David Brooks wrote in The Weekly Standard on 6 April 2002 that much of the European reaction to the American response to September 11 "has been straight out of Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American," and went on to paraphrase European criticism of the U.S.: "They will go marching off as they always do, naively confident of themselves, yet inevitably unaware of the harm they shall do." The reference is to Greene's Alden Pyle, an American government secret operative in Vietnam whose support for a political leader who commits a terrorist bombing causes Thomas Fowler, an apolitical British journalist, to conspire in Pyle's murder by Communists in order to prevent Pyle from innocently causing more harm. And Phillip Noyce's current movie version, starring Michael Caine as Fowler and Brendan Fraser as Pyle, has been reviewed in this country as prophetic of the inevitable disaster of the American involvement in Vietnam. The novel was criticized in America upon its publication in 1955 for being anti-American, but a little digging into Greene's biography raises the surprisingly slippery question to what degree and in what way Greene intended this condemnation of American foreign activity.
Part I: Culture
To begin with the most obvious anti-American element: the word "quiet" in the title should be italicized because the point is that the American Pyle isn't your typical, brash, noisy, moronic American. The son of a professor, Harvard-educated, and intensely idealistic about his undercover work to set up an indigenous Third Force to battle both the fading French colonialists and the Communist Vietminh, he's nevertheless so inexperienced he's more dangerous than his stupid, obnoxious countrymen. (Fowler thinks of him: "[Y]ou can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.") Pyle is as good as this country can produce and yet it comes across as a form of redemptive political engagement for Fowler to conspire in his murder.
Fowler's motive is mixed, to be sure, grounded in Pyle's forthright, gallant competition for Fowler's teenaged Vietnamese mistress Phuong. Fowler is married to a Catholic woman who won't give him a divorce, whereas Pyle wants to do the honorable thing by Phuong. But that doesn't make the anti-Americanism an inaccurate statement of Greene's feelings, it just gives its voicing a personal motive in the story. What Fowler says about Americans feels grounded in Old World snobbery, especially against crusading Americans like Henry Luce whose Life magazine sponsored Greene's first trip to Vietnam. Greene gives Fowler, his alter ego as detached-but-aroused journalist in Indochina, swipes at American culture of the kind that Europeans often take to be devastating: we have air-conditioned lavatories; women's lunch clubs that play Canasta; grocery stores where the celery comes wrapped in cellophane. Fowler refers to our "sterilised world," so different from the real world of "rumpled sheets and the sweat of sex," and wonders if American women take deodorants to bed with them. Even the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French, is blamed on us--it may not be our fault that it's "ill-designed" but it is we who have rendered it "meaningless."
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Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Alan, exceptionally thorough and well-done. Thanks.
2 - C Grant
I think you miss the point. Obviously the American experience has worked well for you, setting up in your mind a clear distinction: 'with us or against us'. Greene communicates a much broader message, and to view the novel as a polemic against American foreign policy is a narrow approach. If you read closely you notice Greene empathising greatly with Pyle: "was I that different from Pyle", "was I the only one who really cared for Pyle?", etc. It is not about how much he detests Pyle, it is a discussion of involvement, personal and political - the American cliche simply provides a distinctly recognisable example, some great vocabulary for an exploration of innocence and ignorance and its consequences.
The reconciliation with Granger at the end of the novel is something worth great consideration. In it, Fowler overcomes his labelling of Americans as dim-witted, idealist morons, to realise that he is nothing more - albeit with a a bit of European enlightenment.
And please, why bring up Milton Friedman to support your case. Why don't you just use York Harding to support it instead?
You speak from a distinctly American perspective, attacking European snobbery. Perhaps you could look beyond this parochialism. Or maybe you're like Pyle, you seem very similar - "A soldier for democracy, a Red Menace", or in your case "Commie apologist or Double Agent?"
3 - Alan Dale
Hey Cameron,
Thanks for the e-mail. Hope this doesn't sound too harsh.
You write: "Obviously the American experience has worked well for you, setting up in your mind a clear distinction: 'with us or against us'."
This is a strange way to begin, with assumptions about my personal history. I don't know what you think you know about me; I could tell you about my personal setbacks, outright failures, about bankruptcy and misery in my life and my family's, but that would be beside the point. No reasonable person adopts a belief solely because it "works well" for him. How do you define "works well," anyway? What's the metric--education, income, liberty, happiness?--and what's the threshold--PhD, 6 figures, a wife and kids? You risk being accused of a classic form of left-wing cynicism: One is in favor of American-style free-market democracy not because it supplies the most opportunities to the most people to make of themselves what they can, because it's based on individual rights and liberties and thus permits the closest tailoring of outcomes to individual talents and desires, but because one has got rich by it (at everyone else's expense) or else, under the false-consciousness wing of the argument, because one is deluded (applied, for instance, to pro-market working-class people). This is the kind of argument Graham Greene, to his eternal shame, made after taking a tour with East German guards of the freshly-erected Berlin Wall, criticizing "the materialistic people who went over the wall simply for the freedom of being able to buy more consumer goods." This argument isn't applied to Communists, who are presumed to be idealists--they'd pretty much have to be, wouldn't they, since their avowed system "works well" for no one, apart from the party elite.
The corollary point is that anyone in favor of free market democracy willfully, shamefully ignores all those people for whom it hasn't "worked well." Do the struggling people of the world fare better than in the United States? Immigration trends suggest otherwise. (I make it a point of talking to taxi drivers; "freedom" and "opportunity" aren't just abstractions to them.) As for lapses with respect to groups already here--racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, and women--the point of any civil rights movement from a liberal point of view is to integrate marginalized groups into the mainstream economy so that they may take care of themselves as they see fit, and that is clearly working, as a general trend. No possible system works well for all people at all times, by any measure. The point is to remove the prejudicial institutional bars to opportunity and achievement, as the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s finally has done. At the same time, American homosexuals have blossomed in this free-market democracy before we have established our rights with national legislation. Rights emanating from private sources of law, e.g., the same-sex health-care benefits my partner gets through the firm I work for, may be more practically valuable than national laws, however plainly just it is that such laws eventually be enacted. I am in favor of this system because it tends to work well for all comers, without regard to my personal ups and downs.
In addition, "with us or against us" is not how I view anything. In my analysis of narrative, I tirelessly argue against the polarized moral view of melodrama, in movies and in politics. I'm always getting into trouble at parties because I don't go along with anybody's partisan venting.
Most of what you say about me does not describe me accurately, but even if it did, it's still argument ad hominem. Think: I could favor the right answer for the wrong reason. (Like the southern U.S. Senators who insisted on attaching sexual-equality provisions into Civil Rights legislation with a view to undermining it--their motivation doesn't make sexual equality wrong.) The better approach is to address your criticism to the idea, not the man espousing it.
As for the smaller points. I don't think fiction "communicates messages"; it tells stories. The story of The Quiet American is shaped as a melodramatic romance in which two national/political/moral types struggle for dominance. Pyle is plainly a type, as is Phuong. The trick of the book, and the essence of its appeal both from the literary and political viewpoint, is that Fowler is the only character with any complexity. You point out: " If you read closely you notice Greene empathising greatly with Pyle: 'was I that different from Pyle', 'was I the only one who really cared for Pyle?', etc." In fact, close reading tells you that Greene isn't empathizing with Pyle here, Fowler is. What you write is comparable to saying, "Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a stage'." Greene gives Fowler complexity by making his moral traits cut against his national/political traits. But whatever Fowler may realize about Pyle, or about his reactions to Pyle, is undercut by the depiction of Pyle itself (e.g., the fact that Pyle is given no answers to Fowler's political comments in the tower).
You also write: "You speak from a distinctly American perspective, attacking European snobbery." Okay--how else is an American supposed to counter European snobbery? In fact, how is an American supposed to speak at all except from an American perspective. What's wrong with that? Nothing strikes me as more American than hearing American intellectuals and academics and cultural figures say how they've always felt more European. Presumably they don't mean they feel more like their peasant ancestors who came to this country to gain the freedom and opportunities their descendants now take for granted. Greene writes with amused condescension about the air-conditioned lavatories and grocery stores where the celery comes wrapped in cellophane, just as Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One writes about Aim饠Thanatogenos's being "dressed and scented in obedience to the advertisements," about her going through "the prescribed rites of an American girl preparing to meet her lover--dabb[ing] herself under the arms with a preparation designed to seal the sweatglands, gargl[ing] another to sweeten the breath, and brush[in] into her hair some odorous drops from a bottle." (You only have to read the more scabrous of Swift's poems to know this isn't uniquely American. And it never occurred to me that when Shakespeare and Cervantes write about stinking breath and body odor that they thought of them as virtues.). Waugh writes of the mortuary hostess that she was "the standard product. A man could leave such a girl in a delicatessen shop in New York, fly three thousand miles and find her again in the cigar stall at San Francisco, just as he would find his favourite comic strip in the local paper." Sorry, but I've never noticed the apparently endless variety among European receptionists, and I've been in European toilets and grocery stores, seen European advertising, stood downwind from European women, and I just don't feel a crushing cultural inferiority on these counts. It's all about what you're used to. I don't apologize for refusing to swallow other people's spit.
Why not bring up Milton Friedman? You use the name as if it inevitably causes shudders, though you don't cite any evidence in defense of whatever point you assume you're making against him. We read Friedman in Robert Ellickson's class on Property in law school, and I was struck by the cogency of Friedman's point that to the extent a system provides security for property rights (unlike Communist Vietnam, for instance), citizens are more likely to voice and defend oppositional political opinions. What's wrong with that?
In the case of Graham Greene, "Commie apologist or Double Agent?" is not a melodramatic reduction on my part but a literal question. He was either one or the other and the record leans toward the latter. "Commie apologist" was facetious wording, of course, but that's a mild term for a man who applied his international cultural reputation to burnish the image of the likes of Fidel Castro, and who notoriously wrote in a letter to the Times (London), "If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the United States I would certainly choose the Soviet Union," while indulging his freedom to live instead in Anacapri, Antibes, and Vevey off his stream of royalties from book sales and movie adaptations. If Greene was a double agent, then apologists for The Quiet American are the dupes that Lenin laughingly appreciated left-leaning western intellectuals for being, though not the kind of dupes Lenin would have wanted them to be.
Thanks again for your comment.
4 - C Grant
Don't worry mate, it didn't seem "too harsh" - you provide a powerful response to my rather flippant comment. But, my concern still stands. Whilst we are most likely at cross-purposes, in trying to interpret The Quiet American, your approach irks me nonetheless.
I would like to criticise your 'liberalism', your 'free' taxi-drivers, your 'opportunity-craving' refugees but I couldn't bear to stand another barrage.
Instead I would like to discuss how you have interpreted the novel, not in the particular, but the more general. It seems you have offered some very clever insight into Greene as a character and how his 'hypocrisy' and 'shortcomings' are reflected in his most renowned anti-American novel.
The big sticking point, in my reading of your critique, however, was "I don't think fiction "communicates messages"; it tells stories." Now, when Tolstoy wrote 'War and Peace' was he talking about the politics of the Russian aristocracy or was he "communicating messages" about humanity? What about in 'Childhood, Boyhood, Youth'? Was Tolstoy talking about the shortcomings and cold winters of the Russian upbringing or was he "communicating messages" about what it is to grow up, more generally? Perhaps in 'Frankenstein' Shelley was intending to "tell the story" of how crude scientific instruments were back in the day. Or perhaps Shelley was telling us something about the incessant curiosity of man. How about Sophocles? Was his 'Oedipus Rex' about Pericles and his mismanagement of Athens during the Peloponnesian War? Or was it about something a bit more significant?
I think I have illustrated my point. Now, I'm not comparing Greene to Tolstoy, Shelley or Sophocles, insofar as greatness or eminence is concerned. However, at heart, they are all writers of fiction. In the end they are judged on their ability to express common concerns and observations.
Two things have made The Quiet American a great novel. On one hand it is written well. More importantly, it is accompanied by 50 years of 'corroborating' evidence. Because of this, its central metaphor - American foreign policy - has ensured the novel is as relevant today as it was in the 50's and 60's. Therefore it is able to "communicate messages" via some familiar vocabulary and events: Americans interfering with the support of their York Harding's and their Milton Friedman's. Hence, its ability to express common concerns and observations is enhanced by the world events we have confronted for the last 40 years.
Essentially I don't think we should be concerned with a character sketch of Greene. Sure, he had terrible motives, he was a man of great hypocrisy and he didn't exactly love the American dream. But his work should not be judged poorly because of this. I still maintain that he offers something more than a polemic against American foreign policy.
I noticed you didn't respond to my comment on Granger, where Fowler realises something common between himself and this "noisy bastard", the quintessential American reporter. I think this scene is where the real 'message' rears its head. And, I think a discussion of scenes like this, within the book, are of far greater importance.
5 - Alan Dale
Hey Cameron,
If I'm reading your opposed interpretations of Tolstoy, Shelley, and Sophocles correctly, you're saying that, in the instance of Sophocles, to the extent Oedipus Rex is about "Pericles and his mismanagement of Athens during the Peloponnesian War," that would be telling a story, but if it's about "something a bit more significant," then that would show that it's communicating a message. The problem with all of these opposed interpretations for me is that both sound like what I mean by "communicating a message."
When I say that narrative artists tell stories, I mean they convey their meanings by the narrative structure itself. War and Peace is a bad example for you because Tolstoy interpolated historical essays into it; it's thus an atypical, hybrid work. But Sophocles is also a bad example for you because he conveys meaning thoroughly through the tragic structure. If you compare the philosophical content of Oedipus Rex to any Platonic dialogue it should be obvious that Sophocles cannot be thought of as conveying discursive, non-narrative ideas to anything like the same degree as Plato. It makes sense: If narrative artists weren't engaged in a specific for of composition, then why would there be a separate, readily recognizable category for fictional works? If fiction writers had some message separable from the narrative, why wouldn't they just write an essay?
You may say that the narrative makes the message more powerful, but it also makes it more ambiguous. By far the best case for your point of view would be medieval romance, in which the authors do work out intricate symbolic narratives to exemplify certain beliefs. Which also forces me to admit that I take a more extreme structuralist position than I otherwise would if such a position were more fully represented in literary analysis. Structuralism is too little understood and yet it's very basic: the art of narrative is the art of narrative, not the art of universal messages or generating emotional responses or whatnot. You say, "In the end they are judged on their ability to express common concerns and observations." We simply disagree; to me they are judged by their power in using the forms of narrative they've chosen. We judge Dante as an epic poet not as a theologian--that is, we judge him without examining whether we share his judgments and epiphanies. He gives us literary epiphanies whether or not we share his Christian vision.
As for the "corroborating evidence" supporting the supposed greatness of The Quiet American, this is a circular, and hence unconvincing, mode of argument. Such "evidence" is not what is normally meant by that termâ€"something with the power to objectively verify an assertion. That American foreign policy has been baneful meddling is a belief; of course such a belief "corroborates" a book that presents American foreign policy as baneful meddling. But it's corroborative only for people who also hold that belief. It is not corroborative for anyone who thinks that Communism has been a disaster for Vietnam, as it has been everywhere else in the world. (Do the former Iron Curtain countries think that their liberation from Soviet domination corroborates Greene's depiction of American foreign policy?) In any case, even if I did agree with you, as stated above, I don't agree that this is what makes narrative art "relevant" at any time. It certainly can't explain why works with topical associations, such as Paradise Lost and Gulliver's Travels and The Beggar's Opera have outlived those associations.
I agree that the characterization of Fowler is by far the most interesting part of the book. That makes it somewhat more complex melodrama than average, but it's still thin-textured melodrama. In addition, Greene is a good prose stylist, but he is not what I mean by a great writer. And I don't say that because I disagree with him--I think Norman Mailer is a great writer, and his Why Are We in Vietnam a great romance, and he's about as loony-left as you can get.
Thanks again for the comments.
6 - DARYA
really gives food for thought. another good case of how the uncommon background reveals one's personality.
7 - Zenah
What an absolute load to crap!! This is the worst analytical piece of writing that I have ever read! Talk about a dishonest and shameful attempt to promote all that is great about the American way of life.
The mere support of America's involvement in the Vietnam War is laughable.
Way to go Dale, support all that is blatantly imperialist about the United States of America.
The Quiet American is a brilliant book, because before its time, it had already predicted the deceit and MURDER that would come at the hands of the American troops. Pyle engaged in the murder of civilians and non-combatants, not because he was American, but because he was an American who thought that he could police the world. That his way was the only way. Well, guess what? Democracy is not the solution to the world's problems. I'd go as afar to say that it is the cause of the modern world's problems.
An advocate of war is being praised. How shameful.
8 - S.T.M
This is beautifully written and nicely thought out but I do feel nevertheless there is a bit of pseudo-intellectual claptrap clouding the real issue here.
The reality is, had Greene been writing 80 years earlier, at the time when his own countrymen were the world-dominating, English-speaking imperial power (yes, folks, hard as it is to swallow, that's what the US has become), the novel might well have been called The Quiet Englishman.
I suspect, too, that the novel is not really in any way genuinely anti-American but simply a really obvious literary device - rather, Greene's intent was to document the continuation of imperialism, in a new guise perhaps, but once again (as it was with the British) dressed up as freedom and carrying with it the offer of great benefit - but at a dreadful price.
The one thing that leaps out in this thread is that too many Americans find it hard to accept that others don't always see Americans as Americans see themselves. In the collective American psyche, there seems an element of delusion, as there was with the British, and a belief in the absolute righteousness of the spread of US "ideals".
That is not to say that many of them aren't good - they are. But they are mostly good for America. Greene doubtless had some knowledge of these kinds of attitudes as a result of his own country's blinkered and blundering attempts at foreign policy and his wartime background.
And it's not good for an imperialist power to be either thin-skinned or prone to hand wringing. It's important not to care what others think.
Like Pyle, you need the balls to carry it all through: from that perspective, perhaps Greene was being complimentary, rather than condescending.
9 - Alan Dale
Zenah,
Did you stop to consider what purpose you had in responding to the review? It cannot reasonably have been to convince me, or anyone who might agree with me, that my point of view is mistaken because you have taken no care to address my arguments or ground your own. You speak insultingly in slogans. Only people who already agree with you, and therefore respect you as a moral authority in a position to call shame on others with respect to their political views, could see this as anything but an ill-tempered, distinctively adolescent outburst. Unfortunately, the fact that you think democracy is not the solution to the world's problems is the only revealing part of your comment. You don't even understand Greene's irony: Pyle was the farthest thing from "dishonest."
10 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment, STM. I don't know that there's any way to accord our very different basic beliefs. England was an empire precisely in the way the U.S. is not. The fact that the no-blood-for-oil slogan in opposition to the current Iraq war faded away due to the plain fact that we did not expropriate "colonial" resources for our own use suggests how different the U.S. is from Victorian England. In the case of the Cold War, how anyone could see the U.S. rather than the Soviet Union as imperialistic is beyond me. Compare the freedom with which western Europe has criticized and opposed its liberator, benefactor, and protector with the clampdown on dissent behind the Iron Curtain. I'm not sure which American ideals you think are good for America but not the rest of the world. Notice that Greene complained about American adventurism against Communism in Southeast Asia, but not our fight against fascism in Europe during World War II.
It is true that Americans find it hard to accept that others don't always see us as we see ourselves. At the same time, foreigners often fail to recognize the spite and envy in their view of Americans.
11 - S.T.M
The imperialism Greene is documenting here isn't very different. It's simply about bringing other people into your orbit for your own gain.
If you look at the proliferation and spread of US corporations on the global stage, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that this is a genuine form of imperialism (or neo-imperialism). Most of the profits return to the US to benefit the US, which is exactly what imperialism is really all about (an example of the similarities: the British, during their mandate there post WWI, waged a war in Iraq in the 1920s and '30s every bit as destructive and ultimately as unpopular at home, as that which is going on today ... and it was, of course, about oil).
Many of these corporations pay near-slave wages overseas and sell at huge profits at home and around the world, which feeds consumerism and gives America the lifestyle it loves. For those being ripped off, however, the story is very different.
The fact that it is in a different guise, and doesn't involve the US flag flying over half the world, doesn't make it any less the same kind of imperialism.
Instead, the corporate flags fly. And where they don't, there is meddling - in central and south America, for instance. There is no real difference, honestly.
These are the values that ultimately are not good for others, just as the values of the British were not good for others.
My point is simply this: imperialism may come in forms that seem benign (and as you point out, also magnanimous) but it is still imperialism - those "empires", taking into account the eras and thus values were a bit different, remain classic examples for study and may well be so similar because of their common values.
And I'm not sure that all others see Americans through spiteful eyes (although some certainly do, and they are often misguided). It's worth noting that constructive criticism is often a tool used among friends. Rose-tinted glasses sometimes need to come off.
To feel you can't be criticised, or that you don't have to remain teachable, is actually a very arrogant view. It also indicates a degree of collective over-sensitivity.
And the belief that one is either 100 per cent with you or 100 per cent against you just doesn't hold water. It's probably best described as a naive way of looking at things.
And by the way, I like America and Americans a lot. It is just some aspects of US foreign policy (and the foreign policy of my own country) that sometimes leaves me a bit cold.
In my view Greene simply used what might have seemed to others like rabid anti-Americanism as a literary device to make a point that was not neccessarily just about America.
It was a very valid observation and remains so today.
In support of my argument, can I suggest if you are so inclined the critically accliamed movie Breaker Morant, a true and historically accurate account of three soldiers from a mounted special-forces unit accused of shooting prisoners during the Boer War in South Africa in 1901. The parallels with Vietnam and Iraq are remarkable (replace oil with gold and diamonds), if you keep an open mind. And if you do choose to see it, listen out for Lord Kitchener's subtle response to the suggestion of British "altrusim".
12 - Zenah
Alan,
Allow me to address the clear fault in your argument and therefore seriously distinguish myself from the previous "ill-tempered, distinctively adolescent outburst"; an insult so thoughtfully constructed.
I will offer a critique of your brash and unchallenged decription of Pyle as a man who "innocently commits harm". The combination of these words is (if permitted to use such an ill-tempred, adolescent word) laughable. Is there such a thing as one who commits harm innocently? We're not talking about accidently putting salt in a cake instead of sugar, we are discussing mass involvement in a political force which directly and knowingly results in the death of the "real" innocent people. People who have children, who have parents, who have FAMILY. People who are soon forgotten as a statistic, much like the hundreds dying on a daily basis in the name of American democracy in Iraq today. Your acceptance of such a character, whose death is brought about as a form of redemptive political action, speaks volumes of a nation's people who are innocent in their blind patriotism. Inexcusable are Pyle's actions, in my eyes, and yet you give him leave.
You see an America that has offered "opportunities to a world of immigrants and having developed unprecedented general wealth". I see an America that has fought centuries to maintain its control over the third world. Greene wrote of the disgraces it committed in Asia, today people write of the atrocities it commits in the Middle East.
You speak so proudly of an America that allowed for the death of its own people in New Orleans, while VALIANTLY continued its war against terrorism and boasted victory. We here in Australia are fighting on a DAILY basis to prohibit our government from becoming like yours, a collecting agency, that offers no health services, nothing.
I will discuss the so called "melodrama" of Greene's novel. Not just melodrama, IRONIC MELODRAMA. Again, you offer your opinion as though it were fact. Fowler is not the "unlikely hero", nor is he depicted as such. He is a weak, patronising, cynical, and frightened old man. He is however, the lesser of two evils.
The idealism which you praise in Pyle again reminds me of the idealism of a classmate who asserted that Israel's use of cluster bombs during its unjustified war on the Lebanese people would not go unpunished. I reminded him that an ally of the United States will never be held accountable for its actions, not while the blind patriotism of its FREEDOM AND VALUES is promoted. Not while its action in Iraq and Afghanistan go unpunished. Greene sets himself apart by, for once, allowing the party at fault to be punished.
Greene does not put his reader in a position, as you have claimed, of advocating communism if opposing the "idealism" of Pyle's Third Force. In fact, communism is the definition of idelism, in other words impractical. But communism is certainly not what you have decribed it to be. The Soviet Union's ADOPTION of communism was incorrect. Yes, there was oppression, and barberous actions, but its fault was in its application, not its philosophy. Secondly, an issue which you conveniently ignored, is that the communism of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam was not oppressive and barberous, nor was it idealistic, but it certainly, as any historian will tell you, took the backfoot to his nationalism and his desire to see a united Vietnam.
I hope to have "reasonably" convinced you or anyone who might agree with you, that your point of view is clearly mistaken. I made every attempt to not "speak insultingly in slogans."
I do believe that the democracy which has been established by the United States is not the solution to the world's problems, in fact the HUMAN BEINGS in IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, LEBANON, SUDAN and countless other countries would agree with me and I write this in the hope that they know that while the world's predominant superpower cares nothing for their future and their people, there is a single, ill-tempered adolescent out there who sees a real error in the world. I hope to never lose that or I will become another human being who lives a routine life and accepts all that is wrong and unforgivable in the United States' practice of democracy, freedom and liberty.
13 - Alan Dale
Dear Zenah, Thanks for the comment. This review has touched off more lengthy comment than any other I've written. It's fascinating.
As for what you say, let me point out that you do not address any "clear fault in [my] argument." You make statements to show that you hold opinions that are odds with mine.
There's a good deal of one-sided sentimentality in what you say. All people on earth have family; including the Israelis killed by Hezbollah rockets, statistics you seem to have "forgotten."
America has "fought centuries to maintain its control over the third world"? One century at the most.
What happened in New Orleans was caused by 1) force majeure, and 2) shoddy levees which surely are the fault of the local gov't as much as the federal.
It is factually inaccurate to claim that the US gov't "offers no health services, nothing." What are Medicare and Medicaid? And offers "nothing" is an uninformed joke. The big financial argument within the US is that the current administration keeps cutting taxes while INCREASING entitlements. They may not offer the services that you would if you were in charge, but surely that is a matter that intelligent adults can disagree about.
"Again, you offer your opinion as though it were fact." Every critic offers opinion as though it were fact. The only other option is to keep saying, "in my [humble] opinion," or something like that, which intelligent readers understand to be the case in any event. And I might add, the ONLY readers who make this accusation are readers who disagree with me, which suggests that something else is at the root of the problem.
"He is a weak, patronising, cynical, and frightened old man. He is however, the lesser of two evils." This is a description of an ironic hero.
"The idealism which you praise in Pyle again reminds me of the idealism of a classmate who asserted that Israel's use of cluster bombs during its unjustified war on the Lebanese people would not go unpunished. I reminded him that an ally of the United States will never be held accountable for its actions, not while the blind patriotism of its FREEDOM AND VALUES is promoted. Not while its action in Iraq and Afghanistan go unpunished."
I don't see how your example is illustrative of what follows from it. And "unjustified war" is such sloganeering, albeit compact in form, that you have no chance of convincing someone like me who sees the Israeli response as self-defense, whatever it is you're trying to convince me of here apart from a generalized attack on the US. Speaking of forgotten statistics, do you ever think about the status of women and girls in Afghanistan during the Taliban's reign and after?
"The Soviet Union's ADOPTION of communism was incorrect. Yes, there was oppression, and barberous actions, but its fault was in its application, not its philosophy." But seeing as it's impossible to name a Communist gov't that hasn't implemented oppression and barbarism against its own population (of a kind and on a scale that dwarfs anything you can say about the US), then maybe there's something wrong with the philosophy if it can never be implemented without them. And as for Vietnam, you don't consider re-education camps "oppressive" and "barberous" [sic]? Judging from the tenor of your comments, I bet you'd hate being put in one. Which is one of the bizarre aspects of Western democractic left-wing sentimentality about the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, as well as the Palestinian state (where, remember, homosexuals are tortured and put to death), etc. Left-wingers would not only hate being subjected to such oppressions as the lack of intellectual freedom, they would be appalled by such country's use of force if it were used against them.
"I hope to have 'reasonably' convinced you or anyone who might agree with you, that your point of view is clearly mistaken. I made every attempt to not 'speak insultingly in slogans'." Not even close--you have stated your opinions in conclusory slogans. You did not, however, "speak insultingly," which was in itself refreshing.
"[T]here is a single, ill-tempered adolescent out there who sees a real error in the world. I hope to never lose that or I will become another human being who lives a routine life and accepts all that is wrong and unforgivable in the United States' practice of democracy, freedom and liberty."
This has something of a self-satisfied Messianic tinge. You can't possibly imagine you're the only one--the US media are full of people who would agree with you more than with me. And to say that people who disagree with you live routine lives, etc., is silly. There is plenty that is "routine" in your comments and outlook. I was in academia in the northeast of the US for fifteen years and I have heard everything you've said repeatedly. And why on earth do you excuse the Soviet Union's falling short of its philosophy but not the US? Have you ever made a list of what is NOT wrong and unforgivable in the US's practice of democracy, freedom, and liberty? Why is it that more people immigrate here than anywhere else--do you think that the world's poor and oppressed have been delusional for nearly 200 years?
Anyway, thanks again for your contribution to this dialogue.
14 - vieh
o no
i have to read this book and im nor interested, neither able to read this book.
mince alors
its f*** boring
15 - AMOUL
WHAT IS THE THIRD FORCE
16 - William Sorensen
Sadly, this is my first encounter with Alan Dale's challenging and thought-provoking commentary and criticism. His words, and those of his readers, represent some of the best I've found about film anywhere.
However, Mr. Dale, your views regarding a sustained belief in Capitalism must have been tempered by more recent events. Looking back at this exchange about Greene, his writings and his motivations for writing, I can't help but add that unregulated greed and a melting arctic may have us all looking at a hybridized future in which social and capital forms must intertwine. The Gulf of Tonkin incident shares much with the mythology of weapons of mass destruction and colossal cover-ups that endanger the Constitution you so clearly defend. Neither of these fabrications was innocent. When you write criticism that leans so politically, as yours so eloquently does, you must be prepared to accept the consequence of events... of history as we've now come to see it.
Your reviews are extraordinary in their depth and obvious affection for motion pictures. They provoke much and add much.
17 - Dan Haag
Is Mr. Dale's arguement that if the U.S. had not gotten involved in Vietnam then it would have been supporting Communism? That to me is the only point. But if this was the right thing for the U.S. to do, then why were the results and the war and the events leading to war so aweful?
18 - Dan Haag
I wonder too about the historical accuracy of the book/movie. Did the U.S. actually prop up a third force, allow/authorize it to commit atrocities which it then blamed on the Communists?