“the best espionage novel of all time”. that’s what publishers weekly called him “the spy who came in from the cold” in 2006, forty-three years after the book’s publication. John le Carré’s international bestseller is dynamite: fiendishly intelligent, as Arthur Conan Doyle might have said, and morally alert in a way that puts him far above the usual streak of espionage fiction. however, it is not le carré’s masterpiece. The author, born David Cornwell, wrote it at the height of the Cold War, and took the surprising decision to portray the intelligence methods of Western and Communist countries as vile and morally insane. in this, his third book, he had found his great theme, betrayal, which he has dramatized in endless variations ever since. the plot hinges on a series of inversions—as you read, you have to check your understanding of what’s going on, which is part of the fun—but, in the end, all mysteries solved, “the spy who came in from the cold ” looks as schematic as an architect’s drawing.
The book portrayed the East-West conflict as a set of dark, fascinating and dubious strategies. who won with the complex role-play? The double agents, the planted innuendos and the endless betrayals? which was won after reading le carré, you may think that the fight against communism is still necessary, but only a fool would think of it as anything but sordid. For some of us, this dark and witty thriller was an introduction to adult reality. no pessimistic book has ever given so much pleasure.
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however, the question of which is le carré’s best book remains in play. Certainly Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the first of the trilogy later known as Karla’s Quest (which includes “The Honorable Schoolboy” and “The People of the Smiley”), is the most entertaining of the books of Le carré It came to light in 1974, when everyone still remembered how severely compromised British intelligence was in the 1940s, 50s and 60s by Soviet double agents like Kim Philby and Guy Burgess. the scandal was still alive. (Sir Anthony Blunt confessed in 1964 that he had worked for the Soviets, but was on the run in the 1970s. Margaret Thatcher did not reveal the truth about him until 1979.) In “Tinker,” Le Carré tells us very little about how the betrayal begins, but it creates a fictional account of how it could end. As everyone knows, meek cuckold George Smiley, awakened from retirement and disgrace, discovers a mole on M.I.6. (the circus) laying traps so intricate that only a spy could fall into them (funny, in his own way).
like raymond chandler, another so-called genre writer (in this magazine, pauline kael once described chandler as a skilled pulp maker), le carré offers a specialized view of life, but one so persuasive that many readers begin to see things in their maturely jaundiced way. Chandler was a master of the sleaze and seductive amorality of the Angels. le carré recorded the club jokes, smooth, ruthless, sharp, of educated Englishmen drawn to espionage. he created the cryptic jargon of the trade: lamplighters, scalp hunters, nannies, joes, mothers, burn boxes, some of which were used by actual spies. in his masterpiece “kim”, kipling did the same with the jargon of the russian-british rivalry (“the great game”), but chandler and le carré devised, as they say, a whole world, ever more detailed and complete , a pleasure for adepts and for those initiated quickly. however, by the mid-1970s, the author of “genre books” was obviously a major novelist who understood the intricacies of deception and self-deception as well as any writer.
Some time after “A Perfect Spy” came out in 1986, Philip Roth commented that it was “the best English novel since the war.” so that was le carré’s best book. however, many were puzzled. since the war? That would cover at least forty-one years, and works by George Orwell, Kingsley Amis, Angus Wilson, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, Anthony Burgess, and Anthony Powell. Still, I was willing to trust Roth’s judgment, so I started reading. and, on two separate occasions, I found “a perfect spy” so densely worked and allusive that I fell out of my chair, a little embarrassed, after about fifty pages. but redemption was at hand. A couple of months ago, preparing for a movie review, I read Le Carré’s excellent late novel, “A Most Wanted Man” (2007). the harshness and complexity of that book made me “a perfect spy.” And it turns out that Roth was right.
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The perfect spy is a magnus pym, a name that suggests a man who is somehow both superlative and ordinary. it’s the late seventies or early eighties, the cold war is coming to an end, and magnus is in the twilight of his career. His mentor in London, spymaster extraordinaire Jack Brotherhood, wants to believe in him, but the rest of him used to be called M.I.6. (now s.i.s., or the firm) has suspected for years that pym is a double agent. London, setting him free, sends him to Vienna, a relative backwater for espionage. In general, British intelligence, including Magnus, seems less concerned about communist espionage than about the possibility that the well-funded C.I.A. will intervene in British operations.
That goes for le carré, too, who has always despised American espionage. Americans lack style, subtlety, patience. They sprang from a mestizo and incoherent society, innocent of family, tradition and manners, all the shortcomings of which Henry James complained a hundred and fifty years ago, before leaving for London. worst of all, they fail to enjoy espionage as a treacherous game; They think they are saving the world, while the British know that apart from Britain’s waning interests, there is nothing to save, only the never-ending struggle itself, rightly or wrongly united. Among other things, “Most Wanted Man,” set in Hamburg in the mid-1920s, is an outraged protest against American bungling after 9/11.
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