I have finally gotten around to starting a list of links over there to the right.
Jurassic Pork at Pottersville is always on the mark with essays that challenge the short attention span zeitgeist. In an ideal world, his essays would be on the front of all our major metropolitan newspapers (although in an ideal world, that wouldn't be necessary). I recommend TBogg for his own brand of insight, and for a really great sense of humor. He reminds me of myself, back when I still had a sense of humor that scared the living shit out of my adversaries.
I'll build the list as I go along. It will be dedicated to meaningful sites that I visit frequently. Except Atrios. God knows why I still visit him frequently. Heh, Indeedy.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The Quiet American
Last month, in a speech on Iraq policy, George Bush made a curiously muddled reference to Alden Pyle, the "quiet" American intelligence officer featured in Graham Greene's novel. Greene's portrait of Pyle is not a flattering one: he is an immensely naive, unworldly young man ready to remake the world in the image of American democracy. While doing my LibraryThing cataloging, I came across this book last week and decided to reread it in light of Bush's comment and the obvious parallels with the Iraq situation.
Clearly, Bush has either not read this book or is a terribly poor reader. Pyle, in his misguided attempt to enable the fermentation of democracy in Vietnam (ca. early 1950's), facilitates a terrorist act that leaves civilians dead or maimed (the chapter describing the explosion and its aftermath are classic Greene). Pyle, as a neophyte to carnage, is shocked by the result of his actions, but is undeterred, rationalizing that the civilians "died for democracy".
Greene's book shows the Americans bumbling into the French colonial disaster in Southeast Asia, but in essence this provides a background to the moral awakening of the "narrator", Thomas Fowler, the British correspondent who keeps a Vietnamese mistress while trying to stay uninvolved in the political situation. Fowler's contempt for Pyle - who in addition to his subversive activities has tried to "liberate" Fowler's mistress as well - ultimately leads to his abandoning his moral ambivalence. Although Pyle had in fact saved his life in the course of a nighttime attack in the Vietnamese countryside, Fowler assists in luring Pyle into an ambush in which he is murdered. Did Fowler make the decision to let Pyle be killed because of his recklessness in fomenting deadly unrest, because of his contempt for his naivete, or because of Pyle's attempts to seduce Phong away from him?
In the end, Fowler's own hypocrisies and fears are exposed - a self-awakening for which Pyle is the catalyst. But Pyle is no hero. Despite his "quietness", he is a dangerous man - a man without understanding who attempts to remake the world according to his own ideal.
Clearly, Bush has either not read this book or is a terribly poor reader. Pyle, in his misguided attempt to enable the fermentation of democracy in Vietnam (ca. early 1950's), facilitates a terrorist act that leaves civilians dead or maimed (the chapter describing the explosion and its aftermath are classic Greene). Pyle, as a neophyte to carnage, is shocked by the result of his actions, but is undeterred, rationalizing that the civilians "died for democracy".
Greene's book shows the Americans bumbling into the French colonial disaster in Southeast Asia, but in essence this provides a background to the moral awakening of the "narrator", Thomas Fowler, the British correspondent who keeps a Vietnamese mistress while trying to stay uninvolved in the political situation. Fowler's contempt for Pyle - who in addition to his subversive activities has tried to "liberate" Fowler's mistress as well - ultimately leads to his abandoning his moral ambivalence. Although Pyle had in fact saved his life in the course of a nighttime attack in the Vietnamese countryside, Fowler assists in luring Pyle into an ambush in which he is murdered. Did Fowler make the decision to let Pyle be killed because of his recklessness in fomenting deadly unrest, because of his contempt for his naivete, or because of Pyle's attempts to seduce Phong away from him?
In the end, Fowler's own hypocrisies and fears are exposed - a self-awakening for which Pyle is the catalyst. But Pyle is no hero. Despite his "quietness", he is a dangerous man - a man without understanding who attempts to remake the world according to his own ideal.
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