Has anyone read John Le Carre's apparent about-face novel?

[FunBobbyMucha]

I read about it this AM, sorry, forgot the title. Apparently the man I and many others have mistaken for years as a more elegant Tom Clancy has vented his spleen about Bushco's march towards world domination in his newest spy novel.

I am totally unfamiliar with his work and therefore have no perspective. Anyone read it and/or his earlier work? Is it as huge a reversal as this review suggests?

[mr_hat]

1. LeCarre's been anti-Yank in all of his books. >

The CIA's always bumbling and brash, while Smiley and his people quietly go about saving the free world.

He's simply become outspoken, rather than reserved about it.

[Bossy Monkey]

16. Le Carre has a pretty sophisticated view of the world

There are Americans, for example this misadministration, who think that we can run roughshod over the world all we want and forever, and he recognizes this and puts some of them in his novels. (For some reason, they're always named either Cy or Sol.) However, there are also frequently Americans in his novels who are neither arrogant or incompetent, for example Bob and Russell Sheriton in The Russia House, and the very angry Masters in The Honourable Schoolboy. Brits on the other hand are often inept and oftener than not venal and corrupt in Le Carre's world. So before you start making overgeneralizations, you might try actually reading the books before drawing your conclusions.

[mr_hat]

19. You might refrain from lecturing, posturing and assuming. Or not.

[Bossy Monkey]

21. You might learn to give examples, or admit when you're wrong n/t

[mr_hat]

23. Ah, but I haven't read any of his books, remember? >

Besided which, I'm comfortable presenting opinion here, without resorting to annotated footnotes, whatever the subject.

I suggest you put me on ignore. There's a good chap.

[htuttle]

2. Comparing Le Carre to Tom Clancy...

...is like comparing Stephen King to H.P. Lovecraft or Poe.

Le Carre was never a warmongering type like Clancy. He also has more talent in his big toe than Clancy does in his whole body. I didn't take it as much of a reversal.

[reprehensor]

6. Hey!

Steve's not THAT bad! He describes his own work as 'literary fast-food' but hey, he's a pro!

Christine, though, that one is a frickin' turkey.

[Howardx]

3. i just bought it

havent read it yet though, im just finishing "the best democracy money can buy"

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. Title? (nt)

[BurtWorm]

10. Absolute Friends

(I was wondering why no one was talking about it by name.)

[reprehensor]

5. Not a reversal.

I've read everything he has written up to Smiley's People. In 'The Honorable Schoolboy' Le Carre depicts the CIA as actually very organized and reliable. The problem is turf, and in Le Carre's novels, a mole disrupts 'the Circus', (British Intel), at the highest levels.

I have the newest book, but I don't know when I'll read it. I like reading his books chronologically.

You really must read Le Carre. What he did was elevate the Spy novel from general fiction to a form of literature. His writing skill is top notch. Technically, hand-stands over Clancy.

Clancy is a very good plot formulater, but he does borrow from non-mainstream sources that he doesn't always credit, (e.g. The Turner Diaries). His execution of the plots is often choppy, lacks sublety, requires foreknowledge of most of his previous novels to know the characters, etc, etc.

Le Carre is the king of the genre. But for the record, he has never been a U.S. flag waver or apologist, so no about face has really occured. He has hated the Bush junta almost from its unholy inception.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. I have a great deal of respect for LeCarre as a writer

I became a fan when I opened one of his books (I don't even remember which one it was--it opens with someone getting abducted off the street) back in the 1970s and found myself "hooked" literally after the first page.

Hollywood can't handle his books well (although there was a British film version of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and a couple of British TV miniseries starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley that were shown in the U.S. in the 1980s), because he emphasizes the psychological aspects and moral ambiguities of spying and treason instead of going for the kind of slam-bam action and high tech gadgetry that's easy for talent-free screenwriters to portray on screen.

The Spy Who Came in the from the Cold appeared in 1963, at the height of the James Bond craze, and it was a complete surprise to anyone who picked it up in anticipation of something like Goldfinger or Dr. No. His hero was not a dashing stud with a car full of high-tech gadgets but a wreck of a man in emotional turmoil.

[reprehensor]

8. Yeah.

What she said.

[FunBobbyMucha]

9. So what would be a good novel to start with?

I'm tempted to read the new one because of the topicality (it deals with the Bushco war specifically), but would I be completely lost not knowing the characters' backstories?

[trof]

12. Here's a list

http://www.johnlecarre.com/publicatios1.html
In (I think) reverse chronological order.
Operative George Smiley appears in many, but not all, of his books.

Many years ago there was an excellent PBS/BBC series "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" starring Alec Guiness as the seemingly retiring, unprepossesing George Smiley.

In TTSS, Smiley, formerly right-hand man to the Director of the British Secret Intelligence Service (the "Circus" or MI-6), is brought out of retirement to dig out a highly placed Soviet mole embedded in the Circus.
http://www.co-uk-shopping.com/Video/Classic-Films/PID-0YCCYrsi-m/Smiley-s-People/

[Bossy Monkey]

15. You won't need backstory

If you eventually decide to read them all, it's best to do the Smiley ones in order, but he stopped writing in series almost 20 years ago. Everything since Smiley's People has been free-standing, although The Secret Pilgrim continues the life of a major character from The Russia House (and of Smiley).

A good one to start with is The Night Manager 'cause for once the good guys are totally good and the bad guys are really evil, but if you want to read the current one for its topicality, by all means have at it.

[Lisa]

30. seconded!

"Absolute Friends" stands alone, in terms of the storyline. There are lots of Cold War allusions but if you were old enough to remember what the world was like prior to 1989, you don't really need all the technical details and political background from the earlier books (which have different characters anyway).

Though if you haven't read much in the espionage genre, there are some explanations of things that Mundy (the protagonist) does to check for signs he's being followed, etc. -- the author deliberately makes everything sound rather casual and matter-of-fact, so I have to keep reminding myself that he is actually a highly-trained professional!

I started off with "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" in high school, which makes an okay introduction to the genre. But feel free to dive into the new book ... don't worry about not being able to follow the plot, because there aren't any plot twists more bizarre than have already been suggested here at DU. (No disrespect meant to Le Carre, since I really do admire his writing -- I think it's cool that he's been wondering about the same things we have.)

[Elidor]

27. The Perfect Spy is my favorite

I haven't read any of the books he's written in the last ten years, but Perfect Spy is a piece of literature. He turns the spy story on its head and creates something magical, moving, and very tragic. It's the very best of the ones I've read.

He certainly has never been enamored of the powers that be. He's far too human to approve of Bush, or most other US administrations. He's not any kinder to the British. He's a good man, with a lot of uncommon sense.

[democracyindanger]

11. From the man himself

"A great country is being propelled by the wrong forces"
John le Carre talks about his new war-on-terror novel, the "medieval stupidity" of the Bush administration's misuse of intelligence, and why he wound up marching against the war in Iraq.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2004/01/05/le_carre/index.html

[trof]

13. The United States of America has gone mad

-John le Carré
(This was originally published almost exactly one year ago)

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

The author has also contributed to an openDemocracy debate on Iraq at www.openDemocracy.net


-END-

[Moderator]

14. trof .....per the copyright rules

please limit your snips to 4 paragraphs or less

:hi:

[trof]

18. woops

<Lou Costello impersonation>
I'm a baaaaad boy.

[CaptainClark23]

17. NYTimes reviews

Were terrible.

I disagree vehemently. I may be biased because I am a big fan of LeCarre, but I was into "Absolute Friends" from the first paragraph.

No one gets into a character's psyche the way LeCarre does in just a few words.

Without making a spoiler, I must say that how the story ends up is more important and relevant than LeCarre's diatribes against the BFEE.

Might I go so far as to suggest LeCarre's wink and nod to MIHOP? Thats what I got out of it, anyway.


I do miss Smiley though. And the Lamplighters....

[ewagner]

20. I too, miss Smiley

I caught that BBC presentation of Tinker Tailor et al and have always envisioned Sir Alec as Smiley. It was sooooo well done.

A shorter and less known work of his A Call for the Dead was made into a movie starring George Mason but it was nowhere near as good a the book.

I've read everything up to The Tailor of Panama

The Little Drummer Girl in it's book form was really an important piece about the Arab/Israeli conflict. Again, the movie didn't do it justice.

[CaptainClark23]

24. When o when

Will the Alec Guiness as Smiley flicks get re-released to DVD? I search regularly, and nothing!

I agree re: Little Drummer Girl, but will take what I can get. It was well cast at least.

[ewagner]

26. One of the most sobering scenes ever written

IMO was in The Little Drummer Girl The Israeli secret service has captured the terrorist brother of a terrorist leader and they have interrogated him and used him for other purposes (read the book)They are finished with him so they put him and a companion in a car (still partially drugged up if I recall) and release them. Except that they have planted one of his homemade suitcase bombs in the trunk. After a few minutes, the car explodes and the Secret service agent watches it from the balcony of his hotel room. As the smoke from the explosion rises above the buildings and emergency vehicles rush to the scene, the Israeli Secret Service Agent goes back into the hotel room, picks up the phone, calls his wife and calmly asks, "..and how are the children?"

Sobering and chilling display of how professionals in the nasty game of intelligence can compartmentalize their lives.

[Lisa]

22. he's been pretty critical of the CIA from the beginning ....

Remember how, in the Smiley series, he referred to them as "the cousins", and showed that the British intelligence agents had good reason to be cautious about getting involved with them! He's also shown repeatedly that espionage and geopolitics can be sordid and destroy decent people, even if it's supposedly for a "good" cause. I don't think I'm giving too much away if I mention that his past books have shown that intelligence agencies can disagree with each other (and even internally) about particular situations.


*** spoilers ahead ***










One thing I noticed in the new book is that many of the anti-US arguments are coming from a character who turns out to be less than trustworthy. But I don't think this means that the author is out to get the anti-Bush movement. I'm on my 3rd reading and it seems to me that he's trying to warn idealists about being used by those with ulterior motives. I get the distinct impression that he thinks that the people who are willing to exploit (or even set up) real or apparent "terrorist incidents" are much scarier than bin Laden ... his sympathies are clearly with the characters who are betrayed. He doesn't mention names, but if you've read some of the PNAC discussions here at DU, it's not too hard to fill in the blanks.

The last chapter is sad and alarming, and I could hardly bear to read it, since it's so plausible. The part about the NY Times reporter being in awe of the character who appeared to have been responsible for the whole setup was sickeningly real. But he does leave open the hope that people might see through the deception (a true account of the case gets posted on an alternative-media website).

[bobthedrummer]

25. It just sounds like pc spin to me

I've been reading him since the 1960's. He has created some great stories-especially about moles IMO and the greed driven multi-nationals.

I'm glad for every author that speaks truth to power and further reveals the criminal-thinkers in BFEE.

[kayell]

28. You might be interested in reading his "The Constant Gardener"

where he takes on big pharma.

[qwertyMike]

29. Le Carre's work is Literature

No Clancy spy stuff

I'd kill to be able to write like him.

He also WAS a spy so he probably knows of what he speaks

Smiley and his wife explore relationships >>.. I can't find the words

[Fenris]

31. To suggest that Clancy is anywhere near LeCarré is heresy

LeCarré's writing is eloquent and his plots are well constructed. His characters are complex, extremely dynamic people who seriously consider their actions and have serious remorse and regret. If you need any proof, read "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" or "Smiley's People" or even "The Secret Pilgrim". LeCarré's novels are works of literature.

Clancy writes contrived, warmongering trash that's written in the blandest of language and is chock full of cliché dialogue. His characters are archtypical cardboard cutouts.

Tom Clancy wears military style pilot's sunglasses and has appeared on Hannity & Colmes. David Cornwell, Mr. LeCarré's real persona, lives a quiet life on the far southwest tip of England and conducts any political commentary through letters and few editorials.

Comparing John LeCarré to Tom Clancy in any capacity is like comparing a Rembrant to a Kinkaide.