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GAF Book Club (Jan 2014) - "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene

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C

Cyan

Banned
wRAub.jpg


Innocence is a kind of insanity.


The Quiet American by Graham Greene

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of Greene's career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.

As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler's motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler's beautiful Vietnamese mistress.

"No serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than Graham Greene."
- Time

"There has been no novel of any political scope about Vietnam since Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American."
- Harper’s

"A great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation. Prophet-like."
- Alec Guinness


Find it here:
Amazon paperback
(unfortunately, The Quiet American is not available in ebook form in the US)

Or try your local library. Let's read!


Guidelines:
-Discussion of anything and everything is encouraged. It's a book club, let's chat!
-Please use spoiler tags sensibly.
-The milestones are there to help keep you on the path. If you get ahead or behind, don't worry--it will have no impact on your final grade.


Reading Milestones:
Jan 1-10 - Part I
Jan 11-17 - Part II
Jan 18-24 - Part III-IV


Previous Book Club Threads:
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (Sept 2013)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (July 2013)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Feb-Mar 2013)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (September 2012)
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (January 2012)
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (December 2011)
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy (Oct 2011)
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (Sep 2011)
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (Aug 2011)
Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian (July 2011)
The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin (June 2011)
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (May 2011)
The Afghan Campaign, by Steven Pressfield (Apr 2011)
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein (Mar 2011)
Flashman, by George MacDonald Fraser (Feb 2011)
 
i_am_ben

i_am_ben

running_here_and_there
My school forced me to read this book for English but I'm glad they did. It's my all time favourite book.

When reading it people should try to remember this was written before the Vietnam war.
 
E

Empty

Member
i really love this book and look forward to seeing what people think. i'll probably re-read it to refresh my memory.

i love the atmosphere of the setting, which is captured from greene's personal experience as a reporter in the region and realized through nice spare writing. fowler and pyle's relationship are entertaining to follow with the idealism vs cynicsm dynamic, and i think neither are particularly convincing people by the end. it's very political with the three leads all being symbols of attitudes of post colonial countries (usa in pyle vs old colonial powers in fowler vs the coutries themselves objectified in puong) and pyle in particular is eerily prophetic of modern neo-conservative actions in the middle east, which i found interesting and effective.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Tragicomedy said:
I'm from the future, and there still isn't a digital copy of this available in the USA. Hence, I'll buy a paperback copy then get a pirated version from a kind soul.
Click to expand...

:( I'm starting to feel really stupid here. I have read the page I linked to three times now. And all I see is a Kindle version of the book in question which is waiting to be bought via one-click... Release date says 2010. What the hell am I missing?
 
T

Tragicomedy

Member
Nezumi said:
:( I'm starting to feel really stupid here. I have read the page I linked to three times now. And all I see is a Kindle version of the book in question which is waiting to be bought via one-click... Release date says 2010. What the hell am I missing?
Click to expand...

"This title is not currently available for purchase."

Boo, USA! :p
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Tragicomedy said:
"This title is not currently available for purchase."

Boo, USA! :p
Click to expand...

Strange ... Everything looks normal here. But I am on my phone maybe that is the problem. Hopefully the one from Amazon.de doesn't turn out to be unavailable as well once I try to buy it from my computer.
 
R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
I'm going to try and participate in the Book Club throughout 2014, though said participation will depend on whether or not my library has the books you guys choose.
 
L

LProtag

Member
I read this and watched the film for an independent study course I took with my English professor/advisor during my college years. We dubbed the class "Evolution of the Political Thriller Film". Fun times. Basically myself and another student who I was already decent friends with would head over to his office every week to discuss a film we watched (we often read novels too, if the film was an adaptation) and hang out. The only work we had besides our discussion was a midterm essay and a final essay.

This was one of my favorites, along with The Third Man, which Greene wrote the screenplay for.
 
A

Aquavelvaman

Banned
Gotta love the first few pages:
I shut my eyes and she was again the same as she used to be: she was the hiss of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest.
Click to expand...

One of my favorite books! I'll read it again and hopefully participate.
 
N

Nezumi

Member
If there is a way to gift Kindle books between regions I'll gladly help out with the e-book problem, since I had no trouble downloading it over here.

Edit: Seems like this isn't possible :(
 
T

t-ramp

Member
Got my copy from the library today. Given how little I've read in recent years, it's no surprise that I haven't read any Greene, but I'm looking forward to this.
 
C

CavemanLawyer

Member
I'm in. I need to finish what I'm reading currently, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, and then I will pick this up.

Looking forward to it.
 
R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
What are the reading milestones going to be? Like, 2 chapters a day, 5, etc.? At that rate, will the book last the whole month or only about a week or so?
 
C

CavemanLawyer

Member
RatskyWatsky said:
What are the reading milestones going to be? Like, 2 chapters a day, 5, etc.? At that rate, will the book last the whole month or only about a week or so?
Click to expand...

I see on Amazon that the book is only 180 pages, so I think it should be fairly quick to get through. Though I say that not knowing the difficulty of the read.
 
Guileless

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
I was browsing Graham Greene's books on aMazon recently and for some reason they're not available on Kindle. This book is one that most libraries should have though.
 
E

Empty

Member
the book is broken into four parts. so maybe one per week if you want to pace yourself through the month.

CavemanLawyer said:
I see on Amazon that the book is only 180 pages, so I think it should be fairly quick to get through. Though I say that not knowing the difficulty of the read.
Click to expand...

it's easy to read. greene uses short chapters and short sentences.
 
N

Necrovex

Member
Empty said:
the book is broken into four parts. so maybe one per week if you want to pace yourself through the month.



it's easy to read. greene uses short chapters and short sentences.
Click to expand...

That's good. I remember my first book club was Lolita. Oh boy, now that was a doozey of a read.
 
R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Ah, so it's a pretty short and easy read then? Good choice for the first book of the year. :D

Btw, can I add some of you to my Goodreads friends list? I don't have any friends at the moment. :(

Empty said:
it's easy to read. greene uses short chapters and short sentences.
Click to expand...

Excellent. The book that I'm reading now (Ursula K. Le Guin's The Other Wind) has really long chapters and I hate that about it.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Oh right, I should put in some milestones now that I have the book. :p

Edit:
And there we go. I like to have them end on weekends, which is why the first one is a bit longer. Remember that you are free to read at your own pace!
 
T

Tragicomedy

Member
I purchased a paperback copy from Amazon and then downloaded a .mobi version from the interwebs. If you're US-GAF and really want the book on your Kindle, that's the best option available. The paperback copy will get donated to Goodwill.
 
M

mu cephei

Member
I'll be taking part in this book club, I really enjoyed the other Graham Greene book I read. I might even keep up this time.

RatskyWatsky said:
Ah, so it's a pretty short and easy read then? Good choice for the first book of the year. :D

Btw, can I add some of you to my Goodreads friends list? I don't have any friends at the moment. :(

Excellent. The book that I'm reading now (Ursula K. Le Guin's The Other Wind) has really long chapters and I hate that about it.
Click to expand...

You didn't link your Goodreads account...
 
E

Empty

Member
if you don't get the uk vintage 2004 version you miss out on zadie smith's (awesome) introductionary essay

but you can read it on full here (though if you're spoiler sensitive and want to have a fresh experience wait till you've read the book)

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/18/classics.grahamgreene

a sample because she's infinitely better at explaining what makes the book good than me

Distinctions of character that we fondly imagine concrete, upon which we define ourselves ("But I am kind, where he is only cynical"), are revealed to hold little currency in the face of the human extremities: war, death, loss and love. "Human nature is not black and white but black and grey." Greene is not the first novelist to note it, but his grey was marvellously various.

Into this grey area we must place the shady triad of The Quiet American: the honest venality of Phuong, the disengagement of Fowler, and the innocence of Pyle. Isn't it a brilliantly constructed novel? It reminds one of the game jack straws, in which the aim is to take each stick in turn without disturbing the others. It is a masterful trick to balance these three people against each other - comparing and contrasting their cynicisms, their hopes, their personal failures - and yet weighting the situation in such a way as to never allow us to make that final, satisfying judgement upon their characters which would signal that the reader's work is done. Greene did not like to permit his readers this satisfaction: "When we are not sure, we are alive."
Click to expand...

RatskyWatsky said:
Btw, can I add some of you to my Goodreads friends list? I don't have any friends at the moment. :(
Click to expand...

sure

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7020538-josh-brown
 
B

Barmaley

Neo Member
These book club threads are both a curse and a blessing to me. A curse because after getting stuck somewhere in the middle of brothers karamazov, I completely stopped reading fiction for a few months. That stuff was just too.......intense, yo.
A blessing because otherwise I probably wouldn't have found out about the quiet american. I absolutely loved it and intend to check out more of graham greene.
 
N

Necrovex

Member
Picked up my book earlier this evening. I plan to read it concurrently with Preacher. Let's break in the new year with a groovy novel.

I went with the Penguin edition, since I love the feel of those pages and overall structure.
 
B

bomma_man

Member
Enjoyed all the Greene I've read. They have that endearingly exotic pre-globalised feel of TinTin or Indiana Jones with a far more satisfying core.
 
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