John le Carré's crucial, covert collaborator | Hacker News Reader

John le Carré's crucial, covert collaborator

theguardian.com

110 pointspepys57 comments

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.

> 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

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.

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.

I would add The Constant Gardener (with ok movie) and Single & Single to those recommendations. The latter reminded me of the Magintsky affair.

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

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

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.

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.

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).

You could try reading them.

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.

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.

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.

Perhaps not now, but probably a bit more work on the novels he can't remember writing due to substance abuse problems.

That's easy: George Stark wrote those. Or maybe Richard Bachman.

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

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.

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

It's a lot of things. Prequels are hard to begin with, and Lucas wasn't interested in shooting dialog

These accounts about Marcia are deserved but downplay the contributions of Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. The three of them absolutely saved Star Wars in the editing room.

The lack of Lawrence Kasdan is the reason that every piece of dialogue in the prequels is incredibly awkward (but apparently extremely meme-able).

An accounting of changes made in the edit of Star Wars: https://youtu.be/GFMyMxMYDNk

Both your and /u/kevinmchugh's response to my comment make good points.

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

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

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.

I believe the book title is The Gone-Away World. At least that's what I just bought. :)

Thanks for the recommendation.

Whoops! Quite right, mea culpa. Glad you found the right book -- and hope you enjoy it! :)

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).

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

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?

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

I may not have read that one.

I completely forgot about the main character of The Little Drummer Girl, Charlie. What a book! I cannot judge the realism of the main character because I myself don't understand women well enough to do that, haha. Presumably that's a book where the contribution of Le Carré's wife was crucial.

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.

That last paragraph made me tear up.

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"

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

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)

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).

I actually did not read Tinker Tailor yet, but several others, including the finale:

He still plays along the dirty lines of spycraft, which are at odds with "decent human being" quite often.

Spoileralert for the next paragraph:

With the finale of Smiley blackmailing a - by all accounts of the spys observing him, a very nice guy - into cooperation. Then blackmailing a father to change sides, otherwise his psychological ill daughter will have to leave her Swiss sanatorium and face Russia, which meant Sibiria as she would have been classified as dissident and not ill (she was both). Ok, the father was Karla, the cruel head of the KGB's 13. very black Division. Smileys antagonist. Who did this and worse things all the time. So Smiley finally beat him, by becoming him.

That I call plying along. And he does so very aware of it and hard on himself.

Yeah, but that's a point about the line of work, I think. The fact that certain "professions" will inevitably corrupt, because they are fundamentally based on deceit, so ultimately it's not possible to win if you stay clean. LeCarrè's aim throughout has always been to dismantle the James Bond myth, which was massive when he was writing and massively at odds with his own experience, so he attacks that world from the foundations.

Or at least that's how I see it.

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"

I don't know about railleys temple, but the Harry Potter books I swallowed in no time, too.

But yes, you cannot really do this with Carre's books. You either read very slowly (which I tend not to), or you read them twice or more to fully understand. It is very deep shit, so to say. In terms of Character and story.

There are long mental battles fought, in dialoges in a boring room. And you try to make sense of it all. The layers of conspiracies. When the characters come in play with the story - when some slight things hinted in a dialoge - will in hindsight later reveal that person to be a traitor. So I read his books as elaborate dedective books. Shooting and night assaults do happen, but are quite rarely and happen fast and get not battle glorified. Like in reality. Sometimes you read only about the bloody shadow battles by a note the protagonist reads in secret. So you have to be into that, or not.

So all I need is hang in there.

Will try later!

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

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.

It could possibly be a little sleep deficit. I find when I’m bouncing off a book with that feeling, I just need to accept it and nap or turn in. Eventually it starts to hold my attention and I am drawn in enough that brain chemicals start helping me keep going.

Maybe. I'll try to read his books :)

Ludlum is uh...somewhat comparable to those sugary Froot Loops you used to eat as a kid. The Jason Bourne book set in China and Hong Kong has way too many characters who start their dialogues with "Aiyaa!", "Damn damn," and "Great Christian Jesus!" for me to stomach it a second time.

Have no idea what fruit loops are. But I loved ludlum's novels

Haven't read one since a long time now though.

I had a phenomenal time with Ludlum's novels when I was in high school. Less fun with Clancy. I remember with one book, there was one character's perspective that bored me and so I'd just skip it every time, just turned right past 20-30 pages each time. Didn't feel like I missed anything. :)

Well, you can say that about many books. I write books (not that I've published anything important yet) and normal sized books are 80k long. It is not possible for every word to be important and un "missable"

An overly sweet American breakfast cereal not worth trying as an adult. I read this particular one at my grandfather's house in Karachi one summer when it was stacked in the corner and I had nothing to do.

Bourne Identity was one of my top favourite at the time. But later books started dragging (Just like with Tom Clancy)

Now, I can't stomach either one of them.

I loved Bourne trilogy, Materese countdown

The only book I got bored by was Oracle of Omaha

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.

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.

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

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