The Quiet American

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According to legend, Pyle is based on General Edward Landsdale, a real-life proponent of guerilla warfare and counterinsurgency who showed up at many of the battlefields that littered the margins of the Cold War. This appears to be a misconception).

For parents who are considering sharing “The Quiet American” with their children, this section provides a comprehensive guide to help determine if the book and movie are suitable for all ages. We explore the themes, content, and level of maturity required to fully appreciate and understand the story. By providing an overview of potential sensitive topics and discussing the artistic merits of the work, we aim to assist parents in making informed decisions about introducing their children to “The Quiet American.” Buying Guide and Gift Ideas: For Fans of the Book and Movie I am of the generation raised when being patriotic was the default: we dutifully recited the Pledge every school day, stood at parades when the flag went by, etc. etc. We were taught that the U.S. was unquestioningly on the “right side” in every conflict, and that we were against tyranny, and definitely always pro-freedom and democracy, while the “other side” was oppressive, authoritarian, and they were the “bad guys.” Scott Anderson, historian and author of Lawrence In Arabia, turns his focus to the Cold War era and the development of the espionage industry under the CIA in The Quiet Americans. He agreed wholeheartedly, at a rather morbid distance from orthodoxy, with T.S. Eliot’s image of the beleaguered and battered Word of God at the non-retaliative heart of existence:But the triangle of Fowler, Pyle and Phuong was even more intricate. That is the beauty of it, how they dealt with each other and their desires openly: The four men profiled, who cut their teeth through spy missions during World War II, were directly engaged in the effort after the war to penetrate the Soviet Union and its satellite Eastern European nations and to overthrow Communist rule.

Fowler has a live-in lover, Phuong, who is only 20 years old and was previously a dancer at The Arc-en-Ciel (Rainbow) on Jaccareo Road, in Cholon. Her sister's intent is to arrange a marriage for Phuong that will benefit herself and her family. The sister disapproves of their relationship because Fowler is already married and an atheist. At a dinner with Fowler and Phuong, Pyle meets her sister, who immediately starts questioning Pyle about his viability for marriage with Phuong. Greene set The Quiet American in the same historical moment in which he wrote, which was the early 1950s. These were the final days of French colonialism in the region, which was then known as Indochina (now Southeast Asia). In Vietnam in the early 1950s, the French were engaged in a protracted battle with a communist coalition known as the Viet Minh. This homegrown force fought for independence from the French Empire. This battle with communist forces in Vietnam also mirrored another battle that played out at the same time in Korea. In the final days of World War II, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded the northern territory of Korea, which had been under Japanese control since 1910. After the Soviets liberated Korea north of the 38th , United States forces moved in to occupy the southern territory. Because of Cold War tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea was split into two distinct political dominions with separate governments. On 25 June 1950, Soviet and Chinese forces from North Korea invaded South Korea, which precipitated an armed conflict that lasted until the combatants signed an armistice in July 1953. An officer in the US Air Force who later worked for the CIA, Edward Lansdale (1908-87) gained fame in the early 1950s for his collaboration with Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay in crushing the Huk insurgency. It was during that experience that Lansdale pioneered the techniques of counterinsurgency and psychological warfare that he later brought to bear in South Viernam with Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Frank Wisner, the most senior of the four, had the longest CIA career, beginning in postwar Europe and extending to initiatives in Latin America and Asia.

This is a cautionary tale about the involvement of America and Britain in the French War in Vietnam. Reading this book was a great way to learn more about the First Indochina War. The novel implicitly questions the foundations of growing American involvement in Vietnam in the 1950's and is unique in its exploration of the subject topic through the links among its three main characters - Fowler, Pyle and Phuong. But what he discovered is that frequently we do not have the luxury of staying neutral. Fowler realizes late in his affair that he loved Phuong, also discover that life sometimes has its way of forcing on us to make a stand. God: It surprised me how many times one of the characters asked another: Do you believe in God? Again the contrast: Pyle grew up in one of those New England towns going to a white-steepled church. We know where cynical Fowler stands. And yet, we have heard about Greene being considered a ‘Catholic novelist.’ Fowler’s admiration shows for the Catholic nuns and priests who have by necessity evolved into nurses, doctors and aid workers. The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by English author Graham Greene which depicts French colonialism in Vietnam being uprooted by the Americans during the 1950's.

Anderson points to Eisenhower's New Look policy as the source of many of the worst miscalculations during the early years of the Cold War. New Look held that the nature of war had changed such that a large standing army was no longer the best way to intimidate enemies. Instead, Eisenhower invested in the threat of "massive retaliation" (i.e. nuclear weapons) as well as covert operations, which were seen as a relatively inexpensive way to fight. So the US avoided overt military action in the Soviet Union and its satellite states because of the risk that it would escalate into nuclear war -- a risk that the US created itself (at least in part) by way of the New Look policy. This led directly to the many proxy wars of the time as well as to inconsistent application of US military resources. As Anderson sees him, Lansdale was “one of the most celebrated and influential military intelligence figures of the coming Cold War, a theorist who painstakingly studied and then sought to emulate the enemy. So vast was his impact that he would serve as the thinly disguised protagonist of one best-selling book, The Ugly American, and quite possibly of a second, The Quiet American.” And a CIA director later named him as one of the ten greatest spies in modern history. He retired from the air force in 1963 as a major general but continued working thereafter with the CIA. Innocence is a kind of insanity” “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.” Why indeed? "We are fools," I said, "when we love. I was terrified of losing her. I thought I saw her changing – I don't know if she really was, but I couldn't bear the uncertainty any longer. I ran towards the finish just as a coward runs towards the enemy and wins a medal. I wanted to get death over." In the mid to late 60s, I was in college studying history as I watched the war in Vietnam prompt millions to react in various ways, but it was clear that the days of blindly trusting the government to be on the side of good/freedom/right were OVER. A professor of mine once used the analogy that the U.S. was like a big, dumb, lumbering football player who only wants to win the game, make the score, or stop the opposition, and lamented the way we could only watch as that player went stumbling around the globe, just making things worse. My own reaction to the disillusionment was to quit school and marry a Navy man in the summer of 1968. (not the smartest choice I could have made). I had hoped this book would help me regain some of optimism about our country’s future as in 2020 we wobble toward an election while battling COVID and wildfires, with a lunatic in charge.Anderson doesn't just recount historical events here, though. The strongest aspect of the book is Anderson's evaluations of the lasting impacts of those decisions and actions by the CIA and past administrations: the rift between Republicans and Democrats and the mistrust of just about every other country in the world towards the US (excepting the UK perhaps)- to name just a few. It is a refreshing read and I highly recommend it to anyone curious about how the hell we ended up here. This is certainly no glorification of the CIA and its many failures are documented in rich detail along with some successes. Equally, this is a balanced account free from the conspiracy theory tropes of contemporary culture, describing the CIA's early idealism, its limitations and internal disputes and detailing how the political masters in the White House ultimately determined which CIA plans proceeded and which never saw the light of day. Thomas Fowler is a British journalist in his fifties who has been covering the French war in Vietnam for more than two years. He has become a very jaded and cynical man. He meets Alden Pyle and finds him naïve. Throughout the book Fowler is often caught in lies and sometimes there may be speculation that he is lying to himself. Fowler's relationship with Vietnamese woman Phuong often intensifies the conflict of the story, especially between Fowler and Pyle.