R.I.P. John le Carré

It would be hard to name a more influential talent in the field.

Bit by bit the 20th century slips away…

I only know his work indirectly via the BBC Tinker Tailor and the Richard Burton Spy Who Came In From The Cold. But those are easily among the best spy fictions I have encountered.

RIP.

If you haven’t read le Carre, you should. He’s among the best English-language novelists of the 20th century. His post-cold-war books are every bit as good as the classic ones like Tinker, Tailor. I saw a comment from William Gibson yesterday who said that le Carre was the writer who made Gibson really take a hard look at how the world actually is.

Read e.g. Tinker, Tailor because you have to. Read The Russia House for a taste of his late Cold War fiction. Or read The Constant Gardener to see where he went after the Cold War was over.

The NYT obit is pretty good.

From the article:

Giving the adulterous spouse character the same name as your wife is an… interesting choice. (Uniquely English passive-aggression, maybe?)

But back to the main point:

His work is just so, so good.

I’d probably recommend The Spy Who Came in from the Cold as a starting point because it’s a relatively quick read, compared to the whole Karla trilogy, which, if you’re going to start in on Tinker, Tailor (and you should!) then you’re going to want to read it all.

I also agree with the NYT obit that The Little Drummer Girl is excellent and well worth a read.

His work also lends itself fairly well to screen adaptations, though they tend to miss out on the true depth of his consideration of the human condition (out of necessity, due to time constraints, I think). The recent Tinker, Tailor with Gary Oldman was pretty good, I thought (even if other people didn’t)–I saw it in theaters (rare for me) and once I was on a transatlantic flight where it was playing and I watched the ending like four times because it’s so good. A Most Wanted Man with Philip Seymor Hoffman (RIP, alas) was also really good, and iirc a spectacular final performance from Hoffman, though I also seem to remember it changed the ending slightly in a way that bothered me, having just read the book. My parents also rave about Alec Guinness’ Smiley in the old TV series, but I haven’t set aside the time for that yet. And of course we can’t forget The Constant Gardner with Ralph Fiennes. (Maybe the movies are good because they always get good actors, huh…)

Anyway, if you haven’t picked up any of his books, you really should. I really hate the fact that fiction is divided into “genre” and big-L “Literature”, but everyone seems to agree that le Carre made spy-fiction-genre into Literature.

Sadly, I haven’t read or watched any of his material. The NY Times had a helpful article on viewing adaptations:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979 BBC Series) - Not available for streaming
Smiley’s People (1982) - Not available for streaming

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) - Amazon Prime
The Deadly Affair (1967) - Rental available everywhere
The Russia House (1990) - Max Go, Rental
The Tailor of Panama (2001) - Rental, also Tubi w/ ads
The Constant Gardener (2005) - Peacock
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) - Netflix
A Most Wanted Man (2014) - Hoopla, also Roku, tubi, Pluto w ads
The Night Manager (2016) - 6 part miniseries on Amazon Prime
The Little Drummer Girl (2018) - 8 episodes, Sundance Now

I currently have Amazon Prime, so I’ll start with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and The Night Manager.

I second these recommendations. I think Tinker, Tailor was the first grown-up book I ever read. It was a great place to start.

I’m going to recommend Little Drummer Girl too. While Tinker Taylor is excellent, this little novel is great.

I’ll chime in with a recommendation for A Perfect Spy.

Both of these are actually available on YouTube. First episode starts here:

Alec Guiness was basically born to play Smiley.

Nice!

Is there any adaptation of The Honourable Schoolboy? That story shoehorns in between Tinker and Smiley’s People. It’s the reason George gets sacked after Tinker. A great book.

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Also, for the Smiley fans, le Carre’s A Legacy of Spies is a nice recent tip of the hat to Smiley and Peter Guillam, with a story line that harkens all the way back to Alec Leamas and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. A very nice way to wind things up.

Worth checking out:

https://youtu.be/UMN9VkKP2pY

From the MGM is on sale thread:

Imagine how the world would be different if it were le Carre’s interpretation of Cold War spy games that was the fifth-most valuable movie franchise of all time, instead of Fleming’s. Or maybe the better hypothetical is: imagine how different the world would have to be, for it to be so.

I keep thinking I would watch a modern Bond if it was sort of cyberpunk. Don’t know why.

How about a Laundry Files TV show or movie. I would like to see that.

I would like to see James Bond fight a wizard. Maybe a James Bond/Dresden Files cross over.

Apparently Jane Cornwell, the widow of John le Carré, has also just died. I saw this piece today in the guardian, written by their son, about the extent of their collaboration in le Carré’s work. He couldn’t type, so she typed all his manuscripts, but apparently she was effectively his editor and also a language and content contributor to his writing, helping him to revise his work long before anyone else ever saw it.

Another fine piece in the Guardian about Le Carré, this one focusing on his sense of self and origin, how it was developed and where it led him. It’s interesting to read that one of the key things that turned him into Le Carré, novelist, instead of David Cornwell, successful government apparatchik, was his sense of betrayal when his job changed from interviewing refugees to catch Nazis to interviewing refugees to recruit Nazis.