I rarely give a 5 star review but I am compelled to do so in this case. The ability to read the 1955 book through the lens of having gone through the entire America Vietnam experience allows for a more informed response to the book. Greene’s novel is so accurately prescient of what eventually happened in Vietnam during America’s involvement. It’s uncanny.
The politics of 1950’s Vietnam are played out in the contrasting views of the young idealistic American Pyle actively and destructively pushing for an American style democracy and much older cynical Fowler who cares only for what peace could mean for the peasants in the rice fields. The war against French colonialism is the backdrop for a love story of both men vying for the same woman, Phong. The older man trying to hang on to Phong and their peaceful relationship and the younger trying to take her away and change her life. Their views on what is best for Phong are metaphorically parallel to their contrasting political views. As is my custom I shall not go into plot detail. Suffice to say that Greene plays this out in exquisite detail with some beautiful writing.
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The Catholic Uses of The Quiet American
Graham Greene converted to Catholicism while courting a woman of his affections, but the influence of Catholic thought upon his writing is well attested, raising the question of what Greene brings to the table for Catholic readers--the self-educated as well as the ministers and educators of the church.In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, Robert Stone observes that the work's "bitterness" came as a surprise to most American Catholic readers. [p. ix] Alden Pyle, the "quiet man" of the title, was the unknowing template of American Exceptionalism before the term had been coined. In the year of publication [1955] every Catholic Church in the United States featured an American flag in its sanctuary [alongside the Vatican flag.] The nation's leading churchman of the time, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, embraced the American military as his own flock. American Catholicism had not yet sorted out its patriotic voice from its prophetic one.Greene, writing the early 1950's, creates a literary figure in Pyle that Cardinal Spellman would have loved and probably even absolved for his idealistic extremes, costly as they were. "The Quiet American" is amazingly prescient of a looming American tragedy barely a decade later, right down to the detail of corrupt Catholic dictators. This novel is a textbook catechism of what happens when Christian believers read the Bible too selectively and forget the eternal truth uttered by Jesus to Pontius Pilate that "my kingdom is not of this world." [John 18:36]The other creation of Green in this work, the weary and cynical journalist Thomas Fowler, is the paradigm of the man who professes to belong to no kingdom, at least none that he would give up his heart for. The lesson we receive from Fowler is never to take the agnostic at his word too seriously. Despite the distractions of wine, women, and opium, something of a conscience can still be raised in the heat of the journalist's moral battle. And, there is not a practicing or absented Catholic alive who cannot relate to Fowler's words which close the tale, "but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry."
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Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2023
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2020
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2021
In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, Robert Stone observes that the work's "bitterness" came as a surprise to most American Catholic readers. [p. ix] Alden Pyle, the "quiet man" of the title, was the unknowing template of American Exceptionalism before the term had been coined. In the year of publication [1955] every Catholic Church in the United States featured an American flag in its sanctuary [alongside the Vatican flag.] The nation's leading churchman of the time, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, embraced the American military as his own flock. American Catholicism had not yet sorted out its patriotic voice from its prophetic one.
Greene, writing the early 1950's, creates a literary figure in Pyle that Cardinal Spellman would have loved and probably even absolved for his idealistic extremes, costly as they were. "The Quiet American" is amazingly prescient of a looming American tragedy barely a decade later, right down to the detail of corrupt Catholic dictators. This novel is a textbook catechism of what happens when Christian believers read the Bible too selectively and forget the eternal truth uttered by Jesus to Pontius Pilate that "my kingdom is not of this world." [John 18:36]
The other creation of Green in this work, the weary and cynical journalist Thomas Fowler, is the paradigm of the man who professes to belong to no kingdom, at least none that he would give up his heart for. The lesson we receive from Fowler is never to take the agnostic at his word too seriously. Despite the distractions of wine, women, and opium, something of a conscience can still be raised in the heat of the journalist's moral battle. And, there is not a practicing or absented Catholic alive who cannot relate to Fowler's words which close the tale, "but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry."
The Catholic Uses of The Quiet American
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2021
Graham Greene converted to Catholicism while courting a woman of his affections, but the influence of Catholic thought upon his writing is well attested, raising the question of what Greene brings to the table for Catholic readers--the self-educated as well as the ministers and educators of the church.Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2021
In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, Robert Stone observes that the work's "bitterness" came as a surprise to most American Catholic readers. [p. ix] Alden Pyle, the "quiet man" of the title, was the unknowing template of American Exceptionalism before the term had been coined. In the year of publication [1955] every Catholic Church in the United States featured an American flag in its sanctuary [alongside the Vatican flag.] The nation's leading churchman of the time, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, embraced the American military as his own flock. American Catholicism had not yet sorted out its patriotic voice from its prophetic one.
Greene, writing the early 1950's, creates a literary figure in Pyle that Cardinal Spellman would have loved and probably even absolved for his idealistic extremes, costly as they were. "The Quiet American" is amazingly prescient of a looming American tragedy barely a decade later, right down to the detail of corrupt Catholic dictators. This novel is a textbook catechism of what happens when Christian believers read the Bible too selectively and forget the eternal truth uttered by Jesus to Pontius Pilate that "my kingdom is not of this world." [John 18:36]
The other creation of Green in this work, the weary and cynical journalist Thomas Fowler, is the paradigm of the man who professes to belong to no kingdom, at least none that he would give up his heart for. The lesson we receive from Fowler is never to take the agnostic at his word too seriously. Despite the distractions of wine, women, and opium, something of a conscience can still be raised in the heat of the journalist's moral battle. And, there is not a practicing or absented Catholic alive who cannot relate to Fowler's words which close the tale, "but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry."
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Humility grace and warmth in wartime uncertainty
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PLASTICS AND THE GRADUATE
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