In article . net,
Andrew Venor wrote:

Reid© wrote:
Following up to Gerry


Care to educate us as to what the literary usage implies?


Please! Until I joined this group I had never heard the term and
I have never heard a European use it. What does it refer to?

It in reference to the book published in 1958 titled The Ugly American,
by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer.

Basically it's a collection of short stories set after World War 2 in a
fictitious Southeast Asian country. The underlining theme of which is
about Americans abroad while trying to do help, end up being stymied in
their efforts by their own ignorance of the culture and language of the
country they are in.

ALV


and importantly the 'good guy' in the book is the Ugly American who does
get it right


here is a description:
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Discarded Advice

The Ugly American
by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer

On a bookshelf in the back room of my apartment, I came across a
crumbling, yellowed paperback. It's older than I am: originally
published in 1958, the title page shows that my copy is a third
printing, from 1960. I can no longer remember where I got it. It has no
price tag, so it's doubtful that I bought it. Most likely, I picked it
up from a pile of books discarded in an alley somewhere. That, sadly,
reflects not only the fate of my copy of the book, but of the ideas
within. Its noble sentiments have been passed over and largely
forgotten.


The Ugly American is a novel about Sarkhan, a fictional Southeast Asian
country. Sarkhan is an amalgamation of many nations: Vietnam, Indonesia,
Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand. It's is a poor nation hovering
precariously close to revolution. A communist insurgency, skillfully
aided by the Soviets, is gaining strength. America, meanwhile, seems
determined to alienate the Sarkhanese. The American officials are
overwhelmingly arrogant, rude, and incompetent.


In contrast to the officials, a few Americans are genuinely devoted to
helping the Sarkhanese. A priest, a soldier, a chicken farmer... spurned
by their own government, they work small miracles in their own ways. But
who will the Sarkhanese see as America's true face: the career
diplomats, or the chicken farmers? Between these two distinctly
different groups is Gilbert MacWhite, the newly appointed American
ambassador to Sarkhan. MacWhite is a decent man, but he's woefully
unprepared for the realities of Southeast Asia. To his credit, however,
he realizes his shortcomings, and he dedicates himself to the challenge.

The book's title is deliberately ironic. The "ugly American" is Homer
Atkins, a smart, hard-working engineer with no patience for diplomats
and other fools. "His hands were laced with prominent veins and spotted
with big, liverish freckles. His fingernails were black with grease. His
fingers bore nicks and tiny scars of a lifetime of engineering. The
palms of his hands were calloused. Homer Atkins was worth three million
dollars, every dime of which he had earned by his own efforts..." But
who is really ugly here? Atkins is one of the book's heroes. It isn't
the engineer's skin-deep ugliness that drives this story. It's the
ugliness of short-sighted, conceited, self-important fools. To this day,
more than forty years after its publication, the phrase "ugly American"
is invoked to embody America's incompetent, heavy-handed foreign policy.

In the introduction, the authors assert that events similar to those
described in the book have happened again and again in the developing
world. Indeed, most of the book seems very authentic... authentic enough
that any reader concerned with how America is perceived in the rest of
the world will cringe again and again.

In the book's "factual epilogue" the authors again drive home their
point: that the US was being consistently outmanuevered by communists
throughout the third world. (The postscript, incidentally, notes that
one of the few parts of the book which seemed implausible -- an incident
in which the Soviet ambassador deceives a village into believing that
rice provided by the US was donated by the Soviets -- was loosely based
on an actual occurance in India: in that incident, local communists
secretly painted a red hammer and sickle emblem on several tractors
which had been donated by the US, leading the Indians to believe that
the tractors had been a gift from the Soviet Union!)

The Ugly American received exemplary reviews. In 1963 it was made into a
movie starring Marlon Brando. Its title has become part of our
contemporary lexicon.

And yet America's foreign policy is still haunted by the same mistakes.
The Cold War is long-finished, and communism discredited, but it hardly
matters. Who needs an enemy like communism, when you are already your
own worst enemy?