John le Carré's crucial, covert collaborator

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/13/my-father-was-famous-as-john-le-carre-my-mother-was-his-crucial-covert-collaborator

by pepys • 5 years ago

110 57 5 years ago

theguardian.com

teruakohatu• 5 years ago

One of the things I like about John le Carre was that he wrote what he knew. He was in internal security, so he wrote about that in his first book. He taught at Eton and his second book is set at a fictional Eton-like public school. Later he was in foreign intelligence and he wrote books from that perspective. His intelligence career came to an end in similar circumstances as his third book.

While not a diplomat (The Constant Gardener) I imagine he did run in those circles during his government career.

szopa2• 5 years ago

He also used money from his books to do some in depth, almost journalistic research for subsequent ones. Eg. as soon as the USSR had fallen he traveled to Russia.

szopa2• 5 years ago

John Le Carre is one of my favorite authors. It was a great pleasure to discover that his son is a great author on his own right — his novel Gnomon is absolutely amazing.

Or rather, I should say, I read this great book titled Gnomon after a random Amazon recommendation, and it turned out the author is the son of John Le Carre. It's only a shame he doesn't publish more often.

peteretep• 5 years ago

John Le Carre is one of my favorite authors

I have greatly enjoyed his work, although I've found him wildly inconsistent. His great books are sublime (eg: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), but he published a fair amount of dross too (eg: The Looking Glass War). I'd like to see more Netflix adaptations

jrumbut• 5 years ago

I would make the same criticism in general, but I found The Looking Glass War fascinating as an exploration of how the urge to recapture the excitement and vigor of youth plays out when your youth revolved around WW2.

slibhb• 5 years ago

I'd go further and say The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy are his only two good novels.

They are great novels though.

billfruit• 5 years ago

I thought Looking Glass War was fine, a distinct tale of an ill staffed intelligence group uaing obsolete approaches spectacularly screw up their operations.

Gatsky2• 5 years ago

Also a favourite. "A Perfect Spy" is a masterpiece.

alpanka• 5 years ago

I suspect this is pretty common.

It is an open secret that Stieg Larsson (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) was a mediocre writer with no discipline and his girlfriend shaped most of the Millennium books.

(I wish someone could compare his and her books using some fancy AI tool to investigate this).

DJBunnies• 5 years ago

You could try reading them.

DoreenMichele• 5 years ago

Yeah, there has been recent stuff written about how much Einstein's first wife contributed to his work while getting zero credit.

She apparently knew the value of her work too because she had him agree to give her his Nobel Prize winnings as part of the divorce settlement. She got him to promise her this before he won.

She apparently recognized it was Nobel Prize worthy stuff and it seems she saw that as rightly "her" money.

Edited for clarity, typos.

barney54• 5 years ago

I agree that it's probably pretty common. I thought that Tabatha King, Stephen King's wife, did a lot of work on his novels (but I can't find a link for that right now). The fantasy author Robert Jordan's wife, Harriett McDougal, is an editor and worked with Jordan and others.

the_af2• 5 years ago

That's surprising. Stephen Kings writes at length about his own creative process and habits (he wrote a full book about it, On Writing) and he never mentions Tabitha doing "lots of work" on his novels. He does mention she is an accomplished writer and that he asks her for opinions, but lots of work? Sounds like an urban legend.

jgalt212• 5 years ago

I have a similar sneaking suspicion about To Kill a Mockingbird.

pjc50• 5 years ago

It's commonly claimed that the reason the original Star Wars films were so much better than the prequels was the work of Marcia Lucas in the editing suite.

monoideism2• 5 years ago

More likely, it's because Lawrence Kasdan wasn't involved in the writing of the prequels.

Gatsky2• 5 years ago

Have always felt that le Carre’s female characters are particularly good. Maybe this is one reason why!

ahartmetz2• 5 years ago

I felt that they are believably nuanced and not obviously "female as imagined by male", but their depth is, in most books, only hinted at because there isn't much text spent on them. So I would say what is there is good, but there isn't that much.

The ones with the most detail are the female main character from The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Conny, the retired researcher. Conny is easily the most interesting. The estranged wife Anne is the main one about whom I really would have liked to read more. Did I forget someone?

selimthegrim3• 5 years ago

She gets a bit more of a look in in Smiley's People

jumpgrumpy• 5 years ago

The main protagonist in the Little Drummer 'girl'?

Although I found her a bit irritating. Then there is the rather 'forgettable' main woman char in the Constant Gardener.

I liked most of Carre's works (although there are some stinkers in his canon - the Night Manager was I though a terrible book - but apart from Connie and Wife Anne I can barely remember any decent female characters at all.

thewhitetulip8• 5 years ago

Probably off topic, but till now I've been unable to read Le Carre's books. I don't know why.

I just can't continue then after a bunch of pages.

I've read hundreds of books but his are the only ones that I can't "enjoy" or "continue"

Angostura2• 5 years ago

Fascinating I find the Smiley ones in particular, gripping, Not just for the plots ut for the nuanced characterisations. Love them.

hutzlibu3• 5 years ago

Well, since most of Le Carre's books play in a very dark setting, with strong reality connections - I also cannot really "enjoy" them, as in something to lift the mood.

I've read many books of him, but I actually cannot remember one, that was "bright" or uplifting. Usually it ends with death and despair and I think one of the main topic is exactly, how people still try to be decent humans in a cruel world - and how they mostly fail to do so all in all, either because they get shot, or because they play along. It is also mainly about choosing sides. When both sides are clearly not nice, but one is even worse (the cold war setting - british small empire vs sowjet russia)

toyg2• 5 years ago

I don't see how Smiley fails to be a decent human being in Tinker Tailor - he "plays along" only with her unfaithful wife, and that's because he basically loves her unconditionally (although eventually they will separate in later books, iirc).

thewhitetulip8• 5 years ago

Thats not it actually. I just find his narration to be difficult to follow.

I had finished Matthew railley's temple in 8 straight hours, entire Harry potter books in a weekend and GoT all books within 2 months while having a full time job

Le carre on the other hand, tried to read Absolute friends thrice before giving up. Tinker tailor twice before giving up

The only other author I've given up on was the guy who wrote His Dark Materials. Dont know why, they didn't "come at me"

11235813212• 5 years ago

There’s nothing wrong with not personally liking a particular writer. Do you otherwise enjoy spy novels?

thewhitetulip8• 5 years ago

I love spy novels. Growing up, the only Genre I read was spy. Ludlum was my favourite author until few years ago when I discovered that Fantasy genre exists! (Hadn't read harry potter until I reached college)

But for the life of me, I couldn't follow Carre's writing and it saddens me. I have ~10 of his books in hard bound from constant gardener, absolute friends, tinker tailor but every time I start reading one, I get "lets go to sleep vibe" as if his writing isn't interesting enough

Maybe I'm not mature enough of a reader.

tunesmith2• 5 years ago

As a non-Brit, I'm using the dictionary to look up words often, sometimes multiple times per page. So reading Le Carre's books as ebooks is better for me just for that reason.

I'm reading them in order. I found the first two enjoyable enough, but it took getting to the ending of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold for me to really "get" Le Carre. That floored me. Taking a break before starting the next one.

I also got a hint of that feeling from the "A Most Wanted Man" movie.

I didn't really like the Gary Oldman Tinker Tailor movie, so I'm not sure how much I'm looking forward to that book.

jhbadger• 5 years ago

Don't judge the book by the movie. It's a very complicated story and the movie was nearly incomprehensible because they tried to cram everything in it without explanation. The book, and the 1970s miniseries starring Alec Guinness are both excellent, though.

chrisweekly3• 5 years ago

Nick Harkaway ("le Carre"'s son) is a phenomenal -- as criminally under-read -- writer, one of my all-time favorites.

criddell2• 5 years ago

What's a good book of his to start with?

chrisweekly3• 5 years ago

I was hooked based on my first -- Gone-Away War -- but might have liked Gnomon and Angelmaker even better... really tough call. I love everything he's written.

Angostura2• 5 years ago

That last paragraph made me tear up.

jimbob45• 5 years ago

Finished Tinker Tailor during the pandemic. I’d highly recommend it and I assert that watching the movie/miniseries is a much more rewarding experience after the book. Both are of the old sort where they would throw in book details that couldn’t make sense if you didn’t have the background (similar to Harry Potter 1/2).

medium_burrito• 5 years ago

Meh Gerard Villiers is the guy you wanna be reading for all the real juicy.

John le Carré's crucial, covert collaborator

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