Book Review: THE QUIET AMERICAN by Graham Greene

The Quiet American by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Rooms don't change... only the heart decays."

This former M16 spy-turned-journalist's reputation as supposedly one of the greatest "Catholic" 20th century authors precedes him, and so when this slim volume showed up for sale in a secondhand online bookshop, I excitedly typed "Mine please!"

Masterfully written. Objectively speaking, I think it deserves 5 stars, but I subtracted one because it was not my cup of tea. Realistic depictions of the Vietnam war aren't usually my weekend book pick, but it speaks to the the skill of the author that he hooked this reluctant reader right from the start.

Published in 1955, the book starts with an American civilian murdered in the depths of a tropical Saigon night, and I felt to my bones that I needed to understand WHY, and WHO was guilty.

"You cannot exist unless you have the power to alter the future."

This being Greene, it's not a typical whodunit. He shows how murderously dangerous certain ideas are, when enacted by well-meaning outsiders in a country they could never hope to understand. He asks the big questions, such as the worth of democracy versus taking the lives of innocent babes and women. In an unpopular war, he dares to speak for Asians who would rather live in ignorance than die in freedom.

I suspect this is partly what makes Greene "Catholic." He picks apart man's anxiety about guilt and shame, and all done with such economy, such grace! This "master of moral nuance" wrote about the ambiguities of war, unafraid to rattle his reader's values system. You THINK you know where you stand ethically... until you read Greene and you realize thinking of ideals is a luxury denied many.

Do not read Greene for the comfort of cold Christianity, or certainty in salvation made while wallowing amid the material trappings of Capitalism.

Read him to understand the darkness in others... and in ourselves.




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