Talk:The Quiet American

Error

It seems incorrect to call it one of his "later" novels when he published it in 1955, and his last was published in 1990. Approximately 12 published before this one, and ten published afterwards. According to his Wikibibliography, anyhow. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.226.171.6 (talk) 02:30, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Article split

I noticed that there as an article split notice at the top of the page, but I see no rationale for that on this talk page. I think it would be best as one article until it gets too big. So I'm removing the notice. LittleDan^talk 01:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't looked at this for a while, & now I see that User:Jazk34 did in fact split the article (into 3 - one for each film version) back on July 17. I mention it here just to clarify the article history, since the edit summaries provided no clue. Editors, please remember to use edit summaries and talk pages when doing that kind of thing... ←Hob 22:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Smith unidentified

The article at one point says: "As Smith asserts in her foreword to the 2002 Vintage edition..." There is no other mention of this 'Smith' anywhere in the article. This needs to be fixed by whoever knows anything about such matters. Tm19 23:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

It's Zadie Smith; that edition is ISBN 0099478390 if you want to find it. I'll fix the name just to make the article less confusing, but I don't think the Smith quote really adds much, and the Themes section needs trimming in general - lots of redundancy and occasional POV. ←Hob 22:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Lengthy "themes" section

This was just a long and vague collection of thoughts and interpretation and was highly subjective. More specifically it is in clear breach of WP:OR. Wikipedia is not an essay forum for lengthy and half-baked analysis of books, films etc, it's an encyclopedia - anyone who wants this section to remain in needs to justify why it should be here. Plus whoever put it back reinserted typos. Thanks --Nickhh 17:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the section resembled certain study guides (eg this one) and might therefore be a copyright violation. Sciurinæ 17:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - I also thought that might have been the case, at least when it was originally added (which of course only adds to the problems with having it here). And people have added their own occasional thoughts to it as well over time I think, which in turn compounds the OR problem. --Nickhh 08:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Can people please stop putting their endless personal interpretations of what the novel is about and what its characters are supposed to signify or not into this article? Wikipedia is not a collaborative/consensus discussion board for amateur (or even professional) book reviewers and literary/political analysts. And, just as one example, it's going to be hard to justify this kind of statement, whatever source you try to dig up for it - "Greene's novel was received with wide condemnation". Please read policies onno original research and verifiable sources if you're new to this. I'm going to revert a whole load of recent changes. --Nickhh 19:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Pssst... when i publish my PhD, i'm coming back with it and reinserting my discussion. That alright? DaveofDundee (talk) 01:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I would certainly say that the description of Fowler is half-baked. Firstly, if Greene had chosen Fowler's surname as a metaphor, he is at least as likely to have used this as a hunter of birds (snaring Phuong and Pyle in different ways) than by sounding like 'foul'. In any case, Fowler is a very complicated character. Some 'non-foul' attributes to be found include his being the most conscientious of his circle of journalists, his knowing murder when he sees it and his willingness to intervene. There are also subtleties which this review comes nowhere near. For example, there are the half-chances which Fowler gives, including those which allow God to intervene, when Fowler is of course an atheist. As well as his hypocrisy, there are also contrasts. He is personally irresponsible, while Pyle is painfully responsible at that level (his desire to protect and plan for Phuong) while being the facilitator of the ambushes of civilians. The religious and existential themes are also interwined with political considerations. Quite what ought to be written is another question, but certainly the current issue is worse than a paperback blurb. Cole Davis writer (talk) 16:58, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

"Anti-war novel"

The book does convey an anti-war message, but does that really belong in the first line of the article? I don't see that as a defining feature of the novel. But I may be wrong. DrJimothyCatface (talk) 10:04, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

York Harding

Given that Pyle seems so devoted to the theories of this imaginary writer, to the extent that York Harding seems almost to be a ghostly character in his own right, has anyone given thought to whom the name might be said to represent? Who was the "godfather" of American postwar foreign policy? Nuttyskin (talk) 14:46, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok, first of all... this is NOT for the article "The Quiet American". Nothing I say here specifically improves the article, and it's probably open to criticism as being "original research" in part.

I am not sure you realize it, but you're asking two widely different questions with necessarily different answers. The ideas attributed in the novel to "York Harding" had very little to do with American postwar foreign policy except to sketch out how that policy was explained, something far different than the policy itself. So I'll give what I feel are the two answers:

1) "York Harding" is not any particular prominent author or person; the views Greene attributes to him are what have been called "American exceptionalism," the belief that the United States of America can and should intervene to limit or end insurrections overseas aimed at imposing Communist regimes not in the interests of preserving colonial regimes or post-colonial governments which support economic colonialism, but to replace those unsatisfactory governments with governments more responsive to the interests of the local people. That actually has been the stated aim of US diplomacy throughout the Cold War in one way or another, but very seldom stated as baldly as condemning our postwar allies as "colonial powers."

However, Greene's portrayal of Pyle as a disciple of York is in some ways too charitable, in other ways too demeaning if you interpret the novel as an allegory (I don't hold to one view or the other; Greene's novels have always struck me as mood pieces in which the United States was portrayed by Greene in one way or another an impersonal and usually amoral force - as opposed to his complete neglect of the murders committed in Kenya and other places by Her Majesty's government in reaction to native uprisings). (action: shrugs).

Without opening the door to a lot of debate over what the US did or did not do via the CIA and DoD's special operations office, the eerie thing was how closely Pyle foreshadowed Kennedy's facilitating the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, and his own subsequent assassination years after The Quiet American was published. Here ends the "original research."

2) George F. Kennan is the intellectual author of postwar American foreign policy more than any other single man, so if it had to have a "godfather," it's Kennan. The wikipedia article X Article describes in greater detail than I want to go into here how that came to be, but basically, Kennan (a senior diplomat at the US Embassy in Moscow in the early postwar years) wrote or helped write three documents (the "Kennan telegram," the Clifford-Elsey Report, and the "X Article") which, respectively, described what he thought the Soviets were doing to hamper postwar recovery and the work of the US and United Nations in rebuilding the postwar world, WHY they were doing it, and what the United States of America ought to do about it.

"Containment" of the Soviet Union's attempts to export Communism worldwide may have been called the "Truman Doctrine," but the man who developed almost every major idea in that doctrine was George Kennan.loupgarous (talk) 11:18, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Question

is it relevant to anything that pyle dances badly?????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.101.54.95 (talk) 20:10, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

another question: must you have the rather jejune, sophomoric parsing of the charcters? reads like a bad effort from a rent-an-essay company.50.101.54.95 (talk) 20:12, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

"The book was the initial reason for Graham Greene being under constant surveillance by US intelligence agencies... "

The statement in the article "The book was the initial reason for Graham Greene being under constant surveillance by US intelligence agencies from the 1950s until his death in 1991, according to documents obtained in 2002 by The Guardian under the US Freedom of Information Act.[2][3]" is NOT supported by either reference 2 or reference 3. Reference 2 refers to PERIODIC inquiries about Greene by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and states that Greene's mail was opened by FBI. No reference to "constant surveillance" is to be found in Reference 2 or Reference 3.

It's important to note as well that Reference 3 is to be found on booksie.com as a self-published paper. This makes it unacceptable under WP:SOURCE:"Sources that are usually not reliable." The author of the work cited in Reference 3, Michael Wynn, describes himself as a former English teacher (in his booksie.com profile) and offers no other qualifications as an expert on Graham Greene. He also does not substantiate the allegation made in this WP article about "constant surveillance by US intelligence agencies." It should be noted here that FBI is a law enforcement agency, not an intelligence agency, and that even so, no support for a claim of constant surveillance by FBI exists in either of the references cited at all - not just to the degree required in WP:SOURCE, but at all.

I am deleting the sentence in question from the article because the references cited do not support it. Reference 3 is an unacceptable source under WP:SOURCE:"Sources that are usually not reliable" section and References 2 and 3 fail under WP:SOURCE: "All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." loupgarous (talk) 08:00, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Unsourced statement: "Assuming Greene himself was a professional assassin for British Intelligence during WWII"

The statement "Assuming Greene himself was a professional assassin for British Intelligence during WWII, our hero (assuming we are dealing with political journalism dressed up as fiction and the reporter is non other than Greene) is anything but a "middle-class English snob". - rather, he is a professional who believes that 100% collateral damage is politically incorrect." was made by another editor - with no citation at all.

Where to begin? Well, let's start with WP:SOURCE, since the editor who inserted this bit of nonsense didn't supply one. That's cause to delete the statement in itself.

In reality, Graham Greene was a minor functionary with MI5 (the British Security Service, which handles counterintelligence activity) during World War II. He worked at a desk there. Any suggestion that Graham Greene ever killed anything other than a pint at the local pub is risible. This is the sort of thing that we should be vigilant to clean up from Wikipedia. Of course, if the editor responsible cares to supply references that meet the criteria in WP:PROVEIT, I'll gladly reconsider my language and the deletion. The WP article Graham Greene doesn't even mention rumors of Mr. Greene ever having murdered anyone, either professionally or as an amateur.

I'm deleting that entire paragraph, as directed in WP:SOURCE.loupgarous (talk) 07:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)