Reading CALL FOR THE DEAD, Le Carre

[Mark Kohut]

First George Smiley novel. His origin story.(do not remember if it is
reprised
or remembered in any later, larger novels..) Set very late 50's or 60 or
so. (pubbed in 61)

Interesting in this way (among other ways): Even before Smiley enters
the Intelligence Service (vast but hidden bureaucracy, of course, like
the one in GR ), he is led there by Them, so to
allude. his Tutor and other Fellows.

They....strongly 'nudge'---his Tutor's inexplicable vagueness annoys him--
George--,(who has planned on a future studying and
teaching German Literature of the 17th Century) to a meeting
with a small group of Oxford Fellows....including one Steed--Asprey.( a
Pynchon name to me)
where, without discussion of money and more vagueness, he hires on.("I knew
I would
say Yes and did not need a week to think it over.").

I did not know that Smiley's cuckold status is there from almost page 1, as
he loves a beautiful interesting woman who quickly leaves him for a hairy
Cuban sportsman-adventurer.

This has to be, in 1961, a counter- protagonist to James Bond, so to speak?
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