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John le Carre, a Trade Secret. Part 3
- Thread starter David Flin
- Start date
I always got a feeling of post-Cold War fiction going "things were simple but now it's all murky & complicated", so it's interesting that Le Carre instead goes "this is a good guy, this is a bad guy" instead.
I'm wondering if thats the kind of book he wanted to write despite his success coming elsewhere (ie Smiley), and that he embraced it once he became successful enough to do whatever he wanted.
Would not be the only author to do that.
But what if the bad guys were not Muslim???
I haven't read all of the books, but Night Manager in particular I read as the successors to the greyer cold war types of earlier novels being now a much darker grey, and with less justification - and the co-protagonist from the service unrealistically trying to be a good guy with consequences.
The big thing I found about the post cold War novels is le Carré having a more profound sense of human weakness and its consequences, the fates that can befall those who get into things they aren't strong enough for, and others who get hurt as a consequence. I found Tailor of Panama very disturbing, in the sense I found the tragedy very believable.
Ted Allbeury was someone who really got that.
Maybe its not very nice, but I felt Le Carre just went full miserabilist as he got older. "Brits are bad and Americans are worse" is not exactly a new theme, but its full on face off mode after the Cold War ends. (Everyone else is also pretty bad, or functionally a child, but they are NPC factions so it doesn't matter.)
Not really sure how I felt about the Night Manager. The ending of the BBC adaption was so toe-curlingly BBC it insulted the intelligence. But the book... just sort of peters out. In fact rather abrupt "What's it all for anyway?" endings are sort of a running theme of these books. Its okay for a couple, but then starts to just seem indecisive.
Not really sure how I felt about the Night Manager. The ending of the BBC adaption was so toe-curlingly BBC it insulted the intelligence. But the book... just sort of peters out. In fact rather abrupt "What's it all for anyway?" endings are sort of a running theme of these books. Its okay for a couple, but then starts to just seem indecisive.
That sums up my view as well. I have a feeling that half the reason why "Tinker, Tailor" and "Smiley's People" are the most popular ones is that they actually have endings.
Something I found with le Carré's later books, which I don't think I brought up here, is that the pacing became atrocious with his later books: he would write a story that you felt was really building to be quite interesting and then everything gets wrapped up in two pages. I'd say that all of the books in this period suffer from that problem. I had wondered whether it was a change in editor, but this was reasonably consistent. It seems more that there was this feeling "Oh, David doesn't need editing" and also that he was acutely sensitive to anything he saw as criticism and could respond incredibly poorly to suggestions that he change things. So as time went on his stories are published almost on the basis of the first draft submitted to the publisher. Again, something to investigate with his archives.
Yes. He's far from the only author to be guilty of that,* but it is noticeable.
*Very different genre, but some of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels were notorious for being trilogies where everything slowly builds up until 3/4 of the way through book 3 and then it all gets resolved in a handful of pages.
One counterfactual involving Le Carré which I once brought up here, is that he mused that his childhood bore similarities to that of Kim Philby, and that with the right incentives he might himself have been enticed to become a spy for the USSR.
(From Conversations with John Le Carré)
(From Conversations with John Le Carré)
If that happened it would not be surprising in the slightest.
A Perfect Spy sees le Carré explore that somewhat, with the le Carré character acting as an intelligence asset for the Czechoslovakians. And Philby looms large over other le Carré novels, especially Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I don’t feel that le Carré’s intelligence career was destined for great heights, but it's an interesting question to consider.One counterfactual involving Le Carré which I once brought up here, is that he mused that his childhood bore similarities to that of Kim Philby, and that with the right incentives he might himself have been enticed to become a spy for the USSR.
(From Conversations with John Le Carré)