, H. Bruce Franklin ISBN: 0870239589 Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: Collected Short Stories by Graham Greene ISBN: 0140186123 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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