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

i'll say more on the prideaux debrief in a bit -- think i want to reread it, as it's point where backstory and current narrative finally get in step with one another -- but here's a note on jlc's tradecraft as regards location (mise en scene theory/pathetic fallacy alert)

the various tale-relating conflabs smiley has had have been in very different places -- some directly emanating from the person being quizzed, like connie's jericho flat or the casino sam collins now works at -- but in almost all he's been in effect the authority figure: the actual interrogator for tarr, callow guillam's guru when it's the karla backstory, the returned agent with ministerial backing... and the places do their work amplifying the way this inflects, from tarr's cramped hotel room (where he's more or less a prisoner for the time being) through to the curryhouse where he gently pumps jerry w (where in a sense they're equals -- smiley gives very little away -- and it's really only westerby's puppyish semi-lachrymose need for approval that undergirds the power relationship

but with prideaux, the setting is not a built room, public or private, furnished or functional-anonymous, but the wild hilly outdoors of the south west: as -- in effect -- demanded by prideaux; and smiley has no power he can really seriously bring to bear... prideaux could basically snap his neck with a single blow and hide smiley's body and who'd really be any the wiser?

jlc is good at compact and evocative descriptions of places: his london streets are very often real streets he's accurately portraying, and i imagine his countrysides are too (it's not a part of the UK i know); but he's also good at letting the sense of the space be a felt manifestation of the encounter -- the strength of the main part of the smiley-prideaux scene is that it's the first (and last) point in the book where things feel almost open-ended, so that you judge that prideaux chooses to spill

adding: it's not just that everyone's equal outdoors -- whereas indoors is always indoors somewhere, a building structure unavoidably embedded in an extant power structure -- but that prideaux the sporty man of action is more than smiley's equal here, and both know it, and placing himself here is the gesture of total vulnerability by which smiley elicits prideaux's trust

going to watch smiley's people tonight. i love the internet!

morbs i lost my giant awesome comp of kael capsule reviews can you send me yours now that you've internalized it

esterhase's italian schtick in the smiley's people adaptation is hilariously bad.

haha i love toby, he's easily my favourite character: his whole thing is "fluent in many languages, speaks none of them correctly"

smiley in the blau diamant, looool.

this is actually hilarious, toby keeps up with the faux italian voice the whole time. and everyone pronounces his name differently to the way they did in tinker tailor.

well faux hungarian i suppose. it's only from a few years after the original series.

Aye, the guy plays it Hungarian in SP, while he didn't in TTSS. I explained this away to myself by saying that he was putting on the plummy RP while at the top of the circus, bur went back to his natural inflection after the fall.

In truth though, all the actors who put on accents seem to do a particularly rotten job of it.

that's because they've been trained by toby!

anyway, the prideaux hilltop debrief:

it comes in three sections, first the circus where control laid out the operation, last the various cells where, operation blown up in everyone's face, hajek aka ellis aka prideaux tried to screen as much/many as possible for as long as possible, before he was (inevitably) broken; and in the middle, one of the climactic passages in a book full of wary spies moving through dangerous places: a seemingly utterly english agent rendering himself effectively invisible in czech streets stiff with watchers who know he's there

once again the sense of place is ever-present: jlc's tradecraft is, in effect, to heighten a character's watchfulness by a kind of transferred descriptionalism -- as if his own gift for conjuring up locale swiftly and effectively is a manifestation of the character's heightened observational level... to be told you're a "watcher" is a compliment of the highest order, so naturally jlc allows the reader to get to share this quality, or to feel they're sharing it

prideaux is described, physically, as "crooked" and even "fanged" -- as a jaggedly palpable, noisy presence in the world -- yet (like smiley) his deep gift is to become invisible in plain sight; invisible, moreover, to his professional peers/foes when they're most expecting it... this middle passage of his tale is a guide to this, a guide to the superb level of detailed observation and anticipation it requires... and, also i think, to underscore that the core being of this seemingly brusque military sporty type is an uttertly gentle quietness: watchfulness is the centre of his being (ditto smiley; ditto smiley's little child phantom bill roach)

there's a weird passage early on, put in the mouth of lacon and thus easily overlooked as point-missing blather: lacon raises the notion that "method is morality" and then projects onto smiley the assumption that smiley can't and won't accept this idea.

well, for starters it's an ambiguous formation: and it's easy to just assume -- this is lacon speaking, for one thing -- that's merely the situational ethos of the high-end civil service ("i do my job to the best of my ability, to aid my political masters, through every change of government: hence even if they're utterly in the wrong, i can be in the right")

but it might also mean "your morality emerges from the method you choose" (as contrast smiley's interrogation technique from the evil soviet one: smiley deploys far less thumping, if not none, and no electronic probes, hence is "better", as far as moralists are concerned)

and there's a third meaning, much subtler and in a sense subversive, i think, of the book's stated sense of good and evil (which does function as an argument between these first two readings): this is the notion that to be true to your method (your technique, your skill, your craft, the still zen of your art blah blah) is to be true to the world

and in this central passage -- when prideaux is being the best street agent in the book so far -- he is truer to the world than any of the botched or confused reasons why his operation has been set in place (by control, or though the deceived control by the mole, or by the clashing forces of world history, or what have you: every other level is botch, compared to prideaux in the middle passage of Operation Testify, its failure notwithstanding)

the point is, i don't think jlc dares put his trust in this reading: whether this is cause or consequence, he's just not that strong a writer -- he's a writer with strengths, and with flaws, and the flaws always muscle back in (one of his strengths, though, is that he can often deploy his flaws as masks; just as a good spy -- or more to the point a good thriller writer -- must be able to)

[i've actually finished -- the sections following this one are "unputdownable", his sense of pace and momentum at its best -- but i'll try and pace my blogging in haha homage]

Just to go back up to the points of it being a 'mini-' series as in I almost can't see that it would be pulled off these days -- imagine there would be certain pressures to make it far more of a prelude to 'Smiley's People' -- which I hate, never liked that Karla was caught, even if it never felt like a 'victory' -- and if it was to be made in five years time there would be a pressure to lenghten it to 10-12 eps and make it more 'wirey' somehow and lenghten the slow pacing (that's what a couple of people said about The hour which I've not seen).

julio yr a MODERNIST, you can't judge a book by whether its ending coincides with yr sense of just deserts! the book is a fantasia, like "hannibal", and its strengths (virtuoso set-pieces) and weaknesses (formless showcase as structure) derive from this i think

(or do you mean the TV series?) (which weirdly i only ever saw once -- i actually didn't realise it had been made till last year! -- and was distinctly disappointed by: possibly because the action requires it be filmed outdoors in various pretty euro-cities, so it comes across as "on the buses 2: a boulogne awayday") <-- unfair and will watch again

The TV series -- and TV is a v MODERNIST thing, of course.

I haven't read the book.

ps "formless" is entirely the wrong word there: what i mean is that the sequence of setpieces determines the structure, which takes the form of a showcase of technical virtues

b-but tv's modernism is a product of any given show's need to fit the overall demands of a network's programming needs, whether these be commercial or constitutional or even merely capricious! <-- controversial (but true)

also: tv's modernism is a quality of tv AS A WHOLE, not any little arty show stuffed into its maw

And 'Smiley's People' was also made into the TV mini-series.

Never got round to a jlc book as he has come across as faintly ridiculous. I think he probably based Smiley on himself if he didn't get out of it by writing bestsellers. 'it' = one of these former Mi6 fellas who waste away in their post central London bunkers, drink in hand, shutting every one out waiting for the day when they won't wake up. xxp = so TV is a bit like minimalism (the Philip Glass sort ;-))

no: p glass minimalism is a little arty show stuffed into music's maw

b-but tv's modernism is a product of any given show's need to fit the overall demands of a network's programming needs, whether these be commercial or constitutional or even merely capricious! <-- controversial (but true)

If I read this right then Smiley's people had to happen. I guess bad tv has to happen somehow.

I'm now reading the book, gentlemen. Thanks for the gentle shoving.

TV is a collage form
modernism is a collage form (hence etc)

the quality (or lack of it) of a given show considered in and of itself (including the "modernism" of a TV show if/when this applies, which isn't often but isn't never), which is to say any given element of the collage considered in and of itself, isn't a direct factor in the quality of the given collage form as a whole -- it depends how the collage element is being deployed (or "deployed", since this isn't an auteured decision really)

^^^think this mostly belongs on some other thread actually (which i then won't contribute to haha)

my guess is that jlc needed to write SP for reasons contained in TTSS: and that the TV "needed" to make SP-for-TV because of the success they had with TTSS-for-TV (ie among other things that it improves on the book); but that SP-for-TV -- while it tries to treat the new book exactly the way the earlier team treated the old book -- not only don't improve on the book, they massively amplify its weaknesses (which is because SP is a very different kind of book, despite superficial similarities, like same characters and same storyline)

(but will have to reread and rewatch to verify this guess)

back to liveblogging and SERIOUS SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN, DO NOT READ IF YOU HATE THE ENDING GIVEN AWAY

as noted, the prideaux sections sees the backstory and the current story slide into consonant lock-step, which means that everything that follows derives its momentum from (i) waiting for that actual whodunnit reveal, and (ii) events and activity caused by the consonance of backstory and current story, and what it impels people to scurry about doing

so far so ho-hum, this is a spy thriller with a whodunnit theme -- the value if you like of what remains of the story is how (ii) can screw around with (i), to make it more than routine poiroteesque grandstanding, the brilliant detective explaining how everything fits and pointing the quiveringly melodramatic finger at hans redacted moleman

jlc does this very neatly, by moving the "explanation of how everything fits" early, to scare a suspect he appears already to have cleared into switching sides: i have to say despite close rereading i don't quite get why this particular suspect has been cleared, mind you -- which i think is a mark of jlc's own very cunning knot, whereby EVEN THOUGH SMILEY EXPLAINS HOW EVERYTHING FITS TOGETHER it doesn't make it much easier to go back and intricately re-examine any given plot point from the new perspective... because of course it's always a double-perspective, a hall-of-mirrors everything-pulled-inside-out-perspective, where such-and-such a cover-story as supplied by yr bosses in london (or moscow) is actually the REAL story

anyway, this particular scene features toby, who as i say is easily my favourite character: and one of the things i love is how smoothly he adjusts to this catastrophic new understanding, and switches sides: smiley's mastery of the story in more detail than most readers quite grasp -- meaning that we cede smiley and jlc an element of trust as to the precision, which we feel more than we apprehend -- is enough to turn toby; and -- even tho he's kind of victim of the scene, toby is actually granted a lot of professional respect, and not just for sleight-of-hand... it goes without saying that he's a mastercraftsman of lamplighting, babysitting, pavement artistry etc etc, whichever side he's being run by, or duped by. (Except not in fact "without saying": bcz it's relentlessly acknowledged and stressed.)

There's a term used in Smiley's People -- by toby descriptively of smiley's tactics after a certain point -- which it claims is untranslateable, and then translates faintly dodgily. It's from German military phraseology: flucht nach vorn -- and literally means "flight to the front", but in military context means something more like "escape via the Front", ie a defence against attack that consists itself of unexpected attack. But it also has more than a smidge of "leap into the unknown", again as a tactic.

Anyway, that's relevant to this scene -- smiley is getting things going by making his completed theory an engine of events -- but with the proviso (not yet filled in with clarity) that someone/something else is also active in this unknown. We've had as many hints -- just as we have with the actual identity of the mole -- but they're still masked, at least to careless and semi-careful reading. The giveaway is a single word.

loving this liveblog

really couldn't get on w/ 'smiley's people: the tv series', barely watched some of it

karla getting caught felt truer than a bunch of other stuff going on there

the german hippies case in point

haven't seen Smiley's People since it was first broadcast, remember more or less nothing. Haven't read the book since then, either, and I thought I'd leave it for a while now.

i watched it last night with 8 cans of tennents and thought it alright. some of it is a bit hokey, lots of dodgy accents. in fact anyone doing an accent in it is terrible. but the plot itself is maybe a weak point. foiling your greatest nemesis in the easiest way possible, because he's being completely useless and sloppy.

may find it hard to avoid live-blogging SP also, since 'm now going to have to reread it, but i'll put it in its own thread

the german hippies are part of my favourite section of SP-the-book actually: everyone gets hippies wrong on film and on TV, one day i will write a book about why this is

i wonder if it is the same reason as david 'pish incarnate' hare's theory about same

it is identical but mine is better

final tranche of liveblogging! as before SERIOUS SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN, DO NOT READ IF YOU HATE THE ENDING GIVEN AWAY; also, tl;dr

So now -- at quite a lick -- we pass towards turning the molerunning system against itself to unmasking denouement to aftermath, as the events set running by the coming into consonance of the backstory and the present-times narrative intrude on smiley's intended conclusion

waiting in the safehouse for it all to kick off is good strong anticipatory mood-music -- including a nice turnabout scene where mendel watches the actual circus itself from across the road at cambridge circus (i once spent 20 minutes wandering around there trying to decide which building he can have been watching from, as he needs simultaneously to be able to see the circus itself, including the roofs above and behind the pepperpot tower over new compton street AND the theatre)

the unmasking that follows is a pretty effective portrayal of anti-climax; serious as the implications are, the action itself is borderline farce, powerful men reduced to flapping nobodies, petulant or stunned or totally withdrawn or (in p****'s case) apparently just clueless. except for t***, the secondary suspects -- who turn out just to be dupes -- were never fleshed out beyond cartoon level; b**** especially remains a cipher. And the actual real mole retreats into stoic bored passivity: this above all i suspect shapes the sense of anti-climax; he doesn't act like a villain, or protest innocence; he doesn't act like "himself" as we've watched him throughout the tale, so we're robbed of something, even if it's hardly clear what (perhaps routine poirotism)

smiley debriefs hans redacted moleman and discovers -- more or less nothing: turns out, denuded of the various stages the mole has fashioned for himself, there's nothing at the heart... the final russian doll turns out to be hollow: moleman gives a cliched political speech one day (jlc doesn't even bother giving it all, on the excuse that smiley isn't really listening -- treated as craft and deliberate style decision, you'd have to note that any mid-level brit stalinist on the stump in 1970, when there were still a LOT of them, could have given a less crappy account of the ideals moleman claims to be upholding; we also get to find out that his lovelife is mean and lame; that his paintings are no good any more; that's there's nothing there

(talking about moscow, smiley says that they won't humiliate great britain over this, because it's in their interests to allow their foes to seem worth taking on: so what does this observation say about smiley himself, and the lifefacts beneath the molereveal?) (i'm reasonably sure jlc is aware of this irony of course: indeed that it fits into his whol OH THE HUMANITY litany, which smiley tends to ventriloquise for him)

and then, in the last few pages, the basically horrid and squalid surprise conclusion: when Redacted B redacts Rredacted A: as i said (an age ago upthread) i saw the TV version before i read the book, so this was no kind of shock -- i'm doing my thin best to keep it at least a little spoiler-proofed just in case, because i'm interested in how it comes across to virgin readers (even though we are somewhat in CHRIST ON THE CROSS SPOILERS territory here).

Another very deliberate irony: a key consequence of this conclusion ensures that Redacted B loses moral high ground firmly established (over Smiley et al) as Smiley heard his tale earlier in the book. (The post-it note sentence here having been: "Why did he choose the same order for their names? Smiley wondered.") <-- ans = because they were more of a rigmarole than we at the time supposed; as now at last emerges... final very bitter irony; also final OH THE HUMANITY thumb-on-the-scale if this is an element yr allergic to...

Which it may well be: I don't want to belabour it, but my threefold reading of "method is morality" seems to me finally to hover over the characters we're encouraged at the end to be thinking of, and through: MOLEMAN obv, now forever an enigma; prideaux, broken and betrayed, and back at thursgood's, learning to forget; and smiley himself, also much betrayed (tho honestly ann's behaviour is NOT a parallel with moleman's if yr actually sane)... and of course, since all three are characters jlc has put a lot of time and love (and some hate) into, which is he saying is most him also? He far too obviously hopes smiley; he far too obviously fears moleman. And Prideaux is masked when visible; and most himself when not? Are novelists street agents or desk agents?

(he's a miner's son and the closest to a working-class contributor to the central

oops, i forgot to finish the footnote: as per discussion far far above, suspect SOLDIER is a miner's son who became an academic, and thus the closest to a non-middle-class contributor to the central tale

also forgot this:
HANS REDACTED MOLEMAN UNMASKED "also took it for granted that secret services were the only measure of a nation's political health, the only real expression of its subconscious." <-- actual quote on p306, 11 pages from close

So I was wrong, it's not JLC saying this, and nor is it his oft-times pained and sententious mouthpiece smiley, it's the defeated villain in his rambling foolishness. So does this mean JLC absolutely does NOT think this, and indeed thinks it ridiculous to think this? ah-hum: well that is the conundrum really... how much does JLC see himself in the villain as yearning wish fulfilment ("AT LEAST HE HAS A BELIEF SYSTEM!") and how much does he think the villain's ideology is would-be-ideology is absurd bad-artist self-delusion and no wonder he ends up defeated etc etc.

Of course we can all be right here, since a novel is not a maths problem: it doesn't have an "answer"

how much does he think the villain's ideology is would-be-ideology is absurd bad-artist self-delusion and no wonder he ends up defeated etc etc.

well, im pretty sure jlc-the-man isn't a communiss. but i think he probably agrees with gerald about 'the state of britain' today a little. the pigs-in-clover society, sucking up to the US -- that stuff.

the full half-carmody!

'a small town in germany' is really hard to fathom, politics-wise. one of the villains, karfeld, is a populist german nationalist politician, but i don't think jlc ever calls him a 'neo-nazi', and there's even some business about him wanting to make an alliance with the SU? in a totally non-communist way. many of his supporters are young people, though, and they don't seem to be particularly nazi neither. wonder if they relate to the hippies in 'smiley's people'.

tbf i don't think this is about politics-as-grand-narrative-ideology, it's about national and individual praxis: which the individuals and nations grab at labels for, of course, but what interests and concerns him is how people treat other people, not so much how they tribalise this <-- so far so wishywashy liberal maybe, hence his constant flagellation that he can't lay hold of an aggregate formulation, and conflcted envy of those who can

gerald's self-disclosure at the close is intentionally a chaotic unself-aware adolescent mess: even if gerald would describe himself as a marxist or whatever, JLC doesn't allow him the dignity of passing the description on to the reader...

found this quite interesting http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/11/jacqueline-durran-tinker-tailor-suits

lol/sigh @ sartorial spoilers

ha yes so sad to learn that ricky will wear a REDACTED jacket

moleskin jacket

been watching the tv version and i wonder if it doesn't really nail the most ingenious thing about the plot, which is

- they don't want tarr to come back and spill the beans, not bc they're in on the plot but bc the reality is also their 'cover story'

wait who is "they" in that sentence?

You know, them.

anyway i love love love the tv show but am still at maximum psychage for this weekend

they = three of them and alleline

well two of them and alleline, one of them IS actually in on the plot (unless it's alleline)

but yes, the ones not in on it think tarr's information will spills the beans in moscow central

and to be honest despite having read and reread the book a trillion times i only "understand" this fact, i don't really "get it": it makes my head sing

one of them IS actually in on the plot (unless it's alleline) or ALL OF THEM

have any of the brits read malcolm gladwell's essay on spies/intelligence?

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/05/10/100510crat_atlarge_gladwell

im generally not a gladwell fan but its an interesting piece that gets at some of what le carre does in TTSS and APS

i did not realise btw that paul greengrass cowrote spycatcher

via

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55264000/jpg/_55264721_28-32.jpg
"A book called Spycatcher written by the former Assistant Director of MI5 Peter Wright, reveals intelligence secrets and is banned in the UK. Entrepreneurs get a ticket to Calais, a boxful of books and a pitch in the street."