I have enjoyed others of Greene’s novels more than ‘The Quiet American,’ with its almost claustrophobic focus on the relationship between veteran British journalist Thomas Fowler and American fixer Alden Pyle in the very earliest days of the Vietnam War. The two are locked in a contest over Fowler’s “girl” Phuong, who is also a stand-in in Greene’s world for the entire country of Vietnam. But their rivalry is also a metaphor for American and European approaches to war, colonialism, and morality. Pyle may be a “quiet” American in comparison to his brash compatriots, but he is deceptively over-confident of his righteousness, a worldview that leaves no room for the rights and even the lives of others. Fowler cannot help envying Pyle’s confidence, youth, and connections, while deploring his impact in the country, a tension that is exacerbated by Pyle’s saving his life under fire. “I became a bore on the subject of America,” Fowler observes. “It was as if I had been betrayed, but one is not betrayed by an enemy” (132). Ultimately, he must decide whether and how to stop Pyle’s subversion in Vietnam, a decision that engages him in the conflict in ways he had always managed to avoid.