A Novel Interpretation
TERZIAN, PHILIP
A Novel Interpretation Bush understands Graham Greene better than his critics. by Philip Terzian "The argument that America's presence in Indochina was dangerous had a long pedigree. In 1955, long...
...The Quiet American is set in Saigon after the French have withdrawn and before the Americans have arrived...
...Pyle has all the attractions—and the dangerous naivete—of the idealist...
...Since this is a British novel and its author is Graham Greene, Fowler is a complicated, worldly-wise Englishman while Pyle is an earnest, buffoonish Yank...
...Philip Terzian is literary editor of The Weekly Standard...
...Frank James of the Chicago Tribune adopted a passive-aggressive voice to advance the standard progressive theory that Bush is a dangerous marionette: Even more astonishing is that Bush's speechwriters included in the president's speech a mention of the very fictional character some of the president's critics have used for years to lambaste him for what they consider a major strategic blunder...
...To which the redoubtable Joe Klein of Time added this elegant thought: I love that the President's (or his speechwriter's) book-reading yielded a reference in the speech to Graham Greene's splendid The Quiet American...
...One last example is supplied by the editor of Editor & Publisher, the newspaper trade magazine, who complained that Bush cited my favorite 20th century novel and its author . . . in his speech on Wednesday that drew several dubious links between the catastrophic Vietnam and Iraq conflicts...
...It must be particularly galling that George W. Bush understands this...
...Fowler is shrewd enough to observe Pyle and his ilk with a jaundiced eye, but is an ignoble figure...
...Its second misfortune is that it has been misread by journalists, in America and elsewhere, in their search for an inexpensive form of sophistication...
...The Quiet American suffers from two misfortunes...
...In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called The Quiet American...
...He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism—and dangerous naivete...
...Its narrator is a cynical, hard-drinking British journalist named Thomas Fowler, and its protagonist is a crew-cut American embassy official named Alden Pyle...
...Sure enough, within minutes of completing his speech at the VFW convention, the salivation began...
...President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, August 22 When George W. Bush introduced Graham Greene and The Quiet American into his argument about Vietnam and the Iraq war, he must have felt a little like Ivan Pavlov tantalizing his dogs...
...Fowler, who represents a marriage between Greene's Catholic fatalism and lost dreams of empire, is at once bemused and repelled by Pyle—and, ultimately, betrays him to the Communists...
...First, it is an instructive example of what happens when an artist pollutes his work with contemporary politics: Graham Greene was infinitely more successful at this than, say, Gore Vidal...
...Even Graham Greene might have hesitated to apply the lessons of his mid-1950s Indochina to the circumstances of the 21st-century Middle East...
...Pyle, who wants South Vietnam to enjoy the benefits of American-style democracy, does not quite comprehend the local culture, and his bumptious efforts yield more misery than success...
...It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle...
...It is very easy, and very appealing, to adopt Fowler's stylish nihilism when contemplating the chaos of the modern world: At the global cocktail party, who would not wish to be the tipsy cynic, glass in hand, who baits the faithful enthusiast, Pyle...
...Another character describes Alden this way: 'I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.' "After America entered the Vietnam War, the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam...
...But it is also lazy and feckless...
...Perhaps because it's unlikely he's ever read the book it was difficult to figure out exactly what the president meant...
...No, it wasn't...
...Indochina did not live happily ever after the American withdrawal: Hundreds of thousands were murdered, millions were imprisoned and exiled, and the misery spread from Saigon to Laos and Cambodia...
...For the fact is that, Thomas Fowler notwithstanding, Alden Pyle's instincts were correct...
...The Quiet American is a good novel but well below Greene's standard...
...It is not too difficult to discern Greene's intent here: The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and heroes (Fowler or Pyle) are invariably flawed...
...Graham Greene may have eased his conscience by rendering Fowler antiheroic, but he drew the wrong conclusion by excoriating Pyle...
...but the impulse to create fiction in the service of ideology is invariably detrimental to the fiction...
...As a matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people...
...Bush's meaning is clear, and bears repeating...
...But the results are indifference and ignorance, and people die...
...It is a popular instinct, especially among journalists, to confront the ideological struggles of the world— and the politicians, like George W. Bush, who must contend with them—and retreat from commitment and take refuge, like Joe Klein and the editor of Editor & Publisher, in cheap irony and contempt...
...I would hope that the President will re-read, or perhaps just read the book, as soon as possible because it is as good a description as there is about the futility of trying to forcibly impose western ways on an ancient culture...
Vol. 12 • September 2007 • No. 47
