The Quiet American - Graham Greene BOOK REVIEW

The Quiet American by Graham Greene is a perfect novel [Music] good afternoon everyone welcome to benefit book reviews I'm your host Clifford Lee Sergeant great to see you as always hope you're doing well get that coffee you know what time it is haircut time delicious if you enjoyed these videos please consider supporting us on patreon more info and link below thanks a bunch how are you good to see you beautiful day here in Florida the sun is shining on the palms the squirrels are running on the branches the lizards are always doing push-ups have you seen these lizards in Florida they do this weird thing they Scamper around everywhere they do these like weird like push-ups to ward off Predators I assume anyways ladies and gentlemen I'd like to direct your attention to what I believe might be a perfect book The Quiet American by the English novelist Graham green Tempo style wit depth maturity humor length sincerity truth atmosphere and the Art of it all the Quiet American by Graham Greene is a perfect novel there are very very few of them this is one of them it will be one of the best books I've read this year and it's one of the best books I've ever read I absolutely loved it review over enjoy your day it's an expat novel a murder mystery and an anti-war novel as well as an existential portrait and a kind of Bittersweet romance concerning an aging man infatuated with a much younger woman it was published in 1955. I think that was the year the Vietnam War officially started and that War lasted for nearly 20 goddamn years I didn't know that we have a real habit As Americans of these multi-decade useless Wars don't we anybody else catch that yeah I thought you did you're smart it's definitely like a travel novel you know it's an exceptional expat story it makes you want to travel but in order to travel properly one must be well equipped and that is why I'd like to tell you about today's awesome sponsor bespoke post bespoke post is a monthly membership club delivering awesome boxes of top shelf goods from under the radar Brands it's free to join you can skip a month or cancel any time every month they introduce their members to cool new products outdoor gear barware home and kitchen goods clothing and more even live oysters based on a preference quiz they fill out every box has around 70 worth of goods inside but cost you only a fraction of the value you can preview your box before it shipped 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Cherry I think there is a very nice old fashioned in my future a bar spoon with a muddler for stirring and muddling as it were and all of that shall be going into my Weekender bag along with books who needs clothes one could always use a good stiff drink wherever one is headed especially if the climate is like Vietnam or Florida where I'm at of course they certainly don't have to include alcohol the mines certainly will please drink responsibly everyone so get 20 off your first box today by going to bespokeost.com forward slash better20 or just click on the link below in the description box and enter the code better20 at checkout supporting sponsors is a great way to support this show much appreciated thank you so much the corpse of a young man The Quiet American that the story's title refers to is found floating in a river in Vietnam in Saigon what happened how did you get here this is the beginning of Graham Green's short Masterpiece it's a Vietnam War story but it's an early Vietnam War Story it's not the 60s and 70s it's actually the 50s it's a story of an 8 political expat reporter in Saigon named Thomas Fowler an Englishman in his 50s who is in love with an 18 or 20 year old Vietnamese woman I can't remember named fuang Thomas is married however not as he puts it to her his wife who is separated from but is still married to refuses to Grant him a divorce because of her religion which is a you know Catholic this keeps Fowler from leaving and taking form with him so Fowler is doing his thing drinking a bunch and smoking opium pipes prepared for him expertly by phuong and uh enter The Quiet American Alden Pyle naive patriotic optimistic essentially deluded drunk on American idealism who wishes to be called Alvin by Thomas who refuses because Pyle has certain associations as he puts it which he deems appropriate and rightly so because Pyle is moving in on his woman because you know he can marry her he's a young guy he's a young American he's a terrible dancer but he has the ability to take her away and I mean he's Harvard educated his father is famous he's got money um Fowler knows he doesn't really stand a chance he just happens to be kind of a okay not a just um I don't know kind of adult kind of a square but a dangerous Square you know what I mean and far more dangerous than either he or Thomas realizes a square who is working for the CIA it turns out and really believes his own I found out something interesting uh very interesting indeed the 2001 American adaptation Stars the inimitable but addictively imitatable Michael Caine in the role of Thomas perfect casting by the way though I haven't seen the full film and Brendan Fraser as Pyle who needs no introduction as the caveman from the early 90s polyshore Masterpiece Encino Man which as many of you already know is getting a new release this year in the Criterion Collection well the first test screening of this film was uh in September 2001 on the 10th did pretty well after the next day not so much continued to go down down and down and down so the release was put on hold I think people thought it had anti-American sentiment just like when the book came out and then guess what we entered into another 20-year useless War now ain't that something now what's very interesting about the book is that it sets you up believing that Thomas the apolitical journalist doesn't like to get involved is kallus Jaded and indifferent my kind of guy piles high on American idealism whereas Fowler is high on opium he smokes opium frequently he drinks like a fish he's extremely witty but he off you know he's had it with politics he's seen where it all goes whereas Pyle is this uh kind of passionate but naive do-gooder a real proponent of American democracy an All-American hero and I mean at one point in the book he saves Thomas's life he appears to be somebody who's not at all indifferent to human suffering and how wrong we are shown to be so as the author of dog soldiers Robert Stone discusses in the introduction at this point in time the French are in the process of losing colonial power in Vietnam they're up against the Communists it's not going well pile under the influence of this American Author York Harding who has a lot of fancy ideas with no real experience on the ground to back it up insists on this third force to be employed in Vietnam neither French nor communist American piles swallow this rhetoric Hook Line and Sinker it turns out Pyle is in the CIA he's importing plastic and molds for bombs he has a part in the orchestration of this horrific bombing that Thomas Witnesses in the book's most disturbing scene you know he's responsible for the deaths of civilians and in perhaps one of the most memorable scenes of the book same scene is more concerned about the blood on his shoes Jews saying that he must get them cleaned before he visits the minister for him these are simply the casualties of fighting for democracy and they most certainly didn't die in vain in his line of thinking it wasn't a bad idea mistakes were made that's all so who killed Pyle I'll leave her for you to find out so why did I love The Quiet American the economical style that emphasizes Green's wit juxtaposed with the poignant reflections of our main character Fowler which I can only assume reflect the views of the author himself you'd have this mystery story this kind of a thriller almost this beautiful country you know in this foreign culture these foreign for westerners with these beautiful descriptions and in the middle of all of it you have these Reflections from this journalist on life and death based on what he's seen and it's perfectly done and it's so clever he is so biting and scathing and witty turns out however that while Fowler is an atheist green was a Catholic surprisingly uh it's a yeah I think he I think I read that he describes himself as a Catholic agnostic how much of one seems difficult to say the book suffered some blowback upon release I think as it was deemed by some anti-American well I suppose this was a novel idea at the time but the whole idea of America being this meddling presence in its insistence of spreading democracy in so-called third world Nations is not something that's gone away if anything has just become worse and is certainly worthy of criticism does that mean that it's always the case when America intervenes or gets involved of course not but it's often enough that one is right to be suspicious if America is interested in invading another country I think the reasons ought to be under great scrutiny Pyle is the perfect metaphor for the bumbling catastrophe with good intentions and Fowler is a perfect cynic to combat him yet it's not so simple right it's not just foul or good pile bad and here comes the ambiguity which adds an entirely different dimension to the novel several different dimensions Pyle at one point saves Fowler's life much to Fowler Chagrin in the beginning but there you have it and there's some other stuff that occurs that makes one go oh wow this is not it's not obvious what's what so what inevitably happens is neither good nor bad nor right or wrong but resides in some strange nebulous gray area like in between which I feel is so often the case in stories of War but this doesn't feel at all like any other story you've read this is a perfectly crafted tale by a master something most authors would kill to produce an accomplishment worthy of trading one's Everlasting soul and it's really difficult for me to say anything insightful or unique on the book as I'm sure all the smart people in the world have said something about this book already I mean it's it's so good I think what I mean by ambiguity is what this article on NPR by Pico ire put much better the two male characters are different versions of a single person in dialogue with him or herself right both of them are just the people we might be at different stages of our lives so pile is the idealistic young man stage Fowler is a cynical apolitical journalist phase they're neither holy pure nor totally corrupted if those terms even mean anything which they really don't to me they're like us which is a complex idiosyncratic mixture at any given time in their life it's what I love about the novel it it shows authentic human behavior and what's interesting is that all three of the characters represent the perspectives of England America and Vietnam or maybe Asia so Graham green was an English writer and journalist who himself at one point worked for MI6 the British intelligence service and his friend and Supervisor was none other than the notorious double-agent Kim philby who was working for both the British and the Russians on Wikipedia I found this magnificent description detailing some facets of Graham Green from a piece in the nation that magazine The Nation according to them he was a stranger with no shortage of calling cards devout Catholic lifelong adulterer pulpey hack canonical novelist self-destructive meticulously disciplined deliriously romantic bitterly cynical moral relativist strict Theologian Salon communist closet monarchist civilized to a stuffy fault and lose to drugged out distraction Anti-Imperialist Crusader and post-colonial parasite self-excurating and self-aggrandizing just to name a few that was a brilliant piece of writing I'm very jealous he was a magnificent author that's not an exaggeration at all and this is the only book of his I've read his book The Third Man was also adapted into the excellent film of course and he wrote the screenplay along with the fellow who also directed and starred in the film which would be the legendary or some wells for me the most powerful parts of the book were actually not the uh the bits about war it was about aging it was it was about um approaching death and this you know what is probably going to be the the last relationship of Fowler's life because if he loses Huang he writes to a still slash ex-wife whom he's asking for a proper divorce it would be for him the beginning of death I wished I had never heard the rumor about fatzian or that the rumor had dealt with any other town in the one place in the north where my friendship with a naval officer would allow me to slip in uncensored uncontrolled a newspaper scoop not in those days when all the world wanted to read about was Korea the chance of death why should I want to die when fuang slept beside me every night but I knew the answer to that question from childhood I had never believed in permanence and yet I had longed for it always I was afraid of losing happiness this month next year fuang would leave me if not next year in three years death was the only absolute value in my world lose life and one would lose nothing again forever I envy those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them I felt that they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent death was far more certain than God and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of Love dying the nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference with lift I could never have been a pacifist to kill a man was surely to Grant him an immeasurable benefit oh yes people always everywhere love to their enemies it was their friends they preserved for pain and Acuity man it's almost like on the level of sailing you know in a journey to the end of the night it's it's really really hard hitting he's he doesn't hold any punches but he does it in a way that is extremely it's very English it's very subtle very like um it's not a gunshot it's not an explosion it's a quiet slit of the throat the razor there's something emotionally devastated and exhausted about Fowler and yeah bitter and cynical and jaded whatever but still charming and there's something he loves about the people in Vietnam the city the culture the drugs and most of all phuong it shines through and for all of us who are sick to death of the world politics and most people it's perfectly relatable one says the world I'll do my own thing until it lands on one's doorstep but it's not even that simple right because his action isn't a political action or if it is you can only say it is indirectly his his action is is a personal action it's very very personal does this mean Fowler should have been more of a patriot more of an activist or this or that more politically engaged and involved absolutely not in my opinion because that's the road that leads to becoming pile for those who think that it's as simple as spreading democracy as if it's some sort of miracle cure you can just dump out all over the world as Michael Caine says in the film adaptation things are more complicated than they see in his most selfish evil action in the book ironically Fowler is heroically taking aside and standing for something but it's indirect it's in fact nearly unbearable for him the repercussions of his actions such are the decisions made during wartime it's a very cynical reaction to uh when one says you know one has to choose a side there's a very famous line in the book that says one has to take sides if one is to remain human and uh Fowler does take a side but in his taking aside he completely flips that statement on its head I mean it's it's so there's so many it's like a giant you right to that statement even though he doesn't his motives are at heart not political though the personal with political repercussions better than food without a doubt so you should read it fans of both Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith and a stone mentioned in the intro Casablanca which in fact I'm going to go see this weekend in the theater first time on the big screen for me I'm very excited yeah but between Heart of Darkness The Talented Mr Ripley and Casablanca it lies somewhere between those three Anthony Bourdain was a big fan so what did I dislike about it nothing it's one of the best books I've ever read I mean you got to get a hold of this thing it's so so good such a solid read and it'll take you like a weekend it's a very it's 180 on the dot I think I think it's only 180 yeah 180 on the dot undoubtedly one of the best things I've read hmm coffee time for those of you who are new thank you very much for stopping by and watching I take all the names of the patrons on patreon who have donated five dollars or more per video to the show I play some games in this mason jar for every review I do I send whoever wins a hard copy of the book I'm reviewing plus a bag of delicious coffee roasted by yours truly and the coffee is delicious if you'd like to help support the show we sincerely appreciate it thank you you can click on the link below and donate five dollars or more per video or go to patreon.com forward slash books are better than food you can find more info about the various patreon tiers and the rewards in the description below thanks a bunch unfortunately international shipping is not included thank you very much to all the patrons and best of luck okay here we go foreign Oscar Oscar s thanks a bunch Oscar really appreciate it you're going to receive the Quiet American by Graham green plus some delicious coffee and I hope you love both cheers Please Subscribe if you have not already and hit the thumbs up if you enjoyed this and always remember to bring a book wherever you go seriously you never know when you're gonna need that damn book you'd be surprised all right take care of yourselves have a great night talk to you soon ciao

Channel: Better Than Food

Views: 22,687

Keywords: better than food, cliff sargent, book reviews, graham greene, the quiet american, vietnam war, michael caine

Id: 8HSOys19mJU

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2022