(no subject)

[skygiants]

As part of my Le Carre reading I was strongly recommended The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, but also that it included relevant elements from Call for the Dead, so I put both on hold at the library in September or October of last year ... then Call for the Dead showed up for me immediately and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold took forever to come in from the cold, suddenly arrived last week, and immediately sucker-punched me in the chest with a blow so hard that I'm still somewhat winded from it.

And thing about The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is it is not subtle about what its thesis is. It is telling you all the way through. "We're all the same, you know, that's the joke," says an East Berlin counterintelligence operative to a British spy, on page 162 out of 215; I took a picture of the quote because I was like "aha! the thesis of the book!" and then I still got sucker-punched by the blow to the face, the kind of punch where you look back and you're like 'oh Mr. Le Carre was announcing very clearly that he was going to punch me, this fist was traveling in my direction the entire time.' (This, to be clear, is praise.)

The plot? The plot. The plot is that a British spy who lost a lot of agents in West Berlin enters into in an elaborate espionage revenge scheme against his counterpart in East Berlin, who was & is a Nazi, by way of the counterpart's ambitious Jewish second-in-command. There is apparently a famous film version starring Richard Burton, which is great news for me, a person who has spent the past month of Emails from an Actor reading a series of extended meditations on how Richard Burton could, would, and secretly longs to kill a man, since Alec Leamas definitely could, would, and, unfortunately, does.

The beginning of my library copy includes an essay in which John Le Carre patiently explains that after he published the book everyone kept assuming it was true; obviously it was not true or he would not have been allowed to publish it. Nothing worked like this, it's just, also, that everything works like this: "The novel's merit, then -- or its offense, depending on where you stood -- was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible. The bad dream turned out to be one that a lot of people in the world were sharing [...] What have I learned over the last fifty years? Come to think of it, not much. Just that the morals of the secret world are very like our own."

I am glad also to have read Call for the Dead first -- which is Le Carre's first book, and most of it almost fits the pattern of a contemporary mystery novel, in which George Smiley Solves a Murder About Espionage, Assisted By a Helpful Normal Policeman. You sort of feel like he's trying to be an ordinary mystery novelist and then as the espionage plot thickens and Smiley is confronted by a former protege/shadow double from East Berlin (the first of many Smiley shadow doubles) it starts to slip sideways into the kind of things that Le Carre really wants to talk about.

But it does give you a sense right off the bat of Smiley as the affable protagonist weary of all the collateral damage of espionage, which is important in Spy Who Came In From The Cold where Smiley is rarely on page but frequently lurking just off-screen because you-the-reader know that Smiley will eventually be important and you are trained & led to think that it will be in, broadly speaking, a positive way; that Smiley is at least trying to be there to help: an incredibly effective way to pull the rug out from under you and make you feel the sense of complete and utter betrayal, of quicksand under your feet, that suffuses the end of the book.

As a sidenote, I realized shortly after reading that this book -- about a head of counter-intelligence who turns out to have been a double agent the entire time -- was published in 1963, which is to say the same year that Kim Philby was unmasked and defected, which is to say that Le Carre must have been writing the thing in 1962 ... John Le Carre shooting an absolute three-pointer with Apollo's dodgeball. He must have felt like a damned god laughing all the way to hell.

Comments

[starlady]

I read an article a year or two ago which talked about how Le Carré actually spent most of his life using his tradecraft to deceive his wife about an endless series of affairs he had, and how he used the same tactics on his biographer, who now considers the book he wrote to be worthless as anything but evidence of fraud. So I sort of feel like Le Carré denying everything constantly in his forewords is also another layer of that deception. "It's not like this! Except how it is! And I'm just writing about it, not doing this myself in my intimate relationships!"

None of which is to take away from his literary achievements, but it does sort of answer how he kept the spy skills sharp for decades after he notionally got out of the game.

[snowynight]

I love "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is" because it really feels like a sucker punch to me too.

This is the first book I read that Smiley appears, which cements his characterization in my mind. It's interesting how reading order may shape our reading experience.

[radiantfracture]

I don't think I knew about Call for the Dead! Thank you for this elegant reflection.

[shadaras]

ohhhhh I should read these when I next get into a SPIES mood :eyes:

[littlerhymes]

I was bracing myself all the way to the end and it still hurt! (positive)

I should put Call for the Dead on my TBR list...

[princessofgeeks]

That book is so good. It still haunts me.

Hope you read more Le Carre and post your reviews. Would love to follow along if you do that.

[raven]

Oh that book! I love it, but more so because it was my father's favourite book of all time. I've always wanted to do a straight-up SFF rewrite.

[chestnut_pod]

It is a sucker-punch! Sometimes (twice) he would just strike the perfect balance; it would all come together.

[kore]

The first Le Carre book I ever read was TTSS, so I thought I was prepared for his sucker punches. Reader, I was not prepared.

Spy is so heartbreaking I think I've only reread it once. The plot seems a little strained but the emotional intensity makes it work.

[lirazel]

This definitely inspires me to actually read Le Carre instead of just watching adaptations! I've meant to for a long time, I just never got around to it!

[katarik]

I have gone through your le Carre reviews and am now clearly going to have to read le Carre, but I have to ask: have you read the Mrs. Pollifax books, which are basically 'what if Jessica Fletcher retired from being an English teacher and decided to go join the CIA in 1966'? I'm currently in the third one and am having a fantastic time.