Monday, 16 September 2024

The Novels of John le Carré


Having recently watched the 2011 film of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (TTSS) it was one of those occasions when I felt I wanted to go and read the book, but Wikipedia told me this was one book mid way in a series of novels by John le Carré and so I decided I best start at the beginning...
(I might in the following recklessly drop spoilers – you have been warned)
 
 
 
So this is the first novel, (at 170 pages perhaps it is a novella?), I read it in a single sitting, on flight home from New York, and it felt faster paced that the film which was my starting point. It will be interesting to see if the books get longer as le Carré reputation built (which seems to be a fairly common contemporary feature).
There are some standard devices that aid the story telling, George Smiley the master spy is teamed up with an ordinary Policeman therefore providing the excuse for Smiley to explain his craft, but these are used skilfully, and while aware of them they do not detract from the power of the narrative.
Although a spy story and a murder mystery this is not a particularly dark tale, and there is little of the soul searching that the film TTSS.
In the film Smiley's colleague Peter Guillam is in a gay relationship, in this story there is no explicit reference to this – it was written a number of years before decriminalisation – but there are some mannerisms given to Guillam that once might read as suggestive of a leaning in that direction – and so yet again I await with interest developments in the later books.
 
 

Getting to read this was a struggle, I requested it from the Library, it turned out to be missing, I ordered from Amazon, it got lost in the post, I ordered it again, it turned out the vendor had listed the wrong novel, but at long last I got a copy...

In this one George Smiley having retired is enlisted by another former Secret Service Officer to help solve a murder. This is therefore not a Spy drama, it plays with the masks and deceits that are worn in “ordinary” life by those who wish to have status.

We gain a bit more insight into the character to Smiley, and it builds a sense of a wider canvas for the other dramas that will be told, but this is not a particularly strong narrative, if I am honest I found it all a bit “Midsomer Murders”...



This is the work that made le Carré's reputation, a return to the world of spies and agents.

I think the success of the novel is that moral ambiguity that runs through it. There is a gradual unveiling, within the twists and turn, of the multiple layers of deceit. You are not given the status of all knowing observer, at many points all you have are hints and shadows. At the end you assume that you know what has happened but still there is not certainty.

There is perhaps a feeling “the British” should be playing the game with a straight bat – but it is clear that this is far from the case. The whole story is the most outrageous double bluff, with the revelation that the British were trying to frame their own agent being the guarantee of his assumed innocence. It is the scheme's sheer preposterousness that is key to its success.

But this is not without cost, Leamas, the central character, is a broken man, already worn down but “the game” but when it becomes clear to him the level at which he has been coldly used he chooses to die alongside the girl he has come to love, the girl who in the midst of all that has happened is innocent, rather than escape back into the tainted arms of the British Service.



One of the powerful aspects of this novel is that Smiley and the Circus hardly feature, and yet it becomes clear that they have shaped the entire cause of events (or it is clear that they have shaped much of what has happened, and therefore you tend to the view that even those aspects that are not direct attributable to them were likely under their influence). As is so often the case, the best way to deal with opponents is to give them some rope and wait for them to hang themselves.

It is a tale of inter-departmental rivalry, and while set in the context of Cold War counter-intelligence most of the behaviour is common to all settings where there is an overlap of responsibilities – where there is a desire to protect your organisation, to advance your operation. This is part of the power, in showing that this world is populated by ordinary human motivations allows you to imagine yourself into the drama.

But we are once again left with a question mark – for the Service to be ruthless in its actions against the Communist Forces is one thing, but for it to display the same level of ruthlessness against another section of the British operations – is that also OK? These are our Knights in Armour, but it is not more than a little tarnished...
 
 
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The skill of this novel is that it turns not on grand conspiracy, it is about the interact of the individual and the group. It relies on le Carré's close observation of human nature – the way that successful espionage is not so much about skill of the spy to deceive as it is about the ease with which others around them delude themselves. 
 
Here the character of Harting gains access because those around him didn't really see him – he was in their eyes a nobody, unimportant, below the radar. It is a razor sharp critique of the foolishness of the “English” Establishment in much the way of “A Murder of Quality”. The setting of Bonn and the enclave of England – a kind of “Society” set where ones standing is measured in the minutiae of differentiation. So obsessed with maintaining the differentiation against their “peers” there was no room for consideration of one who was and would remain unquestionably inferior.



Just when you think you have the measure of a writer and settle down for the usual spy thriller le Carré decides to go all Iris Murdoch on us...

According to Wikipedia it is an autobiographical tale, it is about the temptation to a life beyond the safe norms of respectability, where love and lust play and it is far from clear where virtual lies. It is an adventure that is probably best left as a vicarious pleasure. It perhaps explores the contemporary privilege for “authenticity” - do you live authentically in the moment or do you live within your responsibilities?



It was the film of this novel which was the starting point, and it is hard to read the novel without the film hanging close by.

There is a closeness between the two, but there are differences, in particular I commented earlier on Peter Guillam being gay in the film. Guillam's love life plays in the book too, but his interest seems firmly directed towards women. So I have to wonder again at the hints about his sexuality I thought I saw in the earlier books.

Although Guillam turns out in this book to be straight there are others who have are gay, or who have complex sexuality. This is part of the mix of their character yet given the period of le Carré's writings it seems fairly matter of fact, there is no parody or stereotyping, and in so being enlightened. If we read The Naive and Sentimental Lover as autobiographical then we must understand le Carré's own sexuality as expansive which perhaps explains his easy treatment of the sexuality of others.

The Russia Spy Haydon says “The cold war began in 1917 but the bitterest struggles lie ahead of us, as America's deathbed paranoia drives her to greater excesses abroad...” in one of those moments that has a resonance. How much of the contemporary geopolitical situation is shaped by nations playing out, or attempting to distract from, their domestic crises, material or existential, through assertive “foreign policy”? 
 
 

I remarked on le Carré's first novel being just 170 pages, well this one weighs in at 690 pages and as such it forces a different encounter – rather than the single sitting it is read over a few weeks and on more than one occasion when faced with a mystery in the plot I found myself wondering if it was because le Carré had chosen to impart only partial information to the reader or perhaps the information was available but forgotten by this reader.

Clearly this long form account of the story allows le Carré to explore details and flesh out the settings – something that he does do with skill. The task within this of holding on to the critical information perhaps takes you closer to the journey of the characters trying to tease out what lies behind the events.

There is a multi-levelled plot, as so often with le Carré, the headline is about the defection of a Chinese Official who had been working as a Russian Agent, but perhaps the real story is the intrigue between the intelligence agencies of the US and UK “allies”.

This also very clearly has the feel of an episode – within the wider run of novels this is the middle of a trilogy, begun by Tinker Tailor and concluded by Smiley's People. 
 
 

After having got rather bogged down in the last novel (I am not sure how much that was down to me, how much down to le Carré) this definitely felt like a return to form.

There was a crispness to the plot and a drive that took you ever forward. A tension that remains until the final page or two – and then a very deliberate anti-climax, for you feel with Smiley that in that moment has life work is accomplished – and for a man so consumed by that work for so long, when it is now done what is left for him.

I think one of the well observed aspects is that le Carré often gives such “small” motivations to many of the players. This is a drama of the high political games on the Cold War, and yet it is not the great ideals that make the individuals on the ground act. It is boredom, petty desires for money or lust, for a sense of importance. And in this ordinariness there is a sense of authenticity. 
 


In some ways this novel combines the medium of the Spy Thriller with what I called the “Iris Murdoch” genre of The Naive and Sentimental Lover.

Our central character Charlie's is set in the midst of a complex web of relationships – love, passion, lust, and multiple configurations of the Stockholm Syndrome are at work in and on her. It creates an intense and psychological plot – becoming increasingly claustrophobic as she has to inhabit the layer of deceit for her own survival.

It is also a book with resonance to be reading at this moment – it is not a “Cold War” drama, but about Israel and Palestine, and about terrorist action in Europe. There is an exporting of conflict from the Middle East to be played on by proxies on the streets of European Capitals.

Also I think it has one of the most clear political positioning of le Carré novels – for me it reads as a critique of “heavy handed” military action – in this instance by Israel beyond its borders (wherever you choose to draw them) – but I think you could easily read this logical across to other conflicts. Kurtz's incredible scheme is an attempt to break the cycle, to use the intellect rather that brute force – his plan is a success in all expect this ambition. And it is a cycle that continues to this day. Some want to attribute the status of victim and aggressor to one side and the other – but like the chicken and the egg you will never answer that paradox.
 
 
 
Once again this is a novel more about the exploration of identity than about political intrigue. 
 
The central theme of the novel is the playing with the quote “Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.” What are we to make of this seeming paradox? That there has to be level of “love” in order to make an act only of betrayal – when in war you act against an enemy country, that is clearly not betrayal, it is only the act against “your own” that can be seen as betrayal. 
 
But the question posed here is how you define “your own” - for the central character Pym, not only do you have to ask whose side was he on, but whose side did he belong to? So much of his identity had been a fiction, part of the fronts developed by his con-man father, that perhaps he was rootless and therefore there was no point of betrayal. 
 
Yet is there an additional step for Pym, not just that you can only betray what you love, but you can only love what you betray - it is the betrayal that proves the love? 
 
Also I think it becomes clear that the success of his father Rick as a con-man was that, in the moment, he believed the story just as much as the one who was being con out of their savings. He was the kind of person who would have passed the lie detector, because although it was a fabrication it was one he was emotionally invested in – he was not “lying” even though he was pedalling an untruth. 
 
But I also found the way that we also journey with Mary, Pym's wife, enriches the tale – so many spy stories are about isolated individuals – either they are completely alone or they, James Bond style, have merely disposable relationships.
 
But there must always be a hinterland of relationships, and the ripples, or tidal waves, of consequences that go through the lives of those around the spy are worth exploration. Within the geopolitical posturing there are these personal stories, personal betrayals, and these are perhaps the most painful.


 
Published in 1989 this was a topical novel, set in the rapidly crumbling Soviet Union. 
 
It revolves around the reactions of Western intelligence to the unexpected disclosure of information which shows the Soviet Union's nuclear capability is negligible compared with previous estimates. 
 
The discrepancy has resulted from the West spying on the central administration in Moscow, yet Moscow itself was being taken in by falsified reports from its own manufacturers. 
 
The West had reliable sources in Moscow, the problem was Moscow didn't actually have reliable sources on the ground within the Soviet Union. This is typical le Carré playing on the layers of deceit. 
 
The news of the overwhelming superiority of the West it not greeted with open arms – the vast military budgets had been justified for years on the need to keep one step ahead of the Russians, to now learn they were not even in the same race would shake too many vested interests. 
 
But this is also another exploration of the smallness of motivations, le Carré in one passage has a character reflect “The system will always win... It is a choice between dying of obscurity or dying of compromise, since that is a choice between death and death, we may as well choose the more comfortable alternative.” 
 
And when the British agent ends up going over to the Soviet side, it doesn't really seem appropriate to call this “betrayal”, ideology plays no part in it, thoughts of country or of honour are absent as well, he acts to secure a future for a woman he has come to love, and her children – not riches or a life of leisure just the holding off of vengeance. He sold himself to save her from annihilation. 
 
There is an echo of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, in both cases the act of “betrayal” is the act of a man trying to remain a decent human being, or maybe just trying to remain a human being, in the gap between two systems neither of which has lived up to its claimed values.


 
This book takes the form of a memoir of an intelligence officer on the eve of retirement, after a long and active operational career now confined to running the service's training school. 
 
This allows le Carré to revisit favourite old characters, especially George Smiley, and old stories with a new angle with the advantage of an alternative story teller. It is an engaging vehicle for what is effectively a collection of short stories.
Enjoyable, but without the power of full a narrative arc. 



I didn't watch the recent BBC Sunday evening hit adaptation of this novel, and other that the fact that it provides the opportunity of a host of glamorous locations (rather than le Carré more usual darken offices and rain soaked street with little to distinguish from one side of the Iron Curtain to the other) I struggle to see why this novel was seen to stand out as meriting adaptation.

I think the difficulty is that I failed to buy into the central character of Jonathan Pine – the orphan, military hero, polyglot charmer, high end chief – he just didn't add up. One of the strengths of le Carré's writing is the authenticity of the characters – in the midst of all the drama the people tend towards the ordinary, they might be doing some crazy things but they themselves are folk you recognise from the bus.

Also I found the ending a disappointment – we have all this set up to catch the crook, and then at the last minute we let him walk freely away – perhaps the weakness of the ending also in fact leant it to television.

I would mark this one down as an off day!
 
 
 
After a couple of seemingly less successful novels this is a return to form for le Carré. 
 
It is essentially a drama of the mind, there are moments of physical danger but these are really only a backdrop to the real focus of tension. 
 
In the aftermath of the Cold War old certainties have collapsed, the binary of that conflict created a kind of order, in its absence that are now multiple centres of potential loyalty. But as the story unfolds it shows that comforting binary might always have been an illusion. The double-agent may in fact have been playing both sides off in favour of another loyalty altogether. We told ourselves that we had “won” the Cold War, but seems an increasingly hollow sort of victory...
 
Le Carré often writes from the viewpoint of those on the threshold of retirement (either about to cross it, or recently over it, or in the case of his greatest agent Smiley endlessly dancing back and forth across it). He writes men (and thus far I think all le Carré's leads have been men) who are reflecting on a life given over to a profession, to a career, who are now questioning what good this has done either them or the world around them. 
 
This is a question, although asked in his novel in the niche context of the secret service, that is familiar to the general experience. Maybe it is a question with declining relevance as few of us now have a “job for life”, few will retire after 30/40 years service to a single career. However I think the question still comes to most, just in other forms - as it comes when you face with not exactly “voluntary” redundancy. 
 
This is what grips you in this novel, as the lead character Tim progresses through it, like an onion he peals back layer upon layer of “truth” and find it was in fact falsehood. It is a hypnotic if somewhat horrific decent into nihilism, leading to the final words... “I stood alone, converted to nothing, believing in nothing. I had no world to go back to and nobody left to run expect myself.” 
 

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When you have been making a career out of spy novels the end of the Cold War did present a challenge, here Le Carré successfully finds another context in which there are plenty of secrets to play with.
The central character Harry Pendel is a prime candidate to become an agent, as the most important thing an agent needs is “cover” and Pendel has already been living in deep cover for many years, the respectable tailor is a front to cover a rather less respectable past.
This is an example of Le Carré at his best, a strong character driven narrative with a twist of dry humour. 




This is Le Carré crafting a tale at his best. The “drama” is really just the backdrop for an exploration of a father / son relationship. It is the ability to give authentic expression to relationships that I feel really sets Le Carré apart.


Here there is a certain Oedipus tendency to “kill” the father, in metaphoric themes by undermining his business even if not in literal terms. But arc of the story takes us on the emotional journey from killing the omnipotent father to the revelation of his weakness, his fraud, as a person. 



As so often this is a tale about personal relationships more than about politics.


Sadly it gets bogged down in the middle with the details of the medical scandal – unlike the geopolitics of the cold war I guess Le Carré felt he had to explain things to the reader.

Within the usual petty bourgeois life of the embassy at its heart this is a love story, Justin loved Tessa, loves Tessa, and all else fades away.

This is a strong example of Le Carré's gift for writing people – the interplay between Ted Mundy and Sasha is rich and authentic. As with many of his novels it is written from the perspective of someone reviewing their past – asking how much is the person we “are” determined by our past. In an insightful moment, Sasha says “I am interested only in your personal liberation. There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse....” In the narrative of our own lives how much do we still rely on our childhood as the get out clause for any failing?
The conclusion of this novel is particularly bleak – in many of his novels “the state” (on both sides) uses people up – but the manipulation of the situation, the complete fabrication of the situation in this instance is so stark that when the finale came I feel physically winded by it.

Looking over what I had written about Absolute Friends it would be a good summary for this one as well. That is not a criticism, that I can say the same things about two books is by no means to suggest that Le Carré work is formulaic. The plot’s of these two novels hardly overlap at all, and it is a key part of Le Carré's skill that he finds fresh situations in which to place the drama.
Although published in 2006, that it ends with someone being detained with a view of deportation due to irregularities in their historic documentation seemed very contemporary as I read it amidst the unfolding of the Windrush scandal.


 
Le Carré writing in 2008 explores the contemporary drivers to the secret world, terrorism or perhaps the paranoia about terrorism. As always there is as much subterfuge within the intelligence community as there is between them and their enemy / opponents letting personal and organisational ambition and egos play out. There are operations within operations. 
 
Key to the tale is the banker Tommy Brue, a man towards the end of his career living under the shadow of his late and more successful father in a loveless marriage. This is a character that returns time and again within Le Carré. However the interaction between Brue and the young lawyer Annabel Richter seemed to give fresh energy the story.   
 


While there seem to be plenty of positive reviews I personally found this a bit flat – the characters felt a bit over the top / cardboard cut out and so I didn’t warm to them in the way that I have with many others of Le Carré’s – even those that are very flawed personalities. Also I found that there was a lack of tension. The ending however is classic Le Carré – as it leaves you questioning who is responsible, essentially was it us or them? 



While much of this is solid Le Carré the attempt at engaging the post- Iraq War dilemmas landed a little flat for me. While the heroes email the story to the newspapers just before the net closes around them, if those trying to protect their secrets retained that level of power surely the papers would have been hit with injunctions and the story never told? Maybe a cynical reading of the outcome – but I was left without the sense of hope, most of Le Carré’s stories give, that it will come right in the end, that the honourable will overcome the dishonourable.



Le Carré provides us with a “remix” of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold published some 50+ years earlier. It is a good read, and it is good to return to strong characters of the Smiley novels but one feels it is a little lazy – driven by the knowledge that it would be an easy best seller rather than a genuine creative urge as a story teller. 
 

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6 years after I began I come to this Le Carré’s last novel (assuming there are no posthumous publications…). As in the interval between it publication and my reading Le Carré has passed away I know this is the last but I have no sense that Le Carré was writing this as a finale, this is not a valedictorial message to us.

I did enjoy reading it, but that doesn’t negate the “here we go again” sense it gave me. Nat, like so many of Le Carré’s characters, is a man in middle age, on the threshold between is operational career and whatever the next chapter of life will hold – we join him for, perhaps, the last throw of the dice when life has a thrill, be for being reluctantly incorporated into domesticity. It is interesting that it is this same moment in life’s journey that remained the prime focus of Le Carré writing across 6 decades.

With its references to Trump and Brexit (and unflattering views on the then Foreign Secretary who is latterly our PM) it feels to be places more firmly in a moment in time than most others – but that might just be the effect of me reading this one much closer to its publication than most of the others. However this contemporary references act only as window dressing, the core essence of the story could have been told across any point in the post-war era.

The novel ends at a moment when it would appear that Nat has got one over on the system – yet your feeling is that this will only be a brief moment of victory – discovery, and the consequences that will accompany it only moments beyond the final page…

 

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Having thought I had read the last of Le Carré’s we have one more, a manuscript that his son says he only lightly edited to bring to publication. Unlike many “unreleased” tapes that you clearly see why they were “unreleased” this is a pretty decent offering. The plot is strong, and classic Le Carré, but the characters are not as rounded as we would expect – there is also a lack of focus, I feel that Proctor should be the central character and yet for large chunks he is entirely absent. The relationship between Proctor and his Wife is an unresolved aside – I feel that Le Carré would either have worked that up into a key dynamic or deleted it.


 
To be continued...
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