Remember Mischa and Grischa, those Russian doubles in Pynchon?

[Mark Kohut]

That's "yards" not "years"...

On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 7:00 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> in his The Pigeon Tunnel, Le Carre writes of his first trip to Russia in
> 1987, after
> the end of the Soviet Union. "if we let you in, we'll let anyone in", said
> some Authority.
>
> He speaks of the two, middle-aged, balding, fat KGB guys sentenced to
> follow him everywhere
> at a distance of not many years.
>
> He called them Muttski and Jeffski.
>
> (terrif story of him leaving a dead drunk journalist's apartment very
> late, he too drunk, in the blackest,
> quietest section of the city with no idea  where his hotel was. He saw
> them on a park bench, evidently taking turns
> dozing. He went over, said the name of the hotel loud and louder, and that
> he was drunk, lifted his arms elbows out,
> a passively harmless yet vulnerable request and the three of them walked
> back to his hotel.
>
> PS. BTW, THIS book is a perfect audio book on a long ride, for me. (I
> can't follow well many unread books on audio while driving,
> but rereads when one already knows the story work to hear every word  BUT,
> this book is sketches and conversations, so to speak and Le Carre
> reads it himself and "he do the police in different voices" as an American
> woman said of Dickens in America (made almost eternal
> by Eliot in The Wasteland) and Le Carre is a GREAT mimic, simply great,
> creating a character right out of his voice,
> maybe as good as Philip Roth (I have heard).
>