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92-517: The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by English author Graham Greene . Narrated in the first person by journalist Thomas Fowler, the novel depicts the breakdown of French colonialism in Vietnam and early American involvement in the Vietnam War . A subplot concerns a love triangle between Fowler, an American CIA agent named Alden Pyle, and Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman. The novel implicitly questions

184-454: A libel lawsuit that Greene lost, but he was ultimately vindicated in the 1990s when the former mayor of Nice, Jacques Médecin , was imprisoned for corruption and associated crimes. In 1984, in celebration of his 80th birthday, the brewery which Greene's great-grandfather founded in 1799 made a special edition of its St. Edmund's Ale for him, with a special label in his honour. Commenting on turning 80, Greene said, "The big advantage ...

276-620: A second-class degree in history. After leaving Oxford, Greene worked as a private tutor and then turned to journalism; first on the Nottingham Journal , and then as a sub-editor on The Times . While he was still at Oxford, he had started corresponding with Vivien Dayrell-Browning , who had written to him to correct him on a point of Catholic doctrine. Greene was an agnostic, but when he later began to think about marrying Vivien, it occurred to him that, as he puts it in his autobiography A Sort of Life , he "ought at least to learn

368-608: A "Catholic agnostic". Beginning in 1946, Greene had an affair with Catherine Walston , the wife of Harry Walston , a wealthy farmer and future life peer . That relationship is generally thought to have informed the writing of The End of the Affair , published in 1951, when the relationship came to an end. Greene left his family in 1947, but Vivien refused to grant him a divorce, in accordance with Catholic teaching, and they remained married until Greene's death in 1991. Greene lived with manic depression ( bipolar disorder ). He had

460-634: A "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia , and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland . William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety". Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in St John's House, a boarding house of Berkhamsted School , Hertfordshire, where his father was house master. He was the fourth of six children; his younger brother, Hugh , became Director-General of

552-528: A Best Actor nomination. When the novel was first published in the United States in 1956, however, it was widely condemned there as anti-American. For example, it was criticised in The New Yorker for portraying Americans as murderers (largely based on one scene in which a bomb explodes in a crowd of people). According to critic Philip Stratford, "American readers were incensed, perhaps not so much because of

644-554: A battle. Pyle travels there to tell him that he has been in love with Phuong since the first night he saw her, and that he wants to marry her. They make a toast to nothing and Pyle leaves the next day. Fowler gets a letter from Pyle thanking him for being so nice. The letter annoys Fowler because of Pyle's arrogant confidence that Phuong will leave Fowler to marry him. Meanwhile, Fowler's editor wants him to return to England. Pyle visits Fowler's residence and they ask Phuong to choose between them. She chooses Fowler, unaware that his transfer

736-513: A bicycle bomb is detonated and many innocent civilians are killed. Fowler realizes that Pyle was involved. Pyle had allied himself with General Thé , a renegade commander he was grooming to lead the "Third Force" described in Harding's book. Pyle thus brings disaster upon innocents, all the while certain he is bringing a third way to Vietnam. Fowler is emotionally conflicted about this discovery, but ultimately decides to aid in assassinating Pyle. Although

828-470: A biographer he retained almost nothing except Spanish curse words and French phrases he had memorized in kindergarten. Lansdale's difficulty meeting the foreign language requirement for his degree and lack of obvious career path prompted him to drop out of UCLA several credits short of graduation. He later moved on to better-paying work in advertising in Los Angeles and San Francisco . Lansdale served with

920-526: A commemorative edition. In 2009, The Strand Magazine began to publish in serial form a newly discovered Greene novel titled The Empty Chair . The manuscript was written in longhand when Greene was 22 and newly converted to Catholicism. Greene's literary style was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as "not a specifically literary style at all. The words are functional, devoid of sensuous attraction, of ancestry, and of independent life". Commenting on

1012-417: A contest for parodies of Greene's writing style, he submitted three entries under the names "M. Wilkinson", “N. Wilkinson" and "D.R. Cook". As "M. Wilkinson", he shared the prize (one guinea) with four other authors. He later wrote to the magazine revealing his identity and expressing regret that his other two entries had not won, "because prize money in these days is free of Income Tax." Greene's entry comprised

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1104-459: A few. The Nation , describing the many facets of Graham Greene The novels often portray the dramatic struggles of the individual soul from a Catholic perspective. Greene was criticised for certain tendencies in an unorthodox direction—in the world, sin is omnipresent to the degree that the vigilant struggle to avoid sinful conduct is doomed to failure, hence not central to holiness. His friend and fellow Catholic Evelyn Waugh attacked that as

1196-646: A history of depression, which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life. In a letter to his wife, Vivien, he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life," and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material". Greene left Britain in 1966, moving to Antibes , to be close to Yvonne Cloetta, whom he had known since 1959, a relationship that endured until his death. In 1973, he had an uncredited cameo appearance as an insurance company representative in François Truffaut 's film Day for Night . In 1981, Greene

1288-561: A live-in lover, Phuong, who is only 20 years old and was previously a dancer at The Arc-en-Ciel (Rainbow) on Jaccareo Road, in Cholon . Her sister's intent is to arrange a marriage for Phuong that will benefit herself and her family. The sister disapproves of their relationship because Fowler is already married and an atheist. At a dinner with Fowler and Phuong, Pyle meets her sister, who immediately starts questioning Pyle about his viability for marriage with Phuong. Fowler goes to Phat Diem to witness

1380-469: A non-Americanised South Vietnam. Her character is never fully developed or revealed. She is never able to show her emotions, as her older sister makes decisions for her. She is named after, but not based on, a Vietnamese friend of Greene's. Vigot , a French inspector at the Sûreté , investigates Pyle's death. He is a man anguished between doing his duty (pursuing Pyle's death and questioning Fowler) and doing what

1472-533: A novel, even though, as a work decidedly comic in tone, it appeared closer to his last two entertainments, Loser Takes All and Our Man in Havana , than to any of the novels. Greene, they speculated, seemed to have dropped the category of entertainment. This was soon confirmed. In the Collected Edition of Greene's works published in 22 volumes between 1970 and 1982, the distinction between novels and entertainments

1564-650: A number of leper colonies in the Congo Basin and in what were then the British Cameroons . During this trip in late February and early March 1959, Greene met several times with Andrée de Jongh , a leader in the Belgian resistance during WWII, who famously established an escape route to Gibraltar through the Pyrenees for downed allied airmen. In 1957, just months after Fidel Castro began his final revolutionary assault on

1656-471: A painting he had done, which hung in the living room of the French house where the author spent the last years of his life. Greene did later voice doubts about Castro, telling a French interviewer in 1983, "I admire him for his courage and his efficiency, but I question his authoritarianism," adding: "All successful revolutions, however idealistic, probably betray themselves in time." Between 1944 and 1948, Greene

1748-589: A reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels , and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of

1840-632: A revival of the Quietist heresy. This aspect of his work also was criticised by the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar , as giving sin a mystique. Greene responded that constructing a vision of pure faith and goodness in the novel was beyond his talents. Praise of Greene from an orthodox Catholic point of view by Edward Short is in Crisis Magazine , and a mainstream Catholic critique is presented by Joseph Pearce . Catholicism's prominence decreased in his later writings. The supernatural realities that haunted

1932-709: A role in the overthrow of the Diem regime. Lansdale retired from the Air Force on November 1, 1963. Yet from 1965 to 1968, he was back in Vietnam where he worked in the United States Embassy, Saigon , with the rank of minister. The scope of his delegated authority was vague, however, and he was bureaucratically marginalized and frustrated. His 1972 memoir , In the Midst of Wars. An American's Mission to Southeast Asia , covers his time in

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2024-486: A substantial fragment that was published posthumously in The Graham Greene Film Reader (1993) and No Man's Land (2005). A script for The Stranger's Hand was written by Guy Elmes on the basis of Greene's unfinished story, and filmed by Soldati in 1954. In 1965, Greene again entered a similar New Statesman competition pseudonymously, and won an honourable mention. Edward Lansdale Lansdale

2116-410: A world that is paper-thin". Only in recovering the religious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soul that carries the permanent consequence of salvation or damnation, and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and divine grace , could the novel recover its dramatic power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresent in the world Greene depicts; and Catholicism

2208-567: Is best for the country (letting the matter be unsolved). He and Fowler are oddly akin in some ways, both faintly cynical and weary of the world; hence their discussion of Blaise Pascal . But they are divided by the differences of their faith: Vigot is a Roman Catholic and Fowler an atheist. The novel was popular in Britain, and over the years achieved notable status. It was adapted to film in 1958 , and again in 2002 by Miramax. The 2002 film featured Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser , and earned Caine

2300-498: Is held by the John J. Burns Library, at Boston College . Part of Greene's reputation as a novelist is for weaving the characters he met and the places where he lived into the fabric of his novels. Greene first left Europe at 30 years of age in 1935 on a trip to Liberia that produced the travel book Journey Without Maps . His 1938 trip to Mexico to see the effects of the government's campaign of forced anti-Catholic secularisation

2392-407: Is no longer maintained. All are novels. Greene was one of the more "cinematic" of twentieth-century writers; most of his novels and many of his plays and short stories have been adapted for film or television . The Internet Movie Database lists 66 titles between 1934 and 2010 based on Greene material. Some novels were filmed more than once, such as Brighton Rock in 1947 and 2011, The End of

2484-451: Is particularly devoted to a scholar named York Harding. Harding's theory is that neither Communism nor colonialism is the answer in foreign lands like Vietnam, but rather a "Third Force", usually a combination of traditions, works best. Pyle has read Harding's numerous books many times and has adopted Harding's thinking as his own. Pyle also strives to be a member of this "Third Force". US military counter-insurgency expert Edward Lansdale , who

2576-498: Is pending. Fowler writes to his wife to ask for a divorce, in front of Phuong. Fowler and Pyle meet again in a war zone. They end up in a guard tower where they discuss topics ranging from sexual experiences to religion. Their presence endangers the local guards by attracting an attack by the Viet Minh . Pyle saves Fowler's life as they escape. Fowler returns to Saigon , where he lies to Phuong that his wife will divorce him. Pyle exposes

2668-465: Is presented against a background of unvarying human evil, sin, and doubt. V. S. Pritchett praised Greene as the first English novelist since Henry James to present, and grapple with, the reality of evil. Greene concentrated on portraying the characters' internal lives—their mental, emotional, and spiritual depths. His stories are often set in poor, hot and dusty tropical places such as Mexico, West Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, and Argentina, which led to

2760-684: Is that at 80 you are more likely these days to beat out encountering your end in a nuclear war," adding, "the other side of the problem is that I really don't want to survive myself [which] has nothing to do with nukes, but with the body hanging around while the mind departs." In 1986, Greene was awarded Britain's Order of Merit . He died of leukaemia in 1991 at the age of 86, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery. Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres: thrillers ( mystery and suspense books), such as The Ministry of Fear , which he described as entertainments, often with notable philosophic edges; and literary works, such as The Power and

2852-533: Is that neither communism nor colonialism are proper in foreign lands like Vietnam , but rather a "Third Force"—usually a combination of traditions—works best. When they first meet, the earnest Pyle asks Fowler to help him understand more about the country, but the older man's cynical realism does not sink in. Pyle is certain that American power can put the Third Force in charge, but he knows little about Indochina and recasts it into theoretical categories. Fowler has

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2944-464: Is the "quiet American" of the title. A CIA agent working undercover, Pyle is thoughtful, soft-spoken, intellectual, serious, and idealistic. He comes from a privileged East Coast background. His father is a renowned professor of underwater erosion whose picture has appeared on the cover of Time magazine; his mother is well respected in their community. Pyle is a brilliant graduate of Harvard University. He has studied theories of government and society, and

3036-411: The 100 most inspiring novels . The novel has been adapted to film twice, in 1958 and 2002. The 1958 Hollywood film inverted the theme of the novel, turning it into an anti-communist story instead of a cautionary tale about American interventionism . The plot of the 2002 film version , in contrast, was true to the book. It was test-screened to positive audience reactions on 10 September 2001. However,

3128-482: The 9-11 attacks took place the next day, and audience ratings declined with each subsequent screening. Reacting to criticism of its "unpatriotic" message, Miramax shelved the film for a year. Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired

3220-623: The Batista regime in Cuba , Greene played a small role in helping the revolutionaries, as a secret courier transporting warm clothing for Castro's rebels hiding in the hills during the Cuban winter. Castro, like Daniel Ortega and Omar Torrijos , was one of several Latin American leaders Greene's friendship with whom has led some commentators to question his commitment to democracy. After one visit Castro gave Greene

3312-657: The Caodaist militias under Trình Minh Thế in an attempt to bolster the VNA, a propaganda campaign encouraging Vietnam's Catholics to move to the south as part of Operation Passage to Freedom , and spreading claims that North Vietnamese agents were making attacks in South Vietnam. Operation Passage to Freedom changed the religious balance in Vietnam. Before the war, the majority of Vietnamese Catholics lived in North Vietnam, but after

3404-704: The Director of Central Intelligence for the CIA. Lansdale during this time traveled to Vietnam with a young Daniel Ellsberg who would work in the U.S. Embassy there. From 1957 to 1963, Lansdale worked for the Department of Defense in Washington , serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Operations, Staff Member of the President's Committee on Military Assistance, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. During

3496-630: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II , ultimately being promoted to major. He extended his tour to remain in the Philippines until 1948, helping the Philippine Army rebuild its intelligence services and resolve the cases of large numbers of prisoners of war. With most of Lansdale's prior United States Army intelligence officer experience being with US Army Air Forces units, he transferred to

3588-597: The US Air Force and was commissioned as a captain when it was established as an independent service in 1947. After leaving the Philippines in 1948, he served as an instructor at the Strategic Intelligence School at Lowry Air Force Base , Colorado , where he received a temporary promotion to lieutenant colonel in 1949. In 1950, President Elpidio Quirino personally requested that Lansdale be transferred to

3680-457: The "long drive back to Saigon on the necessity of finding a 'third force in Vietnam.'” Phuong , Fowler's lover at the beginning of the novel, is a beautiful young Vietnamese woman who stays with him for security and protection, and leaves him for the same reason. She is considered by Fowler as a lover to be taken for granted and by Pyle as someone to be protected. Pyle's desire for Phuong was largely interpreted by critics to parallel his desire for

3772-577: The 1950s, but in his final years began to receive the sacraments again from Father Leopoldo Durán, a Spanish priest, who became a friend. In one of his final works, a pamphlet titled J'Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice (1982), Greene wrote of a legal matter that embroiled him and his extended family in Nice , and declared that organised crime flourished in Nice because the city's upper levels of civic government protected judicial and police corruption. The accusation provoked

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3864-446: The Affair in 1955 and 1999, and The Quiet American in 1958 and 2002 . The 1936 thriller A Gun for Sale was filmed at least five times under different titles, notably This Gun for Hire in 1942. Greene received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay for Carol Reed 's The Fallen Idol (1948), adapted from his own short story The Basement Room . He also wrote several original screenplays. In 1949, after writing

3956-463: The American diplomatic corps needed to be more modern, technically proficient, and friendly in assisting Third World countries—some of the exact opinions that Greene had depicted as blinding Alden Pyle. French journalist Jean-Claude Pomonti's 2006 book about the South Vietnamese correspondent and Viet Cong spy Phạm Xuân Ẩn was titled Un Vietnamien bien tranquille ( The Quiet Vietnamese ), which

4048-473: The BBC , and his elder brother, Raymond , an eminent physician and mountaineer. His parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion Raymond Greene, were first cousins , both members of a large, influential family that included the owners of Greene King Brewery , bankers, and statesmen; his grandmother Jane Wilson was first cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson . Charles Greene was second master at Berkhamsted School, where

4140-400: The French war in Vietnam for more than two years. He has become a very jaded and cynical man. He meets Alden Pyle and finds him naïve. Throughout the book Fowler is often caught in lies and sometimes there may be speculation that he is lying to himself. Fowler's relationship with Vietnamese woman Phuong often intensifies the conflict of the story, especially between Fowler and Pyle. Alden Pyle

4232-435: The Glory , which he described as novels, on which he thought his literary reputation was to be based. As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between "entertainments" and "novels" to be less evident. The last book Greene termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. When Travels with My Aunt was published eleven years later, many reviewers noted that Greene had designated it

4324-528: The Glory . The next two books, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1932), were unsuccessful, and he later disowned them. His first true success was Stamboul Train (1932) which was taken on by the Book Society and adapted as the film Orient Express , in 1934. Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist, rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at

4416-694: The Joint US Military Assistance Group, Philippines, to assist the intelligence services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in combating the communist Hukbalahap rebellion . Lansdale was an early practitioner of psychological warfare . Adopting a tactic previously used in the Philippines by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, Lansdale spread rumors that aswangs , blood-sucking demons in Philippine folklore, were loose in

4508-664: The Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black . Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize . Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949). He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning . Later in life he took to calling himself

4600-663: The Philippines [in Vietnam]." Lansdale had previously been a member of General John W. O'Daniel 's mission to Indochina in 1953, acting as an advisor to French forces on special counter-guerrilla operations against the Viet Minh . From 1954 to 1957, he was stationed in Saigon as the head of the Saigon Military Mission. During this period, he was active in the training of the Vietnamese National Army (VNA), organizing

4692-501: The Philippines and Vietnam up to December 1956. Lansdale's biography, The Unquiet American , was written by Cecil Currey and published in 1988; the title refers to the common, but incorrect, belief that the eponymous character in Graham Greene 's novel The Quiet American was based on Lansdale. According to Norman Sherry's authorized biography of Greene The Life of Graham Greene (Penguin, 2004), Lansdale did not officially enter

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4784-645: The Philippines on December 30, 1953. Lansdale is said to have run Magsaysay's campaign for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1953 Philippine general election . Lansdale helped the Philippine Armed Forces develop psychological operations, civic actions, and the rehabilitation of Hukbalahap prisoners. After the end of the left-wing Huk insurgency in the Philippines and after building support for Magsaysay's presidency, CIA director Allen Dulles instructed Lansdale to "do what you did in

4876-555: The Vietnam arena until 1954, while Greene wrote his book in 1952 after departing Vietnam. It is more likely that he was the inspiration for the character Colonel Hillandale in Eugene Burdick 's and William Lederer 's joint novel The Ugly American published in 1958. Many of Lansdale's private papers and effects were destroyed in a fire at his McLean home in 1972. In 1981, Lansdale donated most of his remaining papers to Stanford University 's Hoover Institution . Lansdale died of

4968-481: The agency. Accordingly, he was posted to Sierra Leone during the Second World War. Kim Philby , who would later be revealed as a Soviet agent, was Greene's supervisor and friend at MI6. Greene resigned from MI6 in 1944. He later wrote an introduction to Philby's 1968 memoir, My Silent War . Greene also corresponded with intelligence officer and spy, John Cairncross , for forty years and that correspondence

5060-555: The biased portrait of obtuse and destructive American innocence and idealism in Alden Pyle, but because in this case it was drawn with such acid pleasure by a middle-class English snob like Thomas Fowler whom they were all too ready to identify with Greene himself". The title of a 1958 book, The Ugly American , was a play on Greene's title; however, the authors of that book, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, had arguably thoroughly misunderstood Greene's novel, since their book argued that

5152-523: The calamities he brings upon the Vietnamese. The book uses Greene's experiences as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaro in French Indochina 1951–1954. He was apparently inspired to write The Quiet American during October 1951 while driving back to Saigon from Ben Tre province, accompanied by an American aid worker who lectured him about finding a "third force in Vietnam". It

5244-459: The cleric "on the ground of dogmatic atheism", as Greene's primary difficulty with religion was what he termed the "if" surrounding God's existence. He found, however, that "after a few weeks of serious argument the 'if' was becoming less and less improbable", and Greene converted and was baptised after vigorous arguments initially with the priest in which he defended atheism , or at least the "if" of agnosticism . Late in life, Greene called himself

5336-517: The coining of the expression "Greeneland" to describe such settings. A stranger with no shortage of calling cards: devout Catholic, lifelong adulterer, pulpy hack, canonical novelist; self-destructive, meticulously disciplined, deliriously romantic, bitterly cynical; moral relativist, strict theologian, salon communist, closet monarchist; civilized to a stuffy fault and louche to drugged-out distraction, anti-imperialist crusader and postcolonial parasite, self-excoriating and self-aggrandizing, to name just

5428-513: The criticism. In 1954, Greene travelled to Haiti , where The Comedians (1966) is set, and which was then under the rule of dictator François Duvalier , known as "Papa Doc", frequently staying at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince . He visited Haiti again in the late 1950s. As inspiration for his novel A Burnt-Out Case (1960), Greene spent time travelling around Africa visiting

5520-456: The disaster he inflicted on the Vietnamese. In Ways of Escape , reflecting on his Mexican trip, he complained that Mexico's government was insufficiently left-wing compared with Cuba's. In Greene's opinion, "Conservatism and Catholicism should be ... impossible bedfellows". In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. In April 1949, when the New Statesman held

5612-471: The earlier work declined and were replaced by a humanistic perspective, a change reflected in his public criticism of orthodox Catholic teaching. In his later years, Greene was a strong critic of American imperialism and sympathised with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro , whom he had met. Years before the Vietnam War , he prophetically attacked the idealistic but arrogant beliefs of The Quiet American , whose certainty in his own virtue kept him from seeing

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5704-506: The early 1960s, he was chiefly involved in clandestine efforts to topple the government of Cuba , including proposals to assassinate Fidel Castro . Much of this work was under the aegis of " Operation Mongoose ", which was the operational name for the CIA plan to topple Castro's government. According to Daniel Ellsberg , who was at one time Lansdale's subordinate, Lansdale claimed that he was fired by President Kennedy's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara after he declined Kennedy's offer to play

5796-469: The first two paragraphs of a novel, apparently set in Italy, The Stranger's Hand: An Entertainment . Greene's friend Mario Soldati , a Piedmontese novelist and film director, believed it had the makings of a suspense film about Yugoslav spies in postwar Venice . Upon Soldati's prompting, Greene continued writing the story as the basis for a film script. Apparently he lost interest in the project, leaving it as

5888-453: The foundations of growing American involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s, exploring the subject through links among its three main characters: Fowler, Pyle and Phuong. The novel has received much attention due to its prediction of the outcome of the Vietnam War and subsequent American foreign policy since the 1950s. Greene portrays Pyle as so blinded by American exceptionalism that he cannot see

5980-467: The headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry , who was married to Charles' cousin. Another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene , whose politics led to his internment during World War II . In his childhood, Greene spent his summers at Harston House , the Cambridgeshire home of his uncle, Sir Graham Greene . In Greene's description of his childhood, he describes his learning to read there: "It

6072-482: The ideas for the novel often considered his masterpiece, The Power and the Glory . By the 1950s, Greene had become known as one of the finest writers of his generation. As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between his 'entertainments' and novels increasingly problematic. The last book Greene termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. Greene also wrote short stories and plays, which were well received, although he

6164-557: The journalist Claud Cockburn and the historian Peter Quennell . Greene contributed several stories to the school magazine, one of which was published by a London evening newspaper in January 1921. He attended Balliol College, Oxford , to study history. During 1922 Greene was for a short time a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain , and sought an invitation to the new Soviet Union , of which nothing came. In 1925, while he

6256-587: The jungle. His men then captured an enemy soldier and drained the blood from his body, leaving the corpse where it could be seen and making the Hukbalahap flee the region. Lansdale also arranged for US military support to Philippine efforts in defeating the Kamlon rebellion in Sulu . Lansdale became friends with Ramon Magsaysay , then the secretary of national defense, and with his help Magsaysay eventually became President of

6348-422: The leader of South Vietnam. Diem, typically suspicious of anyone not in his immediate family, invited Lansdale to move into the presidential palace after which they became friends. In October 1954, Lansdale foiled a coup attempt, cutting General Nguyễn Văn Hinh 's communication off from his top lieutenants by moving them to Manila. Lansdale mentored and trained Phạm Xuân Ẩn , a reporter for Time magazine who

6440-555: The lean prose and its readability, Richard Jones wrote in the Virginia Quarterly Review that "nothing deflects Greene from the main business of holding the reader's attention". Greene's novels often have religious themes at their centre. In his literary criticism he attacked the modernist writers Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster for having lost the religious sense which, he argued, resulted in dull, superficial characters, who "wandered about like cardboard symbols through

6532-559: The lie and Phuong must again choose between him and Fowler. Phuong considers her own interests realistically and without sentiment. She moves in with Pyle. Fowler writes to his editor, who decides that he can stay in Indo-China for another year. Fowler goes into the midst of the battlefield to witness events. When Fowler returns to Saigon, he goes to Pyle's office to confront him, but Pyle is out. Pyle comes over later for drinks and they talk about his pending marriage to Phuong. Later that week,

6624-520: The magazine Night and Day . Greene's 1937 film review of Wee Willie Winkie , for Night and Day —which said that the nine-year-old star, Shirley Temple , displayed "a dubious coquetry" which appealed to "middle-aged men and clergymen"—provoked Twentieth Century Fox successfully to sue for £3,500 plus costs, and Greene left the UK to live in Mexico until after the trial was over. While in Mexico, Greene developed

6716-586: The nature and limits of the beliefs she held". Greene was baptised on 26 February 1926 and they married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead , London. He published his first novel, The Man Within , in 1929; its favourable reception enabled him to work full-time as a novelist. Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres (which he described as "entertainments" and "novels"): thrillers—often with notable philosophic edges—such as The Ministry of Fear ; and literary works—on which he thought his literary reputation would rest—such as The Power and

6808-491: The novella as "raw material", he wrote the screenplay for a classic film noir , The Third Man , also directed by Reed and featuring Orson Welles . In 1983, The Honorary Consul , published ten years earlier, was released as a film (under the title Beyond the Limit in some territories), starring Michael Caine and Richard Gere . Author and screenwriter Michael Korda contributed a foreword and introduction to this novel in

6900-584: The operation the South held the majority, 55% of which were refugees from the North. Lansdale accomplished that by dropping leaflets in the Northern hamlets stating that "Christ has gone to the South" and other leaflets showing maps with concentric circles emanating from Hanoi suggesting an imminent nuclear bomb strike on the Northern capital. During his time in Vietnam, Lansdale quickly ingratiated himself with Ngo Dinh Diem ,

6992-442: The police suspect that Fowler is involved, they cannot prove it. Phuong goes back to Fowler as if nothing had ever happened. In the last chapter, Fowler receives a telegram from his wife in which she states that she has changed her mind and will begin divorce proceedings. The novel ends with Fowler thinking about his first meeting with, and the death of, Pyle. Thomas Fowler is a British journalist in his fifties who has been covering

7084-402: The rest of the day. His writing influences included Henry James , Robert Louis Stevenson , H. Rider Haggard , Joseph Conrad , Ford Madox Ford , Marcel Proust , Charles Péguy and John Buchan . Throughout his life, Greene travelled to what he called the world's wild and remote places. In 1941, the travels led to his being recruited into MI6 by his sister, Elisabeth, who worked for

7176-465: The root of much of his writing, especially Brighton Rock , The Power and the Glory , The Heart of the Matter , and The End of the Affair , which have been named "the gold standard" of the Catholic novel. Several works, such as The Confidential Agent , The Quiet American , Our Man in Havana , The Human Factor , and his screenplay for The Third Man , also show Greene's avid interest in

7268-464: The school as a boarder. Bullied and profoundly depressed, he made several suicide attempts, including, as he wrote in his autobiography, by Russian roulette and by taking aspirin before going swimming in the school pool. In 1920, aged 16, in what was a radical step for the time, he was sent for psychoanalysis for six months in London, afterwards returning to school as a day student. School friends included

7360-605: The workings and intrigues of international politics and espionage. In early 1930s Green moved to the left politically. He read left-wing writers like G.D.H. Cole and John Strachey ; in 1933 he joined the Independent Labour Party . This move to the left is reflected in the characters and plot of his fifth novel It's A Battlefield . His later political affiliations and convictions were more ambiguous. He supplemented his novelist's income with freelance journalism, book and film reviews for The Spectator , and co-editing

7452-470: Was actually a highly placed North Vietnamese spy. In 1961, he helped to publicize the story of Father Nguyễn Lạc Hoá , the "fighting priest" who had organized a crack militia, the Sea Swallows, from his village of anticommunist Chinese Catholic exiles. In 1961, Lansdale recruited John M. Deutch to his first job in government, working as one of Robert McNamara 's " Whiz Kids ". Deutch would go on to become

7544-413: Was always first and foremost a novelist. His first play, The Living Room , debuted in 1953. Michael Korda , a lifelong friend and later his editor at Simon & Schuster , observed Greene at work: Greene wrote in a small black leather notebook with a black fountain pen and would write approximately 500 words. Korda described this as Graham's daily penance—once he finished he put the notebook away for

7636-467: Was an agnostic , but was baptised into the Catholic faith in 1926 after meeting his future wife Vivien Dayrell-Browning . They were married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead, north London. The Greenes had two children, Lucy Caroline (born 1933) and Francis (born 1936). In his discussions with Father Trollope, the priest to whom he went for instruction in Catholicism , Greene argued with

7728-453: Was an undergraduate at Balliol, his first work, a poorly received volume of poetry titled Babbling April , was published. Greene had periodic bouts of depression while at Oxford, and largely kept to himself. Of Greene's time at Oxford, his contemporary Evelyn Waugh noted that: "Graham Greene looked down on us (and perhaps all undergraduates) as childish and ostentatious. He certainly shared in none of our revelry." He graduated in 1925 with

7820-497: Was at Harston I quite suddenly found that I could read—the book was Dixon Brett, Detective . I didn't want anyone to know of my discovery, so I read only in secret, in a remote attic, but my mother must have spotted what I was at all the same, for she gave me Ballantyne's Coral Island for the train journey home—always an interminable journey with the long wait between trains at Bletchley ..." In 1910, Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster of Berkhamsted. Graham also attended

7912-701: Was awarded the Jerusalem Prize , awarded to writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society. He lived the last years of his life in Vevey , on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the same town Charlie Chaplin was living in at this time. He visited Chaplin often, and the two were good friends. His book Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party (1980) is based on themes of combined philosophical and geographical influences. He ceased going to mass and confession in

8004-630: Was born in Detroit , Michigan , on February 6, 1908, and later raised in Los Angeles . He was the second of four sons of Sarah Frances ( née Philips; 1881–1954) and Henry Lansdale (1883–1959). Lansdale attended school in Michigan, New York , and California before attending the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he earned his way largely by writing for newspapers and magazines. Lansdale struggled in learning foreign languages while at UCLA and told

8096-463: Was director at Eyre & Spottiswoode under chairman Douglas Jerrold , in charge of developing its fiction list. Greene created The Century Library series, which was discontinued after he left following a conflict with Jerrold regarding Anthony Powell 's contract. In 1958, Greene was offered the position of chairman by Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre , but declined. He was a director at The Bodley Head from 1957 to 1968 under Max Reinhardt . Greene

8188-620: Was paid for by the publishing company Longman , thanks to his friendship with Tom Burns . That voyage produced two books, the nonfiction The Lawless Roads (published as Another Mexico in the US) and the novel The Power and the Glory . In 1953, the Holy Office informed Greene that The Power and the Glory was damaging to the reputation of the priesthood; but later, in a private audience with Greene, Pope Paul VI told him that, although parts of his novels would offend some Catholics, he should ignore

8280-528: Was stationed in Vietnam 1953–1957, is sometimes cited as a model for Pyle's character. In fact Greene did not meet Lansdale until after completing much of the novel. According to Greene, the inspiration for the character of Pyle was Leo Hochstetter, an American serving as public affairs director for the Economic Aid Mission in Indochina who was assumed by the French to "belong to the CIA", and lectured him on

8372-527: Was twice adapted for film, in 1958 and in 2002. Thomas Fowler is a British journalist in his fifties who has covered the French war in Vietnam for more than two years. He meets a young American idealist named Alden Pyle, a CIA agent working undercover. Pyle lives his life and forms his opinions based on foreign policy books written by York Harding with no real experience in Southeast Asia matters. Harding's theory

8464-710: Was widely understood as a play on the title of Greene's book. Scott Anderson 's 2021 book, The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Parts , describes the activities of CIA operators during the Cold War. This book's title too is a play on the title of Greene's book, although its spy craft-related themes are different. On 5 November 2019, the BBC News included The Quiet American on its list of

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