Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (novel, miniseries, and forthcoming film to be directed by Tomas Alfredson)

"is he better at spying than you, georgie boy?" is one of the weirdest moments

george smoothing his chest like a proud donald duck

NV and carson d both otm too.

something of the extremely invisible, or maybe inverse, dandy about him.

after all beau brummel said* fashion was about fitting in - fashion as code.

*citation needed

maybe to a woman who can have anyone from the rogues gallery of confident aristocracy, the guy that reacts by blinking in surprise is the exotic choice

i think that’s right. it’s a matter of taste.

the was it a ballet dancer is a good example that anne enjoys experiencing different men. different flings. it’s attractive and that JLC allows it to be attractive is to his credit.

i say that in response to an interesting article u read recently comparing fleming and le carre and where their lives meet their fiction (wrt to the recent biographical revelations) somewhat in fleming’s favour.

i mean i read it. i have no idea if u all read it.

i like the idea of u as singular we should make that happen

it was a ballet dancer, they were iirc a sensation for a season

I just started Honorable Schoolboy ("the first few chapters are truly execrable") but it's... quite enjoyable? I'm curious what Le Carre going full 1970s airport novel looks like. It's scarily long, though.

its got seriously objectionable aspects and ive recently added another one- the audiobook is read by michael jayston, who does a really brilliant job of TTSS but it soon becomes clear that not having his bbc castmates to imitate (or having a wider range of accents to attempt, perhaps) renders his efforts here absolutely unlistenable

I'm going through his books now as audiobooks since I can't sleep at night, and much as I love Le Carre I haven't really liked Micheal Jayston's reading of the Smiley novels. His voice is too constricted, old-sounding and querulous.

I'm now chronologically up to The Little Drummer Girl. I loved that more than any other Le Carre book when I read it in the 80s, it had a romantic aspect that distinguished it, but the prospect of Michael Jayston reading it to me now does not thrill me

The Honorable Schoolboy was the most chaotic Smiley novel in my opinion, it was enjoyable but was really hard to piece all together

You’re all out of your minds. Jayston’s audiobooks are great. (Apart from the American accents)

not THS- Australian is painful

Fair. the “Asian” accents in that aren’t great either. Bad audiobook of a bad book.

He can do some non English accents (perfect spy and small town in Germany are full of them).

If you think he’s bad you should listen to the night manager read by David case. Preposterous.

I think this is my fault, as I read The Secret Pilgrim for the first time this week and enjoyed having a few more stories set during the various Smiley eras…

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/10/john-le-carres-son-to-write-new-george-smiley-novel

george groany

Amazon was pushing his Titanium Noir on me in recommendations but ugh

"A virtuosic mashup of Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler by way of Marvel—the story of a detective investigating the murder of a Titan, one of society’s most powerful, medically-enhanced elites. • “Cross-genre brilliance from the superbly talented Nick Harkaway.” —William Gibson, New York Times best-selling author of Agency"

Anyone seen the new morris doc on Apple TV yet?

rip jerry westerby

roddy martindale might be among my most bad and hated characters ever

https://media.tenor.com/kRKSXNGI84sAAAAC/what-have-you-been-doing-alec-guinness.gif

'love to ann!'

https://snappishproductions.com/images/gfy/love-to-ann.gif

most other characters just give it to her directly

i’ve got the line “Willie Andrewarthur always was the most godawful liar” stuck in my head. Something v earwormy about Nigel Stock’s performance.

me confusing nigel stock with nigel bruce (both of course played sherlock's watson, albeit several decades apart) totally made me wtf for a moment there lol -- nigel bruce was NOT in tinker tailor soldier spy

never read sherlock

was watching this (again). smiley’s “oh damn! oh damn!” after his meeting with martindale is in the book caused by realising he’s left the volume of grimmelshausen he’s just bought at the club. in the adaptation he has “entrusted it to the postal service” after seeing peter guillam trying to intercept it. makes it a bit of a clumsy or incoherent line, even for alec guinness.

he’s left it at the club. he didn’t buy it at the club.

nigel bruce as roddy martindale would have been a thing!

this is imo unresolved

in the series it seems a very deliberate detail in the change a d in the timing of the change

ann likes smiley bcz he's secretly 1 x GOTH

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Simplicissimus_Cover_page1669.jpg

xpost

the other - obvious - thing is that a) martindale is quite an appealing character and b) that he gets v close with his gossip and surmise to the heart of the problem.

expresses what is said at the end of the book - that everyone in some way *knew* it was haydon. it was just impossible to admit - psychologically or organisationally.

this is imo unresolved

in the series it seems a very deliberate detail in the change a d in the timing of the change

hard to imagine smiley monologuing (word? sp?) so coherently and stagily alright

but i meant, and still mean, the decision to post the book

oh yes. i think it’s a decision forced by the dramatisation tbh. too awkward to get it into the club and post club scenes.

maybe it shorthands smiley seeing gwilm and changing his plans, gives him an object to explicitly speak to someone about that shows this happening

as i noted in the obit thread, now that Michael Jayston has passed away, all of the main cast of the BBC series is now gone. though we've still got Ann Smiley and Karla.

isn't this the opening episode of smiley's people https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/21/ex-royal-marine-charged-with-spying-for-china-found-dead-in-park

"Moscow rules"

would had to have been an aging HK activist in exile who had been promising MI6 a big score

https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_4cf25035-8c3c-4dda-b42f-9bfe4c2eefb7?wid=488&hei=488&fmt=pjpeg

i mostly like harkaway's own books and i suppose if anyone's gonna do this it might as well be le carré's own kid, but . . . go make up your own characters, man

well do or dont (preferably dont) but calling it a john le carre movie is a cunts move

/novel

watched bbc 1979 episode one again and now despite the liveblog above ive decided its chance and weakness that has him lunching with martindale, and he isnt in fact pumping for info at all, and is irritated that he is half interested, and he is very irritated above all to hear that alleline is doing well

if i watched it again id change my mind on some of the above again im sure, isnt that the beauty of it

https://snappishproductions.com/images/gfy/love-to-ann.gif

I think this is mostly true, but he's also never quite out of spy mode, there's always a side that he's hiding. That whole first episode seems to be illustrating the fact that his meek manner is a bit of a put on, and we see him finally transform into the "real" Smiley at the end when he sits down with Ricky Tarr.

thinking about buying a region-free Blu Ray player to get the remaster set w/ TTSS and Smiley's People

You really need a region free for so many great BFI releases

Watching Ralph feinnes in conclave and I keep thinking this guy would have been a better smiley than Gary oldman.