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

Slimy Smiley lets his cousin cuckold him. We don't like cuckolds do we folks?

Failing NY Times keeps falsely reporting about the KARLA COLLUSION HOAX, my meetings with Karla have been perfect and wonderful, nobody can find anything wrong with them

https://theap.substack.com/p/the-honourable-schoolboy

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/john-le-carres-search-for-a-vocation

an awful lot of footage of middle-aged men smoking in dingey rooms.

― 'virgin' should be 'wizard' (GamalielRatsey), Friday, 20 November 2009 19:00 (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

i rewatched TTSS (1979, tv version) over the last two nights and this was my takeaway also (added comment: some superbly cut suits also)

is the duncan jones who plays bill "jumbo" roach bowie's kid? nowhere i googled said no so i choose to believe yes. almost everyone except @sirpatstew has now left the building so karla wins again IMO (exceptions: guillam, lady ann and JOSS ACKLAND at a sprightly 95)

odd seeing london captured at the moment i first arrived in it, a world and time away: cambridge circus in particular somewhat changed (mostly apparently filmed from a high window in the palace theatre and NOT imo the building that i believe le carré had in mind: obscured by trees but i believe the "pepperpot tower" which housed control's lair is in the top right of this image )

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

― mark s, Saturday, 10 September 2011 17:46 (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^me 11 years ago (discussing the book)

well the TV show tidies this issue up extremely neatly in the westerby section btw -- i'd have to check if it follows the book here (quite likely, which means i missed it in my ilx-blogged deepread) (also quite likely): it's evident in toby's sharply shifting reaction to westerby's info (one day pleased, the next day fake-furious) that he's not fully in the loop and thus cannot be the mole lol what else did you think i'd be hiding

yes i think my last tv series watch slotted that into place for me- that person's positioning as the errand boy gave a view of them as out of that loop

halfway thru my rewatch of SMILEY'S PEOPLE (1982)

i stick by my judgment (based mainly on the book tho i have watched the TV version also) that the project is basically an exercise in wish fulfilment (le carré's on behalf of smiley) and that this makes it a lesser proposition as a novel and as "art"… BUT there's something extremely beguiling and unusual abt the visual journey we take, not just across the class spectum of london, from baywater to hampstead heath to wherever it is willem lives (they say but i forgot), but simiiarly contrasting reaches of germany, france and switzerland (fancy and bleak, urban and rurual), including many travelling shots along various autobahns and autoroutes and funny little lanes, plus whichever ferry it is that willem shows the oranges to otto on. the oddest scene is the hippy-punk encampment by the lake, which is like something out of cormac mccarthy lol. agent max meets mad max in a liminal nowhere between the two germanys ("ours" and "theirs"). and it's full of the language of magic -- a character is called the magician, the sandman is making a legend for a girl…

it's not exactly picaresque -- bcz the quest is extremely focused and rigorous -- but it is somehow very dreamlike, as a nostalgia for what pynchon once called "the zone" (that space where the routine post-war rules and bureaucracies had not yet returned to enforce themselves), except this zone is perhaps smiley's own when young, a british agent speaking german secretly at large in occupied europe during the war, at once constrained by all manner of terrors and utterly (existentially) free, free to make his own context. the others keep anxiously repeating his own words back at him: when the whistle blows go home, never dabble in unfinished business post-retirement, yet here he is in a pitiless scrunched-up ecstasy of breaking that rule and many others. and bernard hepton as toby esterhase is just a joy alongside him, just so happy to see it all working so perfectly (again: wish fulfilment) and to be so fully part of it himself… he's loving it!

yeah

both series do such a good job of capturing a world that is just completely gone now, it's almost like visiting an alien planet

rereading it while on my hols and i think you could spend the rest of your life iterating across series, book and movie and enhancing yr comprehension/appreciation of the plotting and little dances that are going on at each stage - i cannot think of a work that seems to me so organic across interpretations in this fashion but this may be a personal experience

look

there's no chance- none at all?- that karla hooks smiley to delhi?

none at all?

Is it unique in the density of possible interpretation?

I doubt that

Is it great because of the way it refuses to give you a clear-cut interpretation?

Yeah for sure definitely

tbf he could probaby just buy a lighter in moscow

too capitalism

the other fundamentally unclear question is whether anne has info on haydon, the nature of some of her conversations with smiley are pretty unclear on exactly what is and isnt being said

this i definitely agree with (she doesn't really care about all the boys and their spy games)

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

george smoothing his chest like a proud donald duck

quiet vanity is maybe the one attribute i'd comfortably attribute to Smiley

Prideaux's stab of "Proud of your memory, aren't you?"

The TTSS TV people are supposed to be adapting the Fractured Europe books, curious how that will turn out

The TTSS people are still alive?

they still love england

"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