The Quiet American by Graham Greene

If you’ve read Private Dancer et al, and are looking for something a bit different, yet still Far East-related, to while away that seemingly interminable flight from Farangland, you might enjoy The Quiet American by Graham Greene.

The plot is based on a love triangle between Fowler, a British journalist, Pyle, the eponymous Quiet American, and Phuong, a beautiful Vietnamese girl. The love triangle is symbolic of the political situation in mid-1950’s Vietnam; Fowler, representing the ‘old colonial powers’, tries to remain detached, while Pyle, representing the Americans’ naïve belief that democracy can be imposed by a ‘third force’, merely adds to the mayhem. Phuong, symbolising the Vietnamese, remains inscrutable throughout. For a more detailed summary and background information, the Wikipedia article makes a good starting point. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_American. There is also an excellent film made in 2002, directed by Phillip Noyce, starring Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, and Do Thi Hai Yen.

The book will have many resonances for seasoned expat and newbie alike. Thomas Fowler is an accurate portrait of the aging expat who ends up with a live-in-lover of less than half his age – accurate because Graham Greene spent some time in the Far East and experienced this situation at first hand, and Alden Pyle is an accurate portrait of a dangerously naïve young man, both in affairs of the heart, and more seriously, in political matters.

Phuong is an 18-year old Vietnamese girl who is working as a dancer at the Grande Monde when Fowler meets her. She is a sort of high-class prostitute (compared with the low-class prostitutes at the ‘House of the Five Hundred Girls’ – no gogo bars in those days!) Greene describes how the system at the Grande Monde worked. You buy a ticket, and give it to the girl you want to dance with. Any other arrangements are between you and the girl. According to old-timers, similar arrangements were in place at the Oriental and Trocadero in Bangkok. Dress and dancing style were traditional. When Fowler met Phuong, she was wearing a ‘white ball-dress’ – you’d have to venture into the ‘artist’ bars of Soi 33 to see that these days. She is watched over by her sister who is ‘determined on a good European marriage’ – so that’s not changed much!

There are several descriptions of their life together in Fowler’s apartment. These show how Phuong attends to his every need – from making opium pipes to sex. Many of these scenes will be familiar to the seasoned Thailand expat, except that these days he will have to be content with having toothpaste put on his brush in lieu of an opium pipe being prepared. However, the sex part has not changed much. On page 107, Fowler praises Phuong for her readiness to comply with his sexual demands:

She had no coquetry…she would have made love if I had asked her to, straight away, peeling off her trousers without question…

The way Phuong tells little white lies to Fowler will also sound familiar:

She told me that she had missed me, which was what I wanted to hear; she always told me what I wanted to hear…

On another occasion, Fowler gives up trying to get the truth out of Phuong when she lies to him about her sister being at home. He gives up because he realises that ‘it was absurd to subject her to this passion for truth, an Occidental passion…’

The nature of Phuong’s love for Fowler will also be familiar to the old Thailand hand. On page 95, Fowler explains to Pyle about the way in which Vietnamese girls love:

They love you in return for kindness, security, the presents you give them – they hate you for a blow or an injustice…for an aging man, Pyle, it’s very secure – she won’t run away from home as long as she’s happy.

Pyle, by contrast, is reminiscent of the naïve Thailand newbie, still blinkered by his Western mindset. When he discusses Phuong with Fowler, he starts talking about love, but Fowler replies: ‘Love’s a Western word…we use it for sentimental reasons or to cover up an obsession with one woman. These people don’t suffer from obsessions.’

Similarly, Phuong’s delicate beauty deceives Pyle into thinking that she needs protection. However, as Fowler points out: ‘She’s tougher than you’ll ever be…’ This is because she has been fighting for survival all her life, and has had to do some very difficult things, such as working as a dancer at the Grande Monde. Pyle’s life in the affluent West has, by comparison, been sheltered.

Phuong and her sister, like the Isaan girls of modern Thailand, are so poor that survival is their main need; enough food to eat, not love. Phuong’s aim, aided by her sister, is to get the best protection and support she can. For a while, this is provided by being Fowler’s mistress, but when Pyle comes along, she can switch her allegiance quite easily to Pyle because he can offer a high level of security – marriage. However,

in the last chapter, after Pyle’s death, she can switch back to Fowler as though nothing had happened.

What is so masterly about Greene’s description of Phuong is that (in the words of Zadie Smith, editor of the Vintage Classics edition): ‘where Greene did not know enough of her life, or could not imagine, he resolved not to describe’. For this reason she is ultimately unknowable – something that many of us will have experienced with our own Thai teeraks.

The characters of Fowler, Pyle and Phuong are the centre of interest in the novel, but the novel also has another dimension as the characters are symbolic of the political situation in mid-1950’s Vietnam – a situation which is all the more interesting because of its parallels with the Iraq debacle of the present day.

Just as Phuong puts her survival needs before the concept of love, so the average Vietnamese peasant put survival needs before the concept of democracy. However, Pyle wants to bring democracy to Vietnam. We find out that he is working for the CIA, though his cover is a job with the U.S. Economic Aid Mission. Vietnam was torn by the conflict between the communist Viet Minh and the colonialist French administration. The French were planning to pull out, but Pyle believes that a ‘third force’ could install a democratic government. Pyle identifies General Thé, who is little better than a bandit warlord, as a suitable third force, and uses his secret service contacts to supply him with, among other things, plastic explosives.

When Pyle explains his political beliefs to Fowler, this is Fowler’s reply:

‘They want enough rice,’ I said, ‘They don’t want to be shot at…They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want…thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?’

The same naïve attempt to impose Western values is happening all over again in Afghanistan and Iraq, and before anyone accuses me of anti-Americanism (as many accused Graham Greene when The Quiet American was published) this time the British are just as much to blame. In the Vietnam of the 50’s and 60’s the French and British – the ‘old colonial powers’ in Greene’s words – were wise enough to realise that the only sensible thing to do was to get out. Unfortunately, that wisdom, born of experience, was ignored this time (perhaps because of the dumbed-down politically-correct revisionism that passes for history teaching in the US and the UK these days). The continental Europeans, led by the French (who still have ‘real’ education) were wise enough to keep out.

The main appeal of this book for me is the character of Fowler, who like many a man of mature years, has given up on the crazy politics and lifestyle of the West and sought a different kind of fulfilment in the Far East – and that’s why many readers of the Thailand Stories website will fill find this book such an enjoyable read.