Book: Le Carré’s The Looking Glass War
Feb. 13th, 2012 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseUp until now I’d never actually read any of John Le Carré’s novels. I’d heard about them, watched the 1979 TV adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and seen parts, in Russian, of the 2011 film adaptation of the same. I’d heard the novels touted as more realistic than the Ian Fleming Blond novels, and since I’m actually quite partial to what I’ve read of the Bond material, I’d let the pursuit of Le Carré’s writing slide. I’d also almost always been busy every time the idea of picking up one of his books occurred to me, and watching Russian language anything tends to scramble my hearing and language processing most of the time.
All that said, I’m a great fan of second hand books and the summary of The Looking Glass War that I stumbled across sounded like something that I’d find interesting to read. The other novel I’m going to chase down a copy of, having read the above, is The Spy who Came in from the Cold which also reminds me that I’ve been meaning to read the follow up to Less Than Zero for quite some time now. I like bleak outlooks and hopeless causes after all, and The Looking Glass War is really quite articulately hopeless.
My overall reaction is very ‘yes, well’ to the entire theme. In many ways it’s much like my response to L'Étranger. The answer is obvious but it’s the getting there that detaches the reader from the characters. In that sense it was like a dry, academic exercise in working through the process. In the end, all the characters go through the motions and yet there’s no real sense of passion or devotion, at least not any more. It’s wonderful really, highlighting so much more than the story context in that respect.
There’s the old maxim that those who want power are the ones who really ought not to be given it because they’re too in love with the idea of it. And this addresses a similar theme. When you want something to give you purpose then everything can go very easily, irrationally, wrong, very quickly, in the pursuit of it. All the characters simply represent different stages on that journey, and quite possibly, only one of them gets to exit the stage with his illusions intact.
Of all the characters in fact, the one I had most interest in following wasn’t the youngest and most uninitiated of the set, and usually such characters serve as a placeholder for the reader e.g. Watson asks all the questions that the reader needs to hear the answers to so that they can catch up to the solution.
The idea that this is the end result of all that patriotism and devotion and time is fascinating. That this is the finished product: not the acclaimed hero but the withdrawn and bitter cynic. This is the character that I was interested in the most because it strikes me as the more realistic outcome and because, catching up on only the closing chapters of Haldane’s story, it speaks volumes of what might have gone before. Similarly, though only appearing briefly, Control was just as interesting for similar reasons.
There’s a whole unwritten history in that sort of exchange and one that strikes me as the sensible outcome of all that’s transpired before. It probably also helps that I’m reading this at the current point in my life. Much like American Psycho, I imagine that the interpretation that’s conveyed might well vary with the reader’s circumstances.
Overall, I rather like The Looking Glass War because it’s bleak and unromantic, but gloriously, realistically, dryly so. There’s no effort to paint a picture that’s in any way more dramatic, because the natural conclusion of all endeavours leads down towards the inevitable anyway, and that inevitability is the ringing death knell of all that’s gone before.
All that said, I’m a great fan of second hand books and the summary of The Looking Glass War that I stumbled across sounded like something that I’d find interesting to read. The other novel I’m going to chase down a copy of, having read the above, is The Spy who Came in from the Cold which also reminds me that I’ve been meaning to read the follow up to Less Than Zero for quite some time now. I like bleak outlooks and hopeless causes after all, and The Looking Glass War is really quite articulately hopeless.
My overall reaction is very ‘yes, well’ to the entire theme. In many ways it’s much like my response to L'Étranger. The answer is obvious but it’s the getting there that detaches the reader from the characters. In that sense it was like a dry, academic exercise in working through the process. In the end, all the characters go through the motions and yet there’s no real sense of passion or devotion, at least not any more. It’s wonderful really, highlighting so much more than the story context in that respect.
- “Smiley said, ‘Yes. You’re a very good technician, Adrian. There’s no pain in you any more. You’ve made technique a way of life... like a whore... technique replacing love.’”
- Le Carré, J.,1965, p. 229-230. The Looking Glass War. London: Pan Books Ltd.
There’s the old maxim that those who want power are the ones who really ought not to be given it because they’re too in love with the idea of it. And this addresses a similar theme. When you want something to give you purpose then everything can go very easily, irrationally, wrong, very quickly, in the pursuit of it. All the characters simply represent different stages on that journey, and quite possibly, only one of them gets to exit the stage with his illusions intact.
- “Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.”
- p.196
Of all the characters in fact, the one I had most interest in following wasn’t the youngest and most uninitiated of the set, and usually such characters serve as a placeholder for the reader e.g. Watson asks all the questions that the reader needs to hear the answers to so that they can catch up to the solution.
- “Haldane was a lean man with long, restless fingers; a man locked in himself, slow in his movements, agile in his features, balding, spare, querulous and dry; a man seemingly contemptuous of everything, keeping his own hours and his own counsel; addicted to crossword puzzles and nineteenth-century water colours.”
- p. 44
The idea that this is the end result of all that patriotism and devotion and time is fascinating. That this is the finished product: not the acclaimed hero but the withdrawn and bitter cynic. This is the character that I was interested in the most because it strikes me as the more realistic outcome and because, catching up on only the closing chapters of Haldane’s story, it speaks volumes of what might have gone before. Similarly, though only appearing briefly, Control was just as interesting for similar reasons.
- “’What are you suggesting? How very distasteful. Who ever would do a thing like that?’
Smiley was putting on his coat.
‘Goodnight, George,’ Control said; and fiercely, as if he were tired of sensibility: ‘Run along. And preserve the differences between us: your country needs you. It’s not my fault they’ve taken so long to die.’”
- p. 218
There’s a whole unwritten history in that sort of exchange and one that strikes me as the sensible outcome of all that’s transpired before. It probably also helps that I’m reading this at the current point in my life. Much like American Psycho, I imagine that the interpretation that’s conveyed might well vary with the reader’s circumstances.
Overall, I rather like The Looking Glass War because it’s bleak and unromantic, but gloriously, realistically, dryly so. There’s no effort to paint a picture that’s in any way more dramatic, because the natural conclusion of all endeavours leads down towards the inevitable anyway, and that inevitability is the ringing death knell of all that’s gone before.
