Reading CALL FOR THE DEAD, Le Carre

[Mark Kohut]

P.S. forgot to add that perhaps the most important fact about Smiley's wife
Ann is her aristocratic class.

A...And, hope this is not a spoiler if you want to read this, but there is
a German Jewish woman, who survived the camps quite damaged,
who *therefore*-- arguably-- loves fascists, as Smiley lightly essays in
his wrap-up explanation.

This novel, btw, could basically be called a simple murder mystery , and,
although many of Le Carre's later deep themes are here packed in
didactically, the scene and characters and many themes are all set up for
the Smiley books.

from the Introduction by Le Carre: "i reentered the world of Whitehall's
large back rooms, and was soon working in a terribly secret building in the
West End, which
even the taxi drivers knew was MI5."...'The world I inhabited in London was
a paper world"....and...."The only tools I possessed [for understanding
others]
were the possibilities of my own nature....and the imaginative bridges I
built to my paper suspects earned me a reputation for, of all things,
perspicuity."

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 5:08 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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