The Quiet American is my introduction to Graham Greene, and methinks it was not the best choice for me. My only compass in choosing this book, instead of other Graham Greene novels, was my enjoyment of Henry James' The American, and all other Henry James novels about American ex-patriates (or ex-patriots, as it were, since James and many of his characters were both). In hindsight, maybe I would have been better off looking up some commentary on Greene's novels or a syllabus, although I don't recall Greene being taught in any of the English classes of interest to me (which in and of itself puzzles me since many of the authors that are taught were admirers of Greene's work).It's quite a short novel, and yet took me a while to read because I began to lose interest as soon as Greene got into the war imagery. I suppose at the time, imagery of warfare in Vietnam was quite a novelty. However, I have an innate aversion to war imagery in general, and more specifically I've had my fill of descriptions of the American war in Vietnam years later, so when he started in on those details, my eyes began to glaze over.
What was not apparent to me until the last quarter of the novel, and maybe this would have helped keep my interest, was that Greene was building up to a reveal of the circumstances surrounding the death of the American, Alden Pyle, the fact of which opens the book. I flew quickly through this last part of the novel, as soon as it became clear to me what I was after in reading it.
As with all good writers, Greene has a gift for description, such that you understand the exact nature of the pain each character feels or the landscape they see.
