"The Quiet American" Has Never Been More Relevant

'The Quiet American' Has Never Been More Relevant

America this Week returns with a discussion of Graham Greene's uncanny prediction about Vietnam, Harvard, and the danger of the managerial

"The Quiet American" Has Never Been More Relevant

In Chapter Two of The Quiet American narrator Thomas Fowler, like author Graham Greene a war-weary British journalist, watches in horror as young CIA agent Thomas Pyle orchestrates a disaster. Pyle has just arrived in Vietnam from Harvard and follows an anticommunist playbook in backing the dubious General Thé, who blows up a street full of women and children instead of soldiers:“He said, ‘Thé wouldn’t have done this. I’m sure he wouldn’t. Someb…