The Circus
LeCarré, originally uploaded by 160507.
For the next month I’m going through the LeCarrés, so if anyone spots a copy of Smiley’s People, let me know (Forget Constant Gardener, zzzzz). I just finished Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is wonderfully bleak and nerdy (We consider nerdhood an honor). So that’s what the fuss was about. Was, because the Smiley novels are harder to find in stores, which probably means fewer people are reading them, which bolsters the argument that the audience is getting dumber. Another reason to miss the Cold War: enemies you get to know so well they’re practically your friends. After all, your adversary is the instrument of your destiny.
In Tinker, George Smiley is looking for a mole inside the Circus (British intelligence). Having been ignominiously booted out of the Circus, he has few allies and assumes everyone an enemy. He only knows a few details, not the whole picture, so he has to sift the rest out of files he has no access to. His allies manage to get their hands on them, and they start plowing through reams of documents, just digesting vast amounts of data. If there are gaps, they point to what the mole doesn’t want him to know. It’s basically auditing, but thrilling. Occasionally someone gets killed in a brutal manner that the author doesn’t dwell on, because it’s a given that if anyone is found out, he’s already dead. It’s about waiting patiently for something to click into place and show how everything is connected. Then you wish you didn’t know, because it destroys your faith in institutions, nations, and human beings. It’s a deep, dark pit that LeCarré plumbs, and it’s a trip worth taking.
Another resemblance between Saffy and Koba Stalin: She insists on being in every picture, and Stalin had his associates erased from his pictures—and from this world.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
June 30th, 2008 at 10:58
How about I swap Smiley’s which I was just browsing at B&N for one of your Twisted books. Email me.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:15
I think it was in Smiley’s People where the protagonist (George Smiley) ruminates on the significance of his wife’s going out without her earrings. I remember being resentful of the author for making the “bida” not as macho and cool as, say, a Ludlum protagonist (I was twenty at the time, an avid Ludlum fan). In the world of espionage according to Le Carre, there is no superspy: the James Bonds do not– cannot– exist; there is also no Ludlumesque plot, no “surprising” and “unexpected” villains involved in a “shocking” conspiracy.
Anyway, his book ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (and other books) was lauded by the critics as being one of the most realistic portrayals of the world of espionage. We have to take their word, of course, as there are not very many of us who know somebody in espionage (besides James Bond). A popular second hand bookstore used to carry many Le Carre books, but, come to think of it, I haven’t seen one (Le Carre book, that is) in a long while. Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.
Good luck on your hunt; George Smiley is an unforgettable character.