An unexpected friendship? Was to me. And most/all? of the Plisters, I suggest

Thu Jan 23 09:58:50 UTC 2020

Jerky,

A cool thought--about recluses and spying. Maybe so, I got no handle on it.

Much more prosaically, I did some research once on Le Carre's reputation
once. And readership.
*( Spy...Cold* was a huge ongoing bestseller--great word-of-mouth-- and a
large readership started then and never quit albeit
with ups and downs in sales per usual)

Most considered literary cultural opinion believes, and can kinda show
circumstantially, that,
just as mysteries were ---and are---seen,  spy novels were judged just
genre fiction, that is, as
'entertainment'. See how Graham Greene divided his fiction--real (literary)
fiction, End of the Affair,
and what he called his entertainments--his spy novels.

But, more than Greene. Scholars have shown the attitude toward Le Carre to
be like this from the beginning.
Words in reviews; words from other writers and critics in interviews; about
lit prize nominees, etc.
. The most high-minded high-hatters argue this
perspective: a writer cannot be a great writer IF he can only express his
vision thru the conventions of
a genre. As Edmund Wilson wrote about mysteries (I paraphrase): The fact of
an ending that solves a
murder cannot be 'large' enough to contain a whole vision of life. Same, in
effect, for spy novels many
argue. *Invisible Man, Golden Notebook, Sabbath's Theater, Tin Drum*, how
could ANY spy novel, so seemingly
limited thematically, be compared in the same breath.

It took the culture a while to see vision and great writing expressing it
in such as Chandler (and others). And Le Carre.

Part, just part, of the way that turned in Le Carre's case is as smart
readers began to see and say that his themes
were among the deepest of the 20th Century. Politics and its Discontents
everywhere. Deep partisan, country-wide
divisions among nations---that touched all. And with rounded characters
embodying all the human qualites (as in
any 'literary' writer) and as types, archetypes, the whole shebang. And, if
the "free' world hangs in the balance,--ambiguity intended--
 wow, right. Joe Conrad smiles.

By the way. Little known bit of trivia about Philip Roth. Great reader,
lover of aforementioned Conrad, Kafka, others, of course
declared that Le Carre's* A Perfect Spy* was THE BEST English novel since
WW 2. Think of the candidates.
 ...some praise, that, yes?

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 11:44 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Wow, that's very cool.
>
> One thing I'd like to point out... LeCarre seems to have a lot of high
> profile admirers. I didn't know that Pynchon was a fan. I did, however,
> know that LeCarre was a frequent dinner guest of - and his books greatly
> admired by - Stanley Kubrick.
>
> Perhaps something in his spy work appeals to the recluse?
>
> Jerky
>
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 7:56 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> + ... "DEAR TOM GUINZBURG WHEREVER YOU ARE, I THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE TO
>> KNOW I'M NUMBER EIGHT AND MY FRIEND FREDDIE IS NUMBER TWO."/ Pynchon was
>> referring to the fact that Frederick Forsyth's second thriller, THE
>> ODESSA FILE, was No. 2 on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list and
>> GRAVITY'S RAINBOW was No. 8 ... +
>>
>>
>> https://books.google.de/books?id=btgXCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=frederick+forsyth+pynchon&source=bl&ots=XzztUaCr-x&sig=ACfU3U2w-d_zdetjCnDUBZyOPsvwhe1IvA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB9fPp0ZTnAhVS4aQKHZaLBZQQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=frederick%20forsyth%20pynchon&f=fals
>> <
>> https://books.google.de/books?id=btgXCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=frederick+forsyth+pynchon&source=bl&ots=XzztUaCr-x&sig=ACfU3U2w-d_zdetjCnDUBZyOPsvwhe1IvA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB9fPp0ZTnAhVS4aQKHZaLBZQQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=frederick%20forsyth%20pynchon&f=false
>> >
>> e
>>
>> One might infer that the friendship began around the time of Freddie's
>> first book, a runaway bestseller,* The Day of the Jackal.* 1971 His
>> publisher was
>>  Viking. Pynchon's publisher..
>>
>> *“The Day of the Jackal makes such comparable books such as The Manchurian
>> Candidate and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold seem like Hardy Boy
>> mysteries.”—The New York Times    ( memory or recreated one: made me want
>> to read it---but I didn't) *
>>
>> Such a quote *would *appeal to TRP. We know he has read Le Carre and liked
>> him without reservations of 'genre'. We also seem to know that he often,
>> through his agent, Ms Donadio and other industry insiders, got new books
>> to
>> read before they were published*. Catch--22* seems almost circumstantially
>> provable as just one he read before publication.
>>
>> Then there is the forgotten Richard Condon. of *The Manchurian Candidate.
>> *Once
>> compared to "satirists" like, O, Thomas Pynchon and some other black
>> humorists. (Latterly, discredited for some plagiarism, including, someone
>> showed, passages of MC 'taken' from Graves,* I, Claudius.! *[A post-modern
>> mixer before the mix times? ] Famous for his* LISTS!*! Pynchon list fans.
>> Famous for extended metaphors ---"complex sentences that go bang at the
>> end"...and for
>> the fiction of information. Condon to Pynchon, like those
>> lost English writers who did the inferior Hamlets and King Lears before
>> Shakey?
>> Wikipedia: "The fiction of information"[edit
>> <
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Condon&action=edit&section=4
>> >
>> ]
>>
>> Condon's works are difficult to categorize precisely: A 1971 *Time
>> magazine
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_magazine>* review declared that,
>> "Condon was never a satirist: he was a riot in a satire factory. He raged
>> at Western civilization and every last one of its works. He decorticated
>> the Third Reich, cheese fanciers, gossip columnists and the Hollywood star
>> system with equal and total frenzy." [6]
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-6> The headline
>> of
>> his obituary in *The New York Times* called him a "political novelist",[7]
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-NYT-7> but went
>> on
>> to say that, "Novelist is too limited a word to encompass the world of Mr.
>> Condon. He was also a visionary, a darkly comic conjurer, a student of
>> American mythology and a master of conspiracy theories, as vividly
>> demonstrated in 'The Manchurian Candidate.'"[7]
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-NYT-7> Although
>> his
>> books combined many different elements, including occasional outright
>> fantasy and science fiction, they were, above all, written to entertain
>> the
>> general public. He had, however, a genuine disdain, outrage, and even
>> hatred for many of the mainstream political corruptions that he found so
>> prevalent in American life. In a 1977 quotation, he said that:[8]
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-8>
>>
>> "...people are being manipulated, exploited, murdered by their servants,
>> who have convinced these savage, simple-minded populations that they are
>> their masters, and that it hurts the head, if one thinks. People accept
>> servants as masters. My novels are merely entertaining persuasions to get
>> the people to think in other categories."
>>
>> With his long lists of absurd trivia and "mania for absolute details",
>> Condon was, along with Ian Fleming
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming>, one of the early exemplars
>> of
>> those called by Pete Hamill <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill>
>> in
>> a *New York Times* review, "the practitioners of what might be called the
>> New Novelism... Condon applies a dense web of facts to fiction.... There
>> might really be two kinds of fiction: the fiction of sensibility and the
>> fiction of information... As a practitioner of the fiction of information,
>> no one else comes close to him."[9]
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-9>
>> Quirks and characteristics[edit
>> <
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Condon&action=edit&section=5
>> >
>> ]
>>
>> Condon attacked his targets wholeheartedly but with a uniquely original
>> style and wit that made almost any paragraph from one of his books
>> instantly recognizable. Reviewing one of his works in the *International
>> Herald Tribune*, playwright George Axelrod
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Axelrod> (*The Seven Year Itch
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Year_Itch_(play)>*, *Will
>> Success
>> Spoil Rock Hunter
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Success_Spoil_Rock_Hunter>*), who had
>> collaborated with Condon on the screenplay for the film adaptation of *The
>> Manchurian Candidate*, wrote:
>>
>> "The arrival of a new novel by Richard Condon is like an invitation to a
>> party.... the sheer gusto of the prose, the madness of his similes, the
>> lunacy of his metaphors, his infectious, almost child-like joy in
>> composing
>> complex sentences that go bang at the end in the manner of exploding
>> cigars
>> is both exhilarating and as exhausting as any good party ought to be."
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>