RIP John Le Carré
Dec. 14th, 2020 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI woke up to learn that John le Carré has died. He was 89, so it wasn't out of the blue, especially in these times. But it still makes me feel that odd sadness the parting of a writer who managed to shape part of how you perceive the world, fictional and real provides one with. Not in the sense that he was one of my favourite authors, though I found some of his books incredibly compelling, but in the sense that it's impossible for me to imagine the world of espionage without seeing the people working in it as Le Carré characters (whereas I've never been tempted to look for real life James Bonds, much as I'm entertained by the movies). It is impossible for me to watch fictional secret service people in media created decades later and not to hear, read and see the echoes of Le Carré, even if the story told belongs to another genre. (Case in point: Torchwood: Children of Earth, where John Frobisher, played by Peter Capaldi, as well as his long time secretary Bridget seem to have walked into the story directly from a Le Carré novel.)
I also very much admire the way Le Carré never stopped engaging with the world around him, both as a writer and a person. He did not remain stuck in the Cold War scenarios his biggest successes were written in; he wrote about Big Pharma, the arms trade, the aftermath of the Iraq War (which disgusted him), and in his, as it turns out, last published novel, Agent Running in the Field, about the insane current day world between Brexit and Trump. There was a powerful anger in him about so many things, and yet I never got the sense that he was driven by obstructive rage or the wish to destroy. Maybe because there was also a sense of love. One of the things he loved was the German language and literature - see here for a passionate love declaration to it from 2017 - , and I dare say he had some affection for the country and the people as well. Yet he had it without prettifying the state of affairs when he was stationed here in the 1950s, when denial was the word of the day and there were former Nazis in every institution. But then, seeing what is flawed, depicting it as flawed, and yet feeling love seemed to be very him, and it's reflected in his most memorable characters.
When I read The Pidgeon Tunnel, his collection of autobiographical writings, the chapter on his parents, Ronnie the life ruining conman and Olive the chilling absentee, the parallels to Charles Dickens struck me immediately. Dickens and Le Carré are quite different writers, and yet I can see a commonality beyond having conmen fathers whom you're driven to fictionalize over and over again, and that's what I talked about earlier. "Victorian" and "Dickensian" aren't strictly speaking interchangeable, but they're often used this way, and you can see why. Someoone, I forget who right now, has said that for the English speaking world, the idea of Berlin is shaped by Christopher Isherwood on the one hand (Weimar and the start of the Third Reich) and John Le Carré on the other (Cold War Berlin), and I can see that; the irony is, though, that my idea of not just the Secret Service but much of second half of the 20th century England is shaped by John Le Carré.
Lastly, two quotes that have stuck with me, and a link. The link is to a couple of excerpts that show off his gifts of pen portraits beautifully, starring Alec Guiness, Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher and his father: here.
On to the quotes. From The Pigeon Tunnel, abut himself:
“I’m a liar . . .Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as novelist. As a maker of fictions, I invent versions of myself, never the real thing, if it exists.”
And from A Legacy of Spies, where at the end a very old George Smiley reflects on why he did the things he did:
"For world peace, whatever that is? Yes, yes, of course. There will be no war, but in the struggle for peace no stone will be left standing, as our Russian friends used to say. (...) Or was it all in the great name of capitalism? God forbid. Christendom? God forbid again. (...) So was it all for England, then?" he resumed. "There was a time, of course there was. But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I'm a European, Peter. If I had a mission - if I ever was aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I was heartless, I was heartless for Europe. If I had an unattainable ideal, it was to lead Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still.
I also very much admire the way Le Carré never stopped engaging with the world around him, both as a writer and a person. He did not remain stuck in the Cold War scenarios his biggest successes were written in; he wrote about Big Pharma, the arms trade, the aftermath of the Iraq War (which disgusted him), and in his, as it turns out, last published novel, Agent Running in the Field, about the insane current day world between Brexit and Trump. There was a powerful anger in him about so many things, and yet I never got the sense that he was driven by obstructive rage or the wish to destroy. Maybe because there was also a sense of love. One of the things he loved was the German language and literature - see here for a passionate love declaration to it from 2017 - , and I dare say he had some affection for the country and the people as well. Yet he had it without prettifying the state of affairs when he was stationed here in the 1950s, when denial was the word of the day and there were former Nazis in every institution. But then, seeing what is flawed, depicting it as flawed, and yet feeling love seemed to be very him, and it's reflected in his most memorable characters.
When I read The Pidgeon Tunnel, his collection of autobiographical writings, the chapter on his parents, Ronnie the life ruining conman and Olive the chilling absentee, the parallels to Charles Dickens struck me immediately. Dickens and Le Carré are quite different writers, and yet I can see a commonality beyond having conmen fathers whom you're driven to fictionalize over and over again, and that's what I talked about earlier. "Victorian" and "Dickensian" aren't strictly speaking interchangeable, but they're often used this way, and you can see why. Someoone, I forget who right now, has said that for the English speaking world, the idea of Berlin is shaped by Christopher Isherwood on the one hand (Weimar and the start of the Third Reich) and John Le Carré on the other (Cold War Berlin), and I can see that; the irony is, though, that my idea of not just the Secret Service but much of second half of the 20th century England is shaped by John Le Carré.
Lastly, two quotes that have stuck with me, and a link. The link is to a couple of excerpts that show off his gifts of pen portraits beautifully, starring Alec Guiness, Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher and his father: here.
On to the quotes. From The Pigeon Tunnel, abut himself:
“I’m a liar . . .Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as novelist. As a maker of fictions, I invent versions of myself, never the real thing, if it exists.”
And from A Legacy of Spies, where at the end a very old George Smiley reflects on why he did the things he did:
"For world peace, whatever that is? Yes, yes, of course. There will be no war, but in the struggle for peace no stone will be left standing, as our Russian friends used to say. (...) Or was it all in the great name of capitalism? God forbid. Christendom? God forbid again. (...) So was it all for England, then?" he resumed. "There was a time, of course there was. But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I'm a European, Peter. If I had a mission - if I ever was aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I was heartless, I was heartless for Europe. If I had an unattainable ideal, it was to lead Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-14 09:15 am (UTC)89 is a very good long life and he accomplished so much, but it still does feel sad -- really the end of an era.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-14 12:50 pm (UTC)His books are so good and he was hugely influential. Writing in that genre gave his fiction a huge sense of urgency, and yet his characters and observations were every bit what you would call "literary" or "realistic".
no subject
Date: 2020-12-14 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-14 06:43 pm (UTC)I started with 'Unter der Linden', not the Mediaeval version (though it did give the first verse both ancient and modern German).
I love it. Partly for the sound of it, and partly for the story it tells.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-15 01:06 pm (UTC)Unter den Linden: have you heard this performance? Medieval German is about as comprehensible to modern Germans as Beowulf English is to modern Brits without having learned it, but yes, it can sound beautiful.
For a translation of a Walther von der Vogelweide poem into modern German in performance, check this out, which makes Walther sound like Brecht (not a bad fit, content wise).
no subject
Date: 2020-12-14 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-15 12:29 am (UTC)