Len Deighton - ripe for rehabilitation?

len deighton is a really good writer. ss-gb obv great but i remember loving the game, set and match trilogy, and Bomber as well. melancholia definitely a strong feeling throughout.

I really like the 'cookstrips' he drew for The Observer in the 60s, too:

http://media.npr.org/programs/wesat/features/2005/oct/collins/recipe_lg.jpg

Explains Harry Palmer's interest in cooking.

i almost bought his cookbook last year, can't remember why i didn't. irritating. he's got a booze book as well iirc.

hmm maybe not.

googling brings up the London Dossier tho, which sounds grebt:

http://londonist.com/2016/03/the_london_dossier_a_rough_guide_to

a lot of the early Callan episodes have been lost haven't they? It was a favourite of my dad's, he was a big Edward Woodward fan, and the hazy memories I have make me think I'd definitely like to watch it now

― The Remoans of the May (Noodle Vague), Friday, May 26, 2017 3:29 AM (yesterday)

I want to watch this too -- I'm sure my mother would as well, being a huge Edward Woodward fan. I remember there was a time when I would tease her every time she would bring up some old series or movie she wanted to see by asking, "Does it have Edward Woodward in it?"

i have the cookstrips book, it's terrific -- not least as a masterclass in readable compression of information

https://andrearroyo.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/spy-sinker.jpg

rehabilitation complete imo

Yes.

Can you explain why the SINKER is represented by a budgie?

Wow, that is amazing, especially amazing that you hadn't heard of it.

i i have not read this book yet so no

tracer mentioned that his uncle had a whole huge shelf of LDs and i thought "i didn't think he'd written *that* many books" so i looked up his bibiography and there it was

(that many = 29 novels, plus quite a lot of non-fiction, so it could be a whole huge shelf)

but yes i'm a bit surprised since i spend like half my shopping time in second-hand bookshops so how have i never seen a copy before :0

(it's not like it wd have not impinged on my consciousness, unlike maybe every other book by him before i started being obsessed with him a few weeks ago)

pinefox I hope we never go on an ornithology trip together lol

my contribution to this thread is that my dad had loads of this and loads of dick francis and i mixed them up all the time

dick francis has not written any books abt cookery so he is not for me at this time

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/Len_Deighton_and_Michael_Caine_Ipcress_File.jpg

When I was peaking in middle school, big on Bond, but starting over (9th Grade) in high school, was very reassured to hear about and identify with relatively grubby, four-eyed Harry Palmer--as we see above, bespectacled Michael Caine wasn't really grubby enough, duh, except compared to smirky old upperclassman Bond. I don't remember reading any of the books, seeing any of the movies, but he made a difference to me.

being grubby only partially as undercover, occasionally rising to the occasion, but *not* whipping off the Clark Kent threads every night to go cruising as Superman---was def. part of the appeal.

Dick Francis was the horse mystery guy

Fine Dick Francis thread here...

Main Character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omp0xQKmIhY

Dick Francis's writing falls considerably short of Deighton's

I'm part way through the 2nd Bernard trilogy, and it seems like it's not acknowledged enough that Deighton is very funny

https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2017/06/07/the-drain-in-brains-dazed-mainly-michael-caine/

D Cairns, one of my fave movie bloggers, writing about Deighton and his adaptations again

Mark S's posts here and elsewhere spurred to pick up old copies of FiB and Spy Game (it's a quid on Kindle right now too). There's something smart-alecky and glib about his sentence-writing style that irritates me; is that a thing about him that other people love? Will persevere though.

There's something smart-alecky and glib about his sentence-writing style that irritates me; is that a thing about him that other people love?

I do, yes.

though I understand being irritated by smart-alecky and glib -- a large part of my loathing for LCD Soundsystem

Interesting - ok will try harder. Are either of those good ones to start with? I meant Berlin Game obvs (Spy Game is crap Robert Redford movie iirc).

i haven't read a book of his not in the first person: so smart-alecky and glib register to me as characteristics of his primary character: harry palmer is totally a glib smart-aleck

in ONLY WHEN I LARF, which switches between three first-person narrators narrators, i don't think he does itwith all three, only with the one who's harry palmer-ish (which is not to say you mightn't get bored with it: i haven't yet)

Palmer is smart-alecky and glib about things that his elders and superiors think are Very Serious Indeed which is part of the appeal i think, as mark pointed out earlier he is really being disrespectful of the glorious British Empire

I was inspired to read Ipcress and Berlin Game back to back. It's really notable how downbeat and constrained the film version of Ipcress is in comparison to the book - which has more of a line in derring-do and big set pieces a la Fleming (sticky bombs! Pacific atolls!). Part of that would certainly have been down to budget but it definitely felt like they were trying to put more water between Palmer and Bond.

I enjoyed Berlin Game too - much more of a kindred spirit to Le Carre by that stage. Resentful, embittered spies and Sainsbury's prosecco.

i'm still only a way into ipcress file: and yes, it does get around a bit, though the action sequences i've encountered so far already have the same lucky-inches-from-a-colossal-fuck-up sense noted above (funeral in berlin is much more dour, even tho set in several countries, and this fuck-up aspect is greatly amplified)

Yes, that's true. I am halfway through Horse Under Water now and absolutely everything has gone wrong.

Looking at Winter in the library shop: two brothers, last name Winter, with a German father and American mother (American-born anyway). One goes good, or not as bad as the other, who becomes a Nazi. They both go through both World Wars, I think, and the jacket flap promises lots of immersive detail about life in Germany. Random reading so far is just one of them being ripped a new one by typical drill sgt., will check again on next visit, if it's still there. Anybody read it?

Ha - also reading Deighton right now - started Funeral in Berlin a few days ago, enjoying it, quickly got over my problems with Deighton's writing (see "glib" upthread). He seems like perfect midpoint between Fleming and Le Carre - the action and globe-trotting larkiness of Bond, the grimness and bureaucracy of Smiley, etc.

(I don't like Le Carre, but I always enjoy his bits about how miserable and awful England is - they're the closest he gets to jokes)

https://spywrite.com/2017/06/28/spy-writers-club/

^^^the day they all met for lunch

(my next rehabilitation in this vein will probably be eric ambler)

i think i may have read at least one Elleston Trevor as a teen but i remember nothing

Ambler's an interesting one in that Cause For Alarm, The Mask of Dmitrios and Journey Into Fear all seem to be very well regarded but the rest hardly get the time of day. That might be the doing of Penguin Modern Classics though.

I've got a couple of Amblers at home courtesy of my other half's father. Not started either yet but will report back (I'm reading one of those British Library crime thrillers which is at least fast-paced)

Epitaph for a Spy and Background to Danger are also good; all the pre-'45 stuff is variations on a theme, really.

i love ambler and he can kind of do no wrong, though i'd need to go over titles again to pick out ones that aren't in print but good. he's faster than anyone else i've ever read at setting things up with economy of dialogue, character strokes and scenery that i think should be obligatory study for any writer.

i sometimes go back and read the beginning of his books and think "you get *here* in *two pages*! how?!"

Here's the full Amis review mentioned in the Ambler story. Some good catty lines.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/kingsley-amis-licence-to-kill/

Ambler is wonderful: 1940s/50s stuff probably the best, but he doesn't ever lose the magic.

Finished Funeral in Berlin - sad to say I found it a bit of a slog, but I'm guessing the things I disliked are the exact things that Deighton's fans love about him: the stop/start plotting, the endless banter, the sense of never really knowing what's happening - it's like the spy version of Turn of the Screw.

Perhaps if all that had been tied to a more enjoyable sentence-writing style, I would've liked it more - but generally I found the prose a bit purple, and the jokey dialogue - although fun at first - sort of relentlessly hits the same larky note throughout. (As everyone else is as much of a wiseass as Harry, he stops standing out.)

THAT SAID I will try another one - first couple of chapters of Berlin Game are promising.

Good writeup here: https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/funeral-in-berlin-len-deighton/

What gives the novel its peculiarly Deightonesque quality, is that the narrator – who holds all the cards ie has his suspicions and is calculating the angles on all the scenarios mentioned above – does not share this knowledge with the reader. In this novel, as in Ipcress, it is only at the very, very end that any kind of order or pattern emerges from the events described, and then only in laconic conversations with his secretary or boss – and even this ‘final roundup’ still leaves holes in the narrative and motivation.

It's those "Deightonesque" qualities that lost me - but I can see why they'd be appealing to another reader.

God help me I kinda want to watch ITV get The Ipcress File wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0yc_6J3FA

They should have remade it with Dennis Pennis as Palmer.

Who's the little twerp playing Harry Palmer?

The Michael Caine cosplay is a groaner

Didn't realise until now that Deighton drew and designed the cover for the first UK edition of On the Road

https://rarebooksleuth.com/collections/beats/products/on-the-road-jack-kerouac-first-u-k-edition-first-printing

https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0417/06/jack-kerouac-road-first-uk-edition_1_4b1589fe4aa5686349661b9aa45a3b85.jpg

ffs

https://i.imgur.com/f3Yzqvw.png

hahaha

https://i.imgur.com/f3Yzqvw.png

:-)

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0515/8846/4815/products/kerouac_1296x.jpg?v=1611863986

... signed too!