According to The Hollywood Reporter, British novelist John le Carré—best known for his many spy novels, including The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy—has died. The news was confirmed by his literary agency, Curtis Brown, which said he died after a “short illness” that was reportedly unrelated to COVID-19. He was 89.
Le Carré, born David John Moore Cornwell in 1931, famously worked as an actual spy in addition to just writing about them. In the ‘50s, after studying foreign languages, he got a job with the British military interrogating German people who had crossed from the East into the West. With the Cold War still in full-swing, he later started working with MI5 to investigate far-left Soviet sympathizers at a college in Oxford. He eventually became a full-blown MI5 officer, albeit covertly, running various clandestine operations and working as a teacher.
He started writing his first novel, Call For The Dead, around this time, and in 1960 he was transferred to MI6, England’s foreign intelligence service. Subsequent books like A Murder Of Quality and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold had to be written under a pseudonym, then, as per the government’s rules against foreign agents publishing with their own name to protect their identities. It didn’t matter, though, because in 1964 a KGB double agent named Kim Philby exposed le Carre’s cover (along with a number of other British agents) and his spy career came to an end. This event was dramatized a decade later in le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, in which his recurring protagonist George Smiley hunts a high-level Soviet mole within The Circus—spy jargon for MI6's London headquarters, either coined or simply popularized by le Carre’s books.
After his work in espionage came to an end, le Carré became a full-time novelist. His spy books, which were more about internal conflicts and moral drama rather than violence and action, were often regarded as a rejection of James Bond—who le Carre’s himself once referred to as a “neo-fascist gangster.” Le Carré continued writing after the end of the Cold War, and while the character George Smiley was largely retired (he was, after all, a regular human and not a superhero), le Carré stuck with spies and spy-adjacent stories for books like The Night Manager, The Tailor Of Panama, and The Constant Gardener. His most recent novel, Agent Running In The Field, came out in 2019 and concerns a Cold War veteran reckoning with with life in a world where something like Brexit can happen.
Le Carre’s books have also been reliable source material for adaptations, like The Little Drummer Girl, Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie’s version of The Night Manager or the 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with Gary Oldman as Smiley (and a whole host of famous faces alongside him).
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Gary Oldman deserves to be an Oscar winner but he absolutely deserved that title for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy rather than Darkest Hour. While it seems appropriate – given some of his more famous roles – that he won for one where he got all shouty and bombastic, his quiet, layered and nuanced turn as Smiley was something truly special.
If Gary Oldman was working in the 50s-70s he’d be a legend. They don’t make the kind of movies for someone that great to shine any more, but Tinker Tailor was definitely an exception.
I think his role in The Dark Knight trilogy is underrated – especially The Dark Knight where his character carries a lot of angst and is probably the moral centre. It’s a fantastic performance, especially for a superhero film sequel. He’s a great actor who can be hammy as hell when he needs to be and chew the scenery like anyone – Leon, The Fifth Element, Hannibal, even Mank in places – and that’s by no means a bad thing with the right material. But he’s also got an incredible range that rarely gets tapped into. Tinker, Tailor… was the sort of role that really showed it off.
Too bad about him beating his wife
Too bad about nobody taking your shitty troll bait
I prefer the version of Tinker Tailor from the 70s.
Very much so. The movie version of Tinker was incomprehensible unless you’ve read the book or seen the series. And Oldman is no Guinness. The follow-up series “Smiley’s People” is also excellent with Guinness reprising the role.
Of course you do because it is superior
Thank you, TGGP — I’m glad I’m not the only one left who knows better than to praise Gary Oldman’s overly-actory performance.
He’s so fucking good in that movie, but then again, that whole film is stunning. The cinematography is stunning and the performances are uniformly awesome. It’s easily among my favourite films of the past decade.The Christmas party and the final scene, as well as the various conference room confrontations are just excellent.
When I end up dead face-down in my Olympic-size pool in my mansion after my chickens come home to roost, I want “La Mer” by Julio Iglesias to play over the end credits of my life.
That final sequence with “La Mer” is so fucking brilliant. The eyeline/editing work between Mark Strong and Colin Firth, the framing of Smiley’s wife as he re-enters their house, the final shot of Smiley assuming control of the ruined Circus, sitting alone in the secure room, it’s all just wonderful. The Christmas party scenes in particular were a masterstroke of adaptation. They perfectly tease out so many of the themes from the novel without being directly pulled from the text. In the first (I think, if I’m remembering correctly) the attendees are all singing along to “The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World,” an incredible choice that reinforces how Smiley feels about himself in opposition to Karla. Always second best. In the next one, when they’re all singing the Soviet Anthem, the camera pans and all you see are mirthful faces, save one: Toby Esterhase, the only non-anglo character we know in the Service. Hungarian by birth and a direct witness to Soviet rule, Esterhase is notably silent and uncomfortable, uneasy with mocking the Soviets and perhaps aware of the ways in which the Brits and the Soviets are two sides of the same coin. And the third party scene is the final one in which the viewer sees Jim Prideaux’s heartbreak as he realizes Haydon’s treachery. La Mer is the perfect choice to undergird that moment.
It’s such a great song. And the end of the track having that burst of applause as Smiley sits at the head of the conference table alone is perfect.
God yes. Smiley ends the film perched atop the rubble of the Service. And then fades out to that burst of applause. It is so deftly done many likely didn’t notice, but it is perfectly pitched and the kind of touch le Carre probably loved because it spoke so deeply to his worldview. It is only fitting that our hero perseveres, and that his reward is to find himself alone atop a corrupted agency of a corrupt state, both entities that use good men as canon fodder. His win is also an unequivocal loss in so many ways.
Absolutely. It’s just a fantastic little denouncement of sorts.He won, but at what cost and was it worth it given it wiped everyone else out too.It reminds me of the awful mid-70s film All This and World War II – the one which is full of file footage from World War II and WW2 movies played with Beatles songs.The final scene is celebrating the end of the war (played to The End) and as the beautiful final lines are song ( “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make”) it has the famous footage of the dancing man in the streets of Melbourne and freeze frames on the soldier holding up the front page of the newspaper with the headline “Peace”. It then immediately smash cuts to the shot of a nuclear weapon detonating, undercutting the whole thing.
I agree that film is wonderful. With the exception of whomever put that ghastly wig on Tom Hardy. Every time he came on screen, it took me right out.
There’s the bit early on when John Hurt’s character has been ousted, and he says, “Smiley comes with me.” Oldman opens his mouth as if he’s about to speak, then just sighs and remains silent. It’s a beautifully delivered moment that gives you such a strong sense of who Smiley is.
I can’t agree, Doctor Boo — in fact, I’m offended that it’s Gary Oldman’s picture up here as Smiley rather than the real George Smiley….
the late, great Sir Alec Guinness.
THIS. A fantastic successor to the original portrayed by Sir Alec Guinness in the BBC version.
The adaptation of The Night Manager kicked ass.RIP, sir.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Night Manager. The miniseries adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl is even better, although it got far less buzz when it came out a few years ago. Directed by Park Chan-wook, it’s a stunning work of art. More sophisticated and cerebral than The Night Manager. But it requires more effort on the part of the viewer. I think it’s worth it, though.
Mrs. YYZ and I tried TLDG, but only got through the first episode. It wasn’t gripping us the same way. Might have to revisit that one.
So…Little Drummer Girl is way more of a slow burn—less action, more thematic complexity—than The Night Manager. It hews closer to Tinker Tailor in complexity and muddiness at times. The viewer doesn’t always know what’s going on, whereas The Night Manager is way more straightforward. When Little Drummer Girl originally aired, AMC made the terrible choice to air it as three 2-hour “movies” rather than six standalone episodes. Big mistake—one that I’d like to hear director Park’s opinion of because I imagine he hated that call. Smashing two episodes together made viewers take on a ton of information in one giant chunk. And it ruined the narrative, thematic, and visual arcs of each episode (and each episode does have distinct arcs in these areas). It made it super confusing. I’m a huge le Carre fan and I felt like I had no idea what was happening after watching the first two hours. I stuck with it and by the time the series was done I liked it but didn’t love it. It was only on my second viewing, when I bought it through Amazon Prime, that I watched it as six distinct episodes and I loved it. I had the benefit of knowing the broad strokes of the narrative because of my first viewing, and that let me focus more on the craft and the performances rather than putting so much effort into just figuring out what was going on. (It also helps to know that every scene with Charlie and Michel/Salim isn’t a flashback to something that actually happened, but rather a visualization of her and Joseph/Gadi constructing the fictional backstory that she needs to infiltrate the Palestinian organization). In the end, it’s a miniseries that asks a lot of the viewer, and that means it’s not for everybody. I’m convinced its complexity led to it being virtually shut out of all major awards. Florence Pugh definitely deserved some love, as did Park. Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Shannon maybe could have gotten some nominations, although Shannon chewed on the scenery a bit. But Park undoubtedly deserved more recognition. Every frame is a painting. Every scene is exquisitely shot.
Agreed. It felt like Susanne Bier’s audition tape for making a Bond film, but I didn’t mind. Because it was a damn good audition tape.
But did he really die? Or has he just retired to a quaint Welsh village?
You are number two!
We sent him to a farm out in the country where he’s got plenty of room to novelize and spy.
In all sincerity, R.I.P. John Le Carre. I can’t resist posting this though.
And somehow, even Malcolm Tucker fits in le Carre’s universe. You can just imagine him taking Lacon’s place as Circus Proctor — a foul-mouthed, short-tempered Scotsman.
“The All-Swearing Eye” almost sounds like a Le Carre novel.
Starring Peter Capaldi as Sir Malcolm Tucker!
Somewhere in the Cotswalds, I think — Steeple Aston should do. There I will set up as a mild eccentric, discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two lovable habits such as muttering to myself as I bumble along pavement. I will be an oak of my generation….
That would be telling.
I hate to admit that I’ve never read his books (I should work on that) but the adaptations never let me down. The 70s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy UK television series starring Alex Guinness (and Patrick Stewart!) is really good.
“Alex”?
Goddamn autocorrect. I know.
Genuine Xlass.
Alex is to Alec what Ben is to Obi-wan.
I urge you to change that. They’re .. uh, how do I put this? Really really good.
They’re extremely good, and the five with Smiley as the main character (CALL FOR THE DEAD, A MURDER OF QUALITY, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, THE HONORABLE SCHOOLBOY, and SMILEY’S PEOPLE) are masterworks.
If the Alec Guinness miniseries is your cup of tea, then you will enjoy le Carre’s novels and you should read them. Tinker Tailor and/or The Spy Who Came in from the Cold are good starts. The Little Drummer Girl from the 80s is great,* and The Constant Gardener is his masterwork of the aughts. The Night Manager is one of my favorites, but it is as close as le Carre gets to writing a Bond novel. That said, it is still imbued with more humanity than most spy novels. His most recent book Agent Running in the Field, is a minor work unlikely to be long-remembered, but the book that came before that A Legacy of Spies, is very good and will likely grow in critic’s estimation as time passes. The thing about le Carre is that, despite the way his writing was always critical of the state, he never succumbed to cynicism. He believed in people while also having a deep understanding of human nature and the corrupting influence of power. *Some people would say that A Perfect Spy is his best of the 80s (and maybe overall), perhaps because it is because it is his most personal. But it is more of a critical favorite than a crowd favorite, I think. I found it hard to get into despite my deep attachment to le Carre.
I liked Legacy of Spies because it let us say goodbye to Smiley and Guillam. Although as noted by some reviewers, it was possible but somewhat implausible that Smiley would be still alive in 2017, given that he was either born in 1906 or 1915 (Le Carre gave both dates in different books).
I had the same thoughts about Smiley’s longevity as I started A Legacy of Spies, then I gave over to the sheer pleasure of reading le Carre at his best.
Counterpoint – The Little Drummer Girl is soooo long. I think Le Carre sometimes finds the art in tedium (Tinker Tailor is brilliant in this regard), but TLDG tips over the edge in my opinion, and I don’t think the characters are well drawn enough to make up for it.I haven’t read enough Le Carre, but I’ll throw a shoutout to A Small Town In Germany.
I can see that point. There are definitely points in The Little Drummer Girl where it drags, and there are also places where the heroine Charlie could be better conceptualized as a character. (And I actually think that the miniseries from 2018 resolves many of those issues—it’s a good adaptation that balances faithfulness to the text with the need to change things to suit the visual medium). But it is definitely not brief. That’s a challenge in a lot of le Carre’s later work. The Night Manager is a weighty tome. So is The Constant Gardener. But both of those keep up the tension and the momentum a little better than Little Drummer Girl. (Both TNM and Constant Gardener also feature much more fully realized protagonists. I really do think, for all his insight into human nature, le Carre struggled with crafting complex women. Charlie is about as close as he gets, and she’s drawn pretty thin). I like the thematic composition of The Little Drummer Girl because it shows a writer reaching beyond the schematic of the Cold War, which few spy writers dared to do in the late 70s/80s. It constructs a critique of Britain’s imperial ambitions toward realignment in the face of a crumbling empire that I think is really smart. A Small Town in Germany is one of the few le Carre novels I’ve not read, oddly enough. I own it, but it’s just been sitting on my shelves for years. Maybe I’ll get around to it in the new year.
Yeah, I think the shifting politics you mention are captured well in Drummer Girl. I’m excited to see that miniseries as a big Florence Pugh fan (she’s since turned a badly written character, Amy March, into a great one, so I’m confident she could flesh out the interesting but underwritten character that is Charlie) but am waiting until I can do so without paying for Amazon Prime.
I think you can get a free week trial of Sundance Now, which has the streaming rights to TLDG miniseries, through the channel’s own app without needing Amazon prime. In the fall you could get 30 days free if you used the code UPRIGHT or SUNDANCENOW30, either of which might still be working. It’s only six episodes so you could get through it in the space of your weeklong free trial if you set about to it. Sadly, I don’t think it’s coming anywhere else in the near future. There was a DVD release in the UK, but not in the US. But it’s worth seeing if you can, especially if you like Park Chan-wook’s style.
One of my favorite authors. He was a master of laying bare the reality that high stakes don’t imply a lack of of minutia and mundacity. Here was a guy who rightly called out self interest in all its forms and believed in the purpose of making the world a better place for everyone despite intricate familiarity with the dance countries do secretly in plain sight.
mundacity (noun): deceitfulness with respect to prosaic or quotidian matters.Etymology: portmanteau of mundanity and mendacity. First attested 2020 in online comments thread.
I’m a trailblazer.
Please please please do not confuse le Carré with Tom Clancy. The difference is between a portrait artist and a cartoonist.
I thought Red October was really good.
It was. And it was even published by the Naval Institute Press, which normally only publishes academic nonfiction about naval affairs. The rest of his work after that was not quite up to that standard.
Red Storm Rising was very good, as was The Sum of All Fears.
I thought Red October was really good.It was not.
I enjoyed it as a teenager, and looked forward to re-read it now. And damn. No, it is not very good.
Hell, it’s the difference between Michelangelo and the “portrait” my two-year-old nephew drew of me using fingerpaints. Le Carre writes beautiful, breathtaking sentences that ache with humanity.
Nobody who needs this news is equipped with the basic tools that would be needed to change their opinion.
Uh, weird, insulting shade to throw against cartoonists there, bud.
I appreciate that comment, but early Clancy was decent. Red Storm Rising is still a mini-series I’d like to see. OTOH, I’m very much an apologist for The Russia House, both book (which I found difficult at times) and the film (same as the book). I haven’t read the novel since probably 1995. The movie is saved by the performances of the secondary performers, because both Connery and Pfeiffer constantly seemed ill at ease with each other. “Why Langley, Bob?” is one of my favorite lines of all time, especially how Connery delivers it.
The kind of writer whose interviews I always very much enjoyed reading.
One quite amusing bit is that the film adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold cast Bernard Lee, a few years into his time playing M in the James Bond films, as a civilian who gets beaten up by the hero.
More like George Frowny amirite
This article he wrote for the New Yorker is far and away my favorite piece of short form writing that I’ve read. I must have read it at least ten times since it was published and it never fails to enchant me. It’s not just the story or the subtext, it’s also just plainly beautiful and economical writing of a kind so few people are capable of or appreciated for.http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/09/29/the-madness-of-spies
I just read this thanks to your link – a great read, thanks!
His family is preemptively apologizing for any anti-Semitic statements or behavior that may soon come to light.
Man, I appreciate the jest, but this is a dude who just went OFF in his later years on how the world is organized by company, country, and geography, and is the worse off for all of it. This is the one person I’m confident that if you wanna make a joke like that, maybe he was bad with women would be the way to go? Am I missing some big clues here or are you just being a cynic? Or is there a beef about that? Because his books were all about dispelling the notion that anybody anywhere was right.
AND he was bad with women!
This is that one guy who someone told him he was funny once and he’s used it as a substitute for a personality ever since
Pleez . . . I’m BEGGING you . . . stop replying to my replies!
The only blemish that I know of on Le Carre’s record is that he made some odd remarks about Salman Rushdie when he was in hiding for writing The Satanic Verses. If I remember right, Le Carre said something about how he’s not defending the people who want Rushdie dead, just that Rushdie should have known better than to write a book about Muslim terrorists because it would offend so many people. Then Christopher Hitchens jumped in and gave Le Carre a savage beatdown. Le Carre later admitted he was wrong, albeit very begrudgingly.
John le Carre was very much the anti-Ian Fleming. Fleming worked in military intelligence but he wasn’t a spy, at least not a professional one. His Bond is a blunt instrument. His sole purpose is to reliably pull the trigger when a trigger needs to be pulled. His use and understanding of actual spycraft is limited. He’s nearly as foolhardy as Sterling Archer and in the real world wouldn’t survive too long after uttering his signature introduction. The Bond books are fun light reading but they really don’t give the reader anything approaching a realistic view of what an actual spy does.le Carre was a real-life, professional working spy and would have continued to be one had Philby not outed him. His books gave us insight into how the espionage world really operates, even after they were surely vetted and sanitized by British Intelligence. His characters were plausible human beings, not cartoon characters like Fleming’s.In short, Fleming produced entertaining pulp fiction, while le Carre produced literature.RIP
“The name’s Bond, James Bond.”“Really? I thought you were Michael Langston, a travelling stationery salesman.”“Oh, yeah. That’s what I meant to say. Mike Langford.”
“Pleased to meet you, ‘Mr. Langford.’”
“OH, I get it! You’re the famous ornithologist!”
My best time in a classroom was when I got to teach a whole semester on spy narratives. We had so much fun. While there is some literary value to the Bond novels, they cannot at all compare to le Carre’s work.* My students loved reading Bond and struggled with le Carre at first. But once they really got into the le Carre, oh my god, we had the best conversations. FWIW, my students also immediately drew parallels between Bond and Sterling Archer. Most knew Archer was a Bond parody, but few realized just how often Bond behaves in a truly Archer-esque way. Le Carre’s humanity and his ability to craft believable people within the framework of espionage was unmatched. He writes dialogue better than anyone. In fact, my only real knocks on him are that his female characters can sometimes be a little flat and he’s (by his own admission) terrible at naming characters. Sometimes his names are a little on the nose, like an antagonist whose name is Darker, for example. But he was unquestionably a giant, and one of my favorite writers. His voice will be missed in the literary landscape of England. *The best literary analysis of Fleming’s Bond novels comes from Michael Denning’s Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller. It’s undoubtedly an academic book, but Denning’s work basically established the literary value of the genre, so fans of spy thrillers may like it.
That sounds like a really fun class! One thing we have to give Fleming credit for is that he knew his audience and what they wanted. I don’t think he took Bond’s portrayal as an actual spy all that seriously—it seems to have been more of a fun project that turned into a job. I think le Carre was much more concerned with creating an accurate picture of what a spy’s life is like, especially in the era he operated in. Fleming’s brief intelligence career was during WWII, a time when the lines were pretty clearly drawn. In le Carre’s time during the Cold War there seems to have been much more intrigue and intelligence work required far more nuance.Another of my favorites in the genre is Len Deighton. Like le Carre, he has a way of getting you to care about his characters. He’s not afraid to let you see their flaws and to reveal how they’re often just pawns in a larger game.
James Bond was part of the British Men’s Adventure genre — he was Bulldog Drummond for the Cold War era, a sadistic and misogynistic “hero” that his superiors pointed in the right direction and said “Get ‘im, James!”
Bond…James Bond.I suspect Fleming thought, if he was lucky, that his stories featuring 007 would sell enough to let him live comfortably in Jamaica, where the cost of living was low, especially for WWII Intelligence Officers turned pulp writers. He never thought he’d be a more popular writer than his brother Peter, who wrote bestselling travelogues and humor.
Good comparison to Bulldog Drummond! Yes, they definitely came out of the same mold. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out Fleming was a fan of McNeile’s books.
Agreed. Fleming understood the escapist allure of Bond, and the consumerism, womanizing, and globetrotting are part and parcel of that escapism. Both imagine a Britain that is secure—economically and imperially—in ways that allow Britons carte blanche for whatever they want. It papers over the anxieties of postcolonial Britain in ways that the public really clung to after WWII. Le Carre rejects that escapism in favor of realism.
Yes, thundercatsarego.
And you’re absolutely right about the men’s adventure genre (and it’s various youth-oriented subsets) and its influence on spy fiction. I once was on a panel with a scholar who gave an absolutely brilliant presentation that connected Boys’ Own and Tintin to the men’s adventure genre and—later—spy fiction. It was awesome.
That panel does sound great, thundercatsarego!
It’s not hard to imagine when you see Seventies Men’s adventure characters like Mack Bolan slipping from soldier engaged in a one-man, highly illegal War Against the Mafia into heading up a Black Ops anti-terrorist unit to heading up an even Blacker Ops unit answerable only to the President —I don’t know about you, but the idea of Donald Trump having Mack Bolan to send out against anyone who annoys him? Scares the piss out of me!
Thanks for reminding me of Deighton. SS-GB was a great novel.
It was a great piece of alternate history. What really got me hooked was the Samson trilogies. I know there was a miniseries based on the Game, Set, Match trilogy, but I’m surprised no one has tried to develop a movie franchise based on them.
I might have a look at that Denning, but I have so much fondness for Kingsley Amis’ James Bond Dossier. As a person who doesn’t easily like stuff, I like people to like stuff (CinemaWins > CinemaSins) and Amis has truly a charming way of stressing Fleming’s flaws in a forgiving, redeeming way. It’s lucid and tender, and also funny, and makes for a very sweet analytical, backhanded praise of James Bond novels.
I really like Amis’ dossier, too! One of the reasons why I study spy fiction is because it lets me do exactly what Amis did with the dossier—step outside of the rigid scrictures of “literary” study and work with something fun. People like Amis made it possible for me to do that because they legitimized the study of popular/genre fiction, so I’m always grateful for that.
Bond’s not really a spy, he’s an operative. No one can really be called a spy when their opponents can easily tell where their loyalty lies. He’s an OSS/SOE/SMERSH man in a CIA/MI6/KGB world. A World War II man in a Cold War world. Just like Fleming himself.
I’d say you pretty much nailed it. Here’s your star!
This seems like a good place to mention that the movie of The Tailor of Panama is a delicious double delivery of anti-Bondism. Based on the leCarre book and lead by Brosnan hamming up what a complete pos Bond would be in the real world.
Yes, I always thought that was great casting.
…in 1964 a KGB double agent named Kim Philby…Kim Philby wasn’t just a double agent – he was the double agent. His defection in 1963, and other actions by the Cambridge Five, did a great deal of damage to MI6.
Spies don’t usually make the face of a stamp. Philby did in the Soviet Union.
Wait he was on a stamp? Wow that speaks volumn.
None of the Manhattan Project spies have a stamp. Damn.
People often treat Philby as if he was the worst of the Cambridge Five because he was in MI6, but Donald MacLean likely gave the Soviets much more information because of what he had access to at the Foreign Service. Philby didn’t stand alone.
‘James Bond—who le Carre’s himself once referred to as a “neo-fascist gangster.”’I love a good James Bond film as much as the next guy, but yeah, le Carre hits that one right on the head.
I mean knowing Fleming… he wouldn’t be too offended at the suggestion.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Old Boy….”
For a legend like Le Carre, it’s fitting that his final novel was an extended epilogue to his George Smiley masterpieces. As far as fitting final works go, that’s up there with How he’s final album (not necessarily the same quality as Blackstar, but in terms of fitting final works).
I really wish that A Legacy of Spies had been his last novel. It is beautiful and elegiac. Le Carre published a novel last year, though, Agent Running in the Field. It is one of his weaker novels (my least favorite of his novels), and it won’t make any of the posthumous “best of” le Carre lists. Legacy of Spies is a far more fitting bookend to his writing career.
Heard this this afternoon, and it still kind of shocks me.The man was a legend among spy novelists, and we’re better for having his work to read.
His work was magnificent, because he focused on the humanity – and often futility – of the struggles his protagonists endured, something so few of his successors have been able to recreate. Sometimes, you just have to have been there. Rest In Peace, sir, with many thanks.
Best “spy” movie ever. Fight me.
I’m reminded of a minor feud between Paul Theroux, who is perhaps one of my favorite authors, and le Carre, that was started by Theroux in the mid-late 90’s. I think PT called le Carre a hack for just drumming out spy novels and not doing anything different, and le Carre basically shrugged it all off and ignored it. R.I.P.