The Ugly American

I recently picked up a copy of "The Ugly American" (by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick) at a Friends of the Library sale. I thought that it might be a first, but when examining it closely at home found the statement "Sixteenth Large Printing" at the top of the front flap. So, I put it on my reading stack and have just finished it.

It was published by Norton in 1958 and was on the New York Times Bestseller List for 78 weeks - reaching as high as number 3 during its time on the list. First printings are quite scarce, especially in near fine condition. Several are listed online at around $150.00. Signed copies are not often seen.

The book is a series of quasi-fictional vignettes, strung together, as a novel, through the story of a newly assigned ambassador to the fictional country of Sarkhan (obviously based on Vietnam). The vignettes present the authors' views of what was wrong with American Foreign Service during the middle 1950s. They touch on the Americans' inability to speak the languages of the countries where they work; the fact that the goals of politicians usually do not relate to the real needs of the populace (big road projects, dams, and military hardware don't often improve the lives of common people).

In their factual epilogue they note that:

"In Japan, Korea, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and elsewhere, our ambassadors must speak and be spoken to through interpreters."

Little has changed over the years, so this book remains relevant today. Ambassadors are appointed because of party loyalty and fund raising skill. The US Foreign Service still does not require foreign language skills of its employees - I just checked their employment webpage.

Supposedly John F. Kennedy felt this book was so important that he sent a copy to every member of the Senate. Sadly, little took. As the French fell to defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the US helped negotiate the split of what had been French Indochina into North and South Vietnam. As the French retreated home in defeat, the US waded into the morass of South Vietnam.

There was a movie of the Ugly American that was released in 1963. It featured Marlon Brando as a somewhat naive Ambassador MacWhite. Although some critics praised Brando's performance, the movie essential flopped at the box office. People just weren't very interested then, as now, in complex issues. The movie ended up focused just on MacWhite, and most of the interesting vignettes were not included - thus, another movie that was only sort of based on the book. The producers hoped to film in Thailand, but our State Department and the Thailand government refused to cooperate and the movie was largely filmed in Hollywood.