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Edward F. Palm (2003) undertook a serious investigation regarding a well-known book, The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer. The book included a series of stories aimed at revealing the real state of affairs and incompetence of Americans in Southeast Asia. The authors claimed to base their stories on real-life characters and events; however, the evidence for that claim is still questionable. Palm held some interviews and analyzed personal documents and letters to shed some light on the writing process and defining what was the story behind it. Palm’s research gave him a reason to argue that Lederer and Burdick’s success “rested on a carefully contrived myth surrounding the novel’s genesis and composition” (p. 176).
Palm begins his work with a quote by Mark Twain, stating that the advantage of telling the truth is that it leaves one with less to remember. He ironically refers to the numerous contradictions in information the writers used to share about their work at different times and interviews. According to them, the idea of the book first occurred when the writers met in Hawaii in 1957 and realized they have mutual opinions on the situation in Southeast Asia. Both of them failed to persuade the authorities and media that the Americans abroad are incompetent, indifferent, and ignorant about learning local languages, which will eventually lead to losing the Far East to the Communists. For sure, The Ugly American was a provocative attempt to raise indignation among the public and call the State Department and the Foreign Service to action. Burdick and Lederer planned to write a non-fiction book that, according to them, “would expose the malpractices, the incompetence, and lack of vitality of many Americans representing the United States overseas” (qtd. in Palm 2003, p. 177). However, they did not want to present a book as anti-American and to make that clear, wrote plenty of examples of “America doing a good job.” The key idea was that America was totally capable of winning and only needed to reconsider and improve its strategy. The important part was to refer to the real names, events, and places. However, six days before the deadline they changed their minds and transformed the entire book into fiction while burning the initial version. Later they explained this move to the publisher as an attempt to make the work more believable to the reader and would gain more emotional response. Lederer did not want to include a “factual epilogue” either, referring to the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He insisted that the book would get more attention if it can trigger the debates about its truthfulness.
In further reviews, Burdick and Lederer were blamed for the exaggeration of very few well-known facts and pure demagogy. Such reaction was a major concern of the writers as they aimed to prove that the described stories were based on events that happened very often. That made Palm wonder why they decided to burn the only documentary evidence of the numerous real facts they used. He concluded that Lederer and Burdick got their inspiration from only a couple of episodes. Thus, the entire message of the book became questionable. There were no reliable sources that would prove the image of an American overseas to be as outrageous as they were trying to portray.
Palm is also confident that because of the lack of facts, the story was intended to be fictional from the very beginning. He discovered a rough initial outline of the book among Burdick’s papers. Some fictional characters were already there, but the real names, dates, and places were numerically insignificant. In his interview with Palm, Burdick shared that the intention of fictionalizing the events and the characters was to make their point clearer. At the same time, they wanted to avoid possible legal proceedings for libel. Later he received the same information from the interview with the writer’s wife, Mrs. Burdick. Palm, for his part, believes that there were only a few “case histories” amongst the remainder of the fiction. That is why it took such a short time to rewrite the book. They did not have to rewrite it entirely, only the real names and events. The fiction was always there.
Back in the time of the Cold War, it was very easy to manipulate public opinion while speculating on its primary concern. The concern was to be defeated by the Communists. The latest achievements of the Soviet Union in space technologies had given the Americans even better motivation to keep on fighting in this Cold War competition. Many researchers accused Burdick and Lederer of starting the Vietnam War. Edward Palm finds such accusations ludicrous and argues that the only consequence of the book should have been the Peace Corps, founded by John F. Kennedy.
However, the opinions that losing Southeast Asia was unacceptable dominated over those who argued that Southeast Asia was not theirs to lose at all. That may have caused a misinterpretation of the ideas that Burdick and Lederer put into The Ugly American and led to one of the biggest tragedies of American history. Indeed, they managed to reach their goal and call the government to action.
Work Cited
Palm, Edward F. “The Fiction Behind the Fiction: Lederer, Burdick, and the Composition of ‘The Ugly American’.” Viet Nam War Generation Journal: A Tribute to Robert Olen Butler, vol. 2, no. 3/4, 2003, pp. 176-189.
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