Fiction Mondays: Short Novels

Even though I’m reading Ulysses, I want to keep up with my book-a-week schedule, so my solution? Short novels! Maybe even novellas, eventually. It’s a real change of pace for me, but I am really interested to see how these shorter books work. Who knows? It might even inspire me to someday write a shorter novel of my own.

Last week, I read Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, which is about the murder of a young, idealistic man in Vietnam in the 1950s and the potential for a supposed innocent to cause untold destruction and suffering. The story follows Fowler, a jaded and cynical reporter, as he deals with the fallout of the murder of Pyle, the American of the novel’s title. But things are not so simple: Pyle stole Fowler’s girlfriend. And before he died, he had started to channel money to a “Third Force,” which he believed would defeat the communists and secure American allies in the region.

What really surprised me in this book is the certainty that Greene had, even in 1955, that America could not win in Vietnam. Over and over, he dismisses (through Fowler) the notion that the United States could come to the region and spread democracy. He believes that Pyle is foolish for believing this will be the outcome, for thinking that channeling money to a rebel force will cause anything but more bloodshed. It’s strange to read it after the war was fought, and in the middle of another war to spread democracy. I wonder what people thought of his predictions in the 1950s.

I thought the book was structured really well; it jumps really smoothly between Fowler’s memories of Pyle and the aftermath of his death, leading to the moment of overlap that you know will occur at the end. I don’t know if the characters were strong enough for me—at times they seemed more like archetypes than actual people. You had Fowler, the old man who was a little world-weary and seemed to have just given up, and the Pyle, the enthusiastic but ultimately naïve young man who thinks he’s going to save the world but ends up causing more trouble than he anticipated. They seemed to embody ideas about containment versus isolation during the Cold War era, and at times I found that this really detracted from the story.

This is the second Graham Greene novel I’ve read, and I definitely preferred the other one, Brighton Rock, to this one. I think the biggest difference for me was that the character in that book, while deranged and evil, was so compelling that you couldn’t help but be dragged along on his criminal escapades, and The Quiet American was the complete opposite. Without a really interesting plot, these characters would have been unbearable stand-ins for different philosophies. The plot alone moves you along, which I think is fine for certain genre novels, but there has to be something more. I mean, Greene also wrote The Third Man, which has a really engaging plot as well, but what makes that movie memorable is the mysterious character of Harry Lime and the way he is presented to the audience. He’s a compelling character within a strong genre plot, which is more memorable.


Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania....

Just a small update on my own writing: a few short stories are coming along really well, and it's looking like I'm going to be heading off to graduate school in the fall. More details to follow when I've made a final decision.