Title: forgettable
Review: I know I'm supposed to revere this book, but for me a careful reading was insufficient to reveal its merits."The Quiet American" is not perceptive enough to be a political novel, not intimate enough to be a romance novel, and not arranged well enough to be a thriller. Heck, Greene (at least here) isn't even enough of a wordsmith to convincingly evoke l'Indochine in the 50's, so it's not even much of a travel book. I found myself doing much of the work in that regard.Obviously, the characters as "representative" of their nation's philosophies (the Brit as cynic, the American as idealist, etc.) is well-taken, though I thought the device was heavy-handed and unproductive.Another thing that, I think, had this book rolling on a flat tire was Greene's "in medias res" beginning, in which he reveals Pyle's death, etc. Although this intially seemed competent, in retrospect it robbed the rest of the story of whatever interest or suspense it would otherwise have had.
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