"There It Is": Narratives of the Vietnam War. Tom Burns

moral universe—but Neilson is surely right to be impatient with the critical insistence on such readings in the post-Vietnam climate, where the political (and moral) issues of American intervention are so relevant.

One notorious political reading was the first film adaptation by Joseph Mankiewicz (1958), filmed in Saigon, which altered certain details, as well as the ending of the novel, to make the story more suitable to Cold War sensibilities. For example, when Fowler reads the book before his window—the signal to go ahead with Pyle’s murder—he reads a passage from Othello (rather than Kipling, as in the novel), to suggest that his motive is jealous revenge rather than moral indignation at Pyle’s political activity. And at the end of the film, Vigot proves to Fowler that Pyle was innocent of the bombing; it was really perpetrated by the Communists.53

Greene was unsurprisingly angry at this willful distortion, as were the British reviewers of the film, but Mankiewicz offered no apologies, even claiming that Fowler was one of those “ice-blooded intellectuals…whose intellectuality is really just a mask for completely irrational passion,”54 which makes nonsense not only of the character but of his moral dilemma in the novel. The distortion of the novel’s politics is not confined to conservative interpretations, according to Neilson, who complains that even liberal political readings of the novel “have continued to read American foreign policy as well-intentioned,”55 which is most likely due to the liberal politics of most literary critics. In Neilson’s Marxist reading, American policy in Vietnam was not the result of well-intentioned but misguided innocence (as he claims even Greene seemed to think), but “a logical and necessary means of maintaining capitalist hegemony.”56 Neilson cites Haim Gordon’s book on Greene to support an interpretation in which The Quiet American can be seen as exposing the horrors perpetrated by the US government “in its greed and lust for power,” and how these horrors have been “instigated, supported, and covered up by the western powers.”57 What seems clear, in any event, is that as long as the Vietnam War inspires the writing of fictional works and provokes both literary and political debate, Greene’s seminal novel will be at the center of these discussions.

iii. William J. Lederer & Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American (1958)

The Ugly American was a best-selling novel (four million copies) later adapted into a less successful homonymous film (1963), starring Marlon Brando and directed by George Englund.58 Lederer and Burdick’s work is essentially a polemical argument worked up into fiction. “This book is written as fiction; but it is based on fact,” the authors claim in an introductory note, a statement that might apply to almost any work of fiction, although it usually means to signal the present work’s serious intentions. The authors were Asian experts rather than professional writers of fiction. When the book was published, Lederer had been special assistant to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, while Burdick was an academic specialist in Southeast Asia at the University of California, Berkeley.59 Despite these impressive credentials, their novel is at the same time politically naïve and a true reflection of Cold War thinking. Jim Neilson claims that the authors evidently held “the belief that simple American know-how can overcome revolutionary political movements that arose from dire socioeconomic problems and the cruel legacy of colonialism.”60

As a literary effort, The Ugly American is far inferior to Greene’s novel or, for that matter, all the other novels discussed in this chapter, but as a cultural document it is revealing of the political climate of the period on which it had considerable influence. John Kennedy, planning to run for the presidency on an anti-Communist foreign policy platform, was one of four senators who gave copies of the novel to their colleagues, evidently to alert them to the dangers of Communism in Asia and the hitherto inadequate efforts of the US government to stem the red tide.61 Lt. Col. John Vann, a later adventurer in Vietnam both as soldier and civilian—he is the subject of Neil Sheehan’s biography-history of the war, A Bright Shining Lie (1988)—read and approved of the novel. Vann also said that he hoped to emulate Landsdale, who had arrived in Vietnam eight years earlier, in his own work there. Vann believed that Landsdale, unlike the inept “ugly Americans” of the novel, really “understood” Asians.

According to Sheehan, The Ugly American, whose title is an obvious play on Greene’s (and possibly meant to “correct” Greene’s view of Vietnam), “was accepted well into the 1960s as an example of serious political thought,” an assessment reflected in the novel’s reception, both popular and critical.62 The historian Joseph Buttinger was one of the few critics who—in a detailed, fifty-page review in Dissent (Summer 1959 issue)—discussed the book’s inanity, distortions, and falsehoods.63 Neilson thinks that Buttinger went to such lengths because he believed that the novel had too much influence on contemporary foreign policy debates. Schulzinger has made an even greater claim for the book’s influence on foreign policy: “as political propaganda setting the stage for a war, The Ugly American had an impact similar to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the years before the American Civil War.”64 Like Stowe, Lederer and Burdick seem certain that God was on their side, and, as a corollary, the enemy (Communism) was both godless and ruinous.

      The nearly plotless novel (if it can be called that) consists of a collection of stories that are little more than fictional portraits of Americans in “Sarkhan” (Vietnam) and other Asian countries. The Americans are divided into two types: the dedicated and effective representatives of their nation, and the reprehensible “ugly Americans” who seem to be, in the view of the authors, most of the people actually over there in some official capacity—hence, the need for this alarmist tract. The characters belonging to the dedicated group are given individual portraits, but they all turn out to comprise a recognizable if idealized American type, both idealistic and pragmatic, genuinely interested in helping Asians as well as improving the image of their own country abroad. They are all democratic, can-do, plain-spoken men (and one woman) who heartily dislike politicians, officials, and bureaucrats, both American and Asian, regarding them as ignorant, interfering, and indifferent to the lives of native peoples. These “good” Americans invariably learn to speak the native language, take an interest in the national culture and local customs, get out into the countryside to see how people really live, establish warm relationships with them, and, in turn, earn their respect. They tend to distrust large and expensive projects but possess some practical skill that will be useful in improving the everyday lives of the “Sarkhanese” with whom they come in daily contact. As if all this were not enough, none of them have a profit motive but are selfless in sharing their gifts.

The first of these, John Colvin, was an OSS agent in Sarkhan during World War II, when he learned to love the country. He returns after the war to teach the Sarkhanese how to breed cattle, drink milk, make powdered milk, and make use of the by-products of stock-breeding, after which he will sell out his share and leave the country. Framed by a former Sarkhanese comrade who has gone over to the Communists, Colvin is deported. Another example is Homer Atkins, who is “ugly” only in the sense that he is physically homely. An engineer, he builds a simple pump to get water up to higher ground for irrigation, and he democratically shares his idea with the local mechanic of a poor village. Together they work out the technical problem of an apparatus that will use only local, inexpensive materials. Quite soon, the village begins to look like a model enterprising American town,