Susan Gerstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "john-le-carre"
A Writer's Adjustment to a Changing World
During the past 25 years, novelists whose subject matter had been the bi-polar world of the Cold War had had the rug pulled out from under them, so to speak. The planet had shifted: the Soviet era with its closed society, the two superpowers staring at each other across a seemingly impassable chasm, the fear of mutual nuclear annihilation had all disappeared with disconcerting speed and the relatively clear worldview of the Good (us) fighting the Bad (them) had been replaced by the more nuanced, in many ways more difficult reality of corruption, eruptions of more localized wars and revolutions, and the rise of terror as a method of persuasion.
All this comes to mind having just read Martin Cruz Smith’s “Tatiana”. This is the latest of his Arkady Renko novels that began with “Gorky Park” in 1981 depicting the world weary, decent Moscow detective trying to work and hold on to dignity inside a Soviet system he sees and judges with all too clear an eye. The Renko books that followed over the years chart the path of a rapidly changing Russia and its relations to the West, beginning with the trauma – and hope – of the early post-Soviet years right up to the present: the criminal/oligarchy ascendant, the politics a sea of corruption and investigations of crimes (Renko’s work) thwarted at every step. Arkady Renko observes all, goes about his business as quietly and efficiently as possible, and we gain insight that only a novelist’s eye can give: in this instance, a series of “police procedurals” that achieve a much higher literary worth than one ordinarily expects of this genre.
That brings to mind John Le Carre, whose Cold War era spy novels, beginning with “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” that erupted onto the literary scene as a spy novel unlike any before, had changed the very genre into a thoughtful, nuanced and heartfelt depiction of the cloak-and-dagger world of East-West rivalry. George Smiley, the spymaster who made a brief appearance in “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” reappeared as the main character of some of the most heartrending series of novels that far transcend what we think of as “spy story” and became an iconic character whose decency and competence we came to rely on. “The Little Drummer Girl” and “A Perfect Spy” were Smiley-less page-turners, full of memorable characters, coming to satisfying conclusions. While Le Carre saw the conflict of opposing sides with a clear and fair eye and the shades were never black and white but many tones of grey, his heart seemed to be invested in the small victories the Good Guys achieved. There was sadness at the compromises that were necessary to accomplish those victories, but not bitterness.
And then the fundamental East-West conflict changed, and so did Le Carre’s writing. The books of the last twenty years bear no resemblance to those of the Cold War period. “The Constant Gardener”, “Absolute Friends”, “Our Kind of Traitor” and others cast around the world for subject matters that are surely not lacking: there are crimes committed by the great and the small all the time and a cloak-and-dagger world continues to exist to both commit and root out those crimes. Except that Le Carre’s heart is no longer in it: ideology and cool thinking had taken over. The subjects are picked following a political agenda. Le Carre used to have a nuanced view of the world, and as conveyed, through the lives and actions of his complicated characters, it used to be a rueful, wise one. With the shift in the planet's political alignment, Le Carre seemed to have become bitter. The sad and resigned but ultimately victorious Smiley and his ilk had now disappeared and had been replaced by uprooted characters functioning in a nihilistic world. Now it is blatant and angry, and because there is anger on the surface, it prevents the spy-story to come to a satisfying end. All is bitter ambiguity.
Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko retained his skeptical, decent world-view throughout the years, and therefore he remains as satisfying a character now as he was thirty years ago. We see the changes that had taken place during the past decades through his eyes, as clear now as they had ever been. May we see with him and enjoy his small victories in the future.
All this comes to mind having just read Martin Cruz Smith’s “Tatiana”. This is the latest of his Arkady Renko novels that began with “Gorky Park” in 1981 depicting the world weary, decent Moscow detective trying to work and hold on to dignity inside a Soviet system he sees and judges with all too clear an eye. The Renko books that followed over the years chart the path of a rapidly changing Russia and its relations to the West, beginning with the trauma – and hope – of the early post-Soviet years right up to the present: the criminal/oligarchy ascendant, the politics a sea of corruption and investigations of crimes (Renko’s work) thwarted at every step. Arkady Renko observes all, goes about his business as quietly and efficiently as possible, and we gain insight that only a novelist’s eye can give: in this instance, a series of “police procedurals” that achieve a much higher literary worth than one ordinarily expects of this genre.
That brings to mind John Le Carre, whose Cold War era spy novels, beginning with “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” that erupted onto the literary scene as a spy novel unlike any before, had changed the very genre into a thoughtful, nuanced and heartfelt depiction of the cloak-and-dagger world of East-West rivalry. George Smiley, the spymaster who made a brief appearance in “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” reappeared as the main character of some of the most heartrending series of novels that far transcend what we think of as “spy story” and became an iconic character whose decency and competence we came to rely on. “The Little Drummer Girl” and “A Perfect Spy” were Smiley-less page-turners, full of memorable characters, coming to satisfying conclusions. While Le Carre saw the conflict of opposing sides with a clear and fair eye and the shades were never black and white but many tones of grey, his heart seemed to be invested in the small victories the Good Guys achieved. There was sadness at the compromises that were necessary to accomplish those victories, but not bitterness.
And then the fundamental East-West conflict changed, and so did Le Carre’s writing. The books of the last twenty years bear no resemblance to those of the Cold War period. “The Constant Gardener”, “Absolute Friends”, “Our Kind of Traitor” and others cast around the world for subject matters that are surely not lacking: there are crimes committed by the great and the small all the time and a cloak-and-dagger world continues to exist to both commit and root out those crimes. Except that Le Carre’s heart is no longer in it: ideology and cool thinking had taken over. The subjects are picked following a political agenda. Le Carre used to have a nuanced view of the world, and as conveyed, through the lives and actions of his complicated characters, it used to be a rueful, wise one. With the shift in the planet's political alignment, Le Carre seemed to have become bitter. The sad and resigned but ultimately victorious Smiley and his ilk had now disappeared and had been replaced by uprooted characters functioning in a nihilistic world. Now it is blatant and angry, and because there is anger on the surface, it prevents the spy-story to come to a satisfying end. All is bitter ambiguity.
Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko retained his skeptical, decent world-view throughout the years, and therefore he remains as satisfying a character now as he was thirty years ago. We see the changes that had taken place during the past decades through his eyes, as clear now as they had ever been. May we see with him and enjoy his small victories in the future.
"Vanity Fair" in the age of Trump
An entire year had gone by without my writing a single post, and even now I surprise myself for having a slight urge to put down some thoughts of books, of the circumstances under which they were read.
It had been a dreadful year in public life. As I indicated at the end of 2016, the political earthquake caused by the surreal election of an ignorant, vulgar, egotistic and mendacious businessman as president of the United States struck most right thinking people speechless with shock. At first one thought it was a bad dream, soon to be over; but it wasn’t. The Evil Clown and the equally horrible cast of characters surrounding him rule for the moment and change almost everything they touch for the worse. The country itself will bear the painful marks of this period – so far an entire year – for a long time to come, even if (and it is a big “if”) this shameful group gets thrown out. There is hope for that: disgust runs high, and there will be major elections at the end of 2018; perhaps a landslide win for the other side will begin to move the pendulum back in a large, sweeping arc. Perhaps. Until then, many of us wake up in the morning finding, day after day, a succubus sitting on our chest, reminding us that yes, fascism is indeed possible in the United States of America.
In the midst of this, one goes on reading. I will try to give a brief summary of the books I enjoyed, the ones that soothed me by their excellence, and the ones that emphatically did not.
To the latter group, then; all here were reviewed to great acclaim.
“The Sport of Kings” by C.E. Morgan
A huge, unwieldy saga of horseracing, southern racial relations, southern family relations that I found thoroughly unconvincing.
“Six Four” by Hideo Yokoyama
A Japanese police procedural with forays into press- and public relations, decades old family secrets, and local politics. I found it tedious beyond words, deliberately slow-moving that some reviewers found endearing but I did not. The over-subtle relationships, the sleep-inducing pace barely enabled me to finish it. In my book, not a winner.
“The Party” by Elizabeth Day
Recounted by the second-banana, just-tolerated, self-designated “best friend” of an upper-class boy/turned into ruthless businessman, the unreliable narrator, (a’la “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) attempts to maneuver himself into a power position. Once more, the melodrama overwhelms the narrative, the motivations do not ring true, and the denouement is unsatisfying.
“Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
This was one of my biggest disappointments, not because it’s a bad book – it isn’t, it’s professionally written and tells a somewhat interesting, over-complicated story of generational conflicts, class conflicts, outcasts among the gentry – but because her previous novel, her first one, “Lies I Never Told You”, (about which I had a whole post on September 5, 2014) was such a perfect small gem that my expectations for her next one were sky high. They were not fulfilled. As so often happens, a thoroughly felt tale that needed to be told and was well reviewed and somewhat successful, is followed by a much researched, professionally written work of no major consequence.
“Manhattan Beach” by Jennifer Egan
This is my final negative comment, and by far the most unexpected. Jennifer Egan is a well known writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for her previous novel, “A Visit from the Goon Squad”; I have not read that or the preceding ones. “Manhattan Beach”, again, received entirely unanimous, rave reviews, all of which described it as a departure for her into “traditional” narrative, a tale taking place in the 1930s and 1940s, with gang life and the war years as its subject matter. Well, all that is true. It is also true that it is an unwieldy tale, a lot of which takes place in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where the main character, a child-grown-into-a-young-woman works as a diver off a destroyer. How this happens is described in endless tedious, painfully researched pages. Meanwhile, characters pop up, disappear, reappear; suddenly we are in a long section of a south Pacific boat trip; the “heroine” of the piece conducts one of the most incomprehensible love affairs I ever encountered; the gangsters take the kind of reckless chances a five year old would avoid; I could go on. And on. Let’s just say I re-read the reviews after finishing the novel, and I had to dig really deep to find anyone to agree with me; though I did, after all.
****
So, now to happier experiences.
“I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong
A fascinating science book about the enormous number of creatures contained in all our bodies. Most are beneficial to the point of enabling the said body to function at all; some are harmful and need to be kept in check. It introduced me to an entirely new way of thinking about our place on the planet, in the Universe. It also reminded me of the great Dr. Seuss tale “Horton Hears a Who”: the re-thinking of the very large vis-à-vis the very small.
“A Legacy of Spies” by John Le Carre
He is back! After decades – ever since the Communists demise in 1989 – of writing painfully pale copies of his earlier, brilliant novels, John Le Carre, now in his latter 80s, came up with one that would happily hold its own against his Smiley books – in fact it is, in a manner of speaking, a Smiley book. He goes back to his first great success, “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold”, and in essence writes its prequel. We get to learn what went on behind the scenes to cause the death of Leamas. Smiley is remembered as the conductor of the operation, though he does not appear until the very end – and a welcome appearance of an old friend it is. The narrative moves between the past and the present day M16 operatives, whose motives of pursuing this matter are, as usual, murky. It all comes to a near-perfect ending and gives much pleasure. Welcome back, John Le Carre.
“Dunbar” by Edward St. Auybin
Every word Edward St. Auybin writes is worth reading, he is such a master of the language. But who would have thought after reading the harrowing “Melrose” novels that the man has a sense of humor, and, far from repeatedly mining his evidently most interesting and painful young years and the difficulties of coping with growing up, he has a much larger scope and is capable of parody, and of empathy. “Dunbar” is a takeoff on “King Lear”. It is such a thoroughly satisfying version that it is hard to put down: the vaguely Murdoch-like main character and his thoroughly believable entourage are hilarious and heartbreaking in turn. A tour de force definitely worth reading.
By Penelope Lively
“How It All Begun”
“Moon Tiger”
“Passing On”
“The Photograph”
“The Road to Litchfield”
“Family Album”
“Judgement Day”
“According to Mark”
These eight novels by the British author Penelope Lively were pure delight, a welcome period of truly enjoyable reading. I had not been aware of her until I read the reviews of her most recent one, “How It All Begun” that described this writer in her eighties who had been quietly producing novel after novel about the daily lives and travails of mainly, though not exclusively, middle-class Brits coping with a changing world. It somehow sounded like a bit of Jane Austen, a bit of Barbara Pym; I plunged. And loved it so much that I went ahead with all eight books, one after another, and loved, loved every bit of it. The stories are as different from each other as one human being is from the next, that is to say, a lot; and yet they all sound the same note: life is difficult but sometimes there is hope; the dreadful is balanced by unexpected redemption, and a sense of irony goes a long way to saving the day. Highly recommended, every one.
*****
And finally I come to the two books that sent me back to the blogposts I had pretty much abandoned: Stefan Zweig’s “The World of Yesterday” and Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair”. On the face of it the two have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, and the juxtaposition certainly wasn’t planned. In fact, the convergence was almost eerie, and played into my recurring themes of the merits of translation and – re-reading.
During the closing months of this year, I had “discovered” “The World of Yesterday”, a book Zweig had written in the early 1940s in Brazil where he lived in exile, a refugee from a Europe overran by the Nazis – and in fact finished only weeks before he and his wife committed suicide. The book had been in and out of print, indifferently translated; I had been aware of it, but being a great fan of Zweig’s novels, somehow his memoirs of a pre-war Europe and the headlong descent into chaos and war that followed did not make me pursue it. Now that I am so conscious of the ease with which a secure-seeming, ever-progressive world can tumble into potential – or real – chaos, I decided to give it a try. That was a good decision. The segments describing the Vienna of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the period Before the War, are riveting for the usual reasons: we know what’s coming. The headlong stumbling of Europe into bloody, horrific and totally unnecessary war is viscerally depicted; and I will return to this shortly, for it has an uncanny resemblance to another, earlier war. – The post-war recovery, the brief period of hopefulness in the early thirties are described from the viewpoint of a successful, productive pan-European artist and intellectual whose world, for the second time in the short space of two decades stumbles into an abyss; this time, with the ascension of Mussolini and Hitler, it appears to Zweig, for good. He does not wait to see the outcome of the battle of good and evil; he kills himself believing the worst had won. The description of the democratically elected Fascists who destroy everything within their reach, with impunity, chilled me to the bones with its contemporary resonance.
I had read “Vanity Fair” in Hungarian when I was perhaps 13, 14 years old; and then again, in English, some thirty years ago. It became one on my mental list that “I will reread – someday”. Some day had arrived a few weeks ago, and I am delighted to be able to say that “Vanity Fair” had improved hugely over the decades! Much as I loved it before, I do so more now; the contemporaneity of it is astounding, the wry, ironic commentary on the characters is hilarious, except where genuinely touching; I found not one superfluous word in it. (Unlike some of the lately-read Dickens, where many were.)
And where the two books, “The World of Yesterday” and “ Vanity Fair” converge is the eerie segments mirroring each other in the description of a giddy, heedlessly gay mood that prevails at the declaration of war, in the one case in 1914, ushering in the First World War, in the other in 1815, the British Army preparing to confront a newly returned Napoleon at Waterloo. One could take large segments out of either book and practically insert it into the other: the expectation, the certainty of winning in a matter of the shortest period of time, almost bloodlessly of course; the visceral hatred of the enemy that only a short time before was just another neighboring country. The mute shock that comes with the discovery of the reality. One hundred years separate the events and yet it could be almost the same event. That we are now at two hundred years from one and one hundred from the other gives one occasion to think.
Looking forward to 2018; perhaps by the end of that year, I can report that the bad guys had been driven back. Fingers crossed.
It had been a dreadful year in public life. As I indicated at the end of 2016, the political earthquake caused by the surreal election of an ignorant, vulgar, egotistic and mendacious businessman as president of the United States struck most right thinking people speechless with shock. At first one thought it was a bad dream, soon to be over; but it wasn’t. The Evil Clown and the equally horrible cast of characters surrounding him rule for the moment and change almost everything they touch for the worse. The country itself will bear the painful marks of this period – so far an entire year – for a long time to come, even if (and it is a big “if”) this shameful group gets thrown out. There is hope for that: disgust runs high, and there will be major elections at the end of 2018; perhaps a landslide win for the other side will begin to move the pendulum back in a large, sweeping arc. Perhaps. Until then, many of us wake up in the morning finding, day after day, a succubus sitting on our chest, reminding us that yes, fascism is indeed possible in the United States of America.
In the midst of this, one goes on reading. I will try to give a brief summary of the books I enjoyed, the ones that soothed me by their excellence, and the ones that emphatically did not.
To the latter group, then; all here were reviewed to great acclaim.
“The Sport of Kings” by C.E. Morgan
A huge, unwieldy saga of horseracing, southern racial relations, southern family relations that I found thoroughly unconvincing.
“Six Four” by Hideo Yokoyama
A Japanese police procedural with forays into press- and public relations, decades old family secrets, and local politics. I found it tedious beyond words, deliberately slow-moving that some reviewers found endearing but I did not. The over-subtle relationships, the sleep-inducing pace barely enabled me to finish it. In my book, not a winner.
“The Party” by Elizabeth Day
Recounted by the second-banana, just-tolerated, self-designated “best friend” of an upper-class boy/turned into ruthless businessman, the unreliable narrator, (a’la “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) attempts to maneuver himself into a power position. Once more, the melodrama overwhelms the narrative, the motivations do not ring true, and the denouement is unsatisfying.
“Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
This was one of my biggest disappointments, not because it’s a bad book – it isn’t, it’s professionally written and tells a somewhat interesting, over-complicated story of generational conflicts, class conflicts, outcasts among the gentry – but because her previous novel, her first one, “Lies I Never Told You”, (about which I had a whole post on September 5, 2014) was such a perfect small gem that my expectations for her next one were sky high. They were not fulfilled. As so often happens, a thoroughly felt tale that needed to be told and was well reviewed and somewhat successful, is followed by a much researched, professionally written work of no major consequence.
“Manhattan Beach” by Jennifer Egan
This is my final negative comment, and by far the most unexpected. Jennifer Egan is a well known writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for her previous novel, “A Visit from the Goon Squad”; I have not read that or the preceding ones. “Manhattan Beach”, again, received entirely unanimous, rave reviews, all of which described it as a departure for her into “traditional” narrative, a tale taking place in the 1930s and 1940s, with gang life and the war years as its subject matter. Well, all that is true. It is also true that it is an unwieldy tale, a lot of which takes place in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where the main character, a child-grown-into-a-young-woman works as a diver off a destroyer. How this happens is described in endless tedious, painfully researched pages. Meanwhile, characters pop up, disappear, reappear; suddenly we are in a long section of a south Pacific boat trip; the “heroine” of the piece conducts one of the most incomprehensible love affairs I ever encountered; the gangsters take the kind of reckless chances a five year old would avoid; I could go on. And on. Let’s just say I re-read the reviews after finishing the novel, and I had to dig really deep to find anyone to agree with me; though I did, after all.
****
So, now to happier experiences.
“I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong
A fascinating science book about the enormous number of creatures contained in all our bodies. Most are beneficial to the point of enabling the said body to function at all; some are harmful and need to be kept in check. It introduced me to an entirely new way of thinking about our place on the planet, in the Universe. It also reminded me of the great Dr. Seuss tale “Horton Hears a Who”: the re-thinking of the very large vis-à-vis the very small.
“A Legacy of Spies” by John Le Carre
He is back! After decades – ever since the Communists demise in 1989 – of writing painfully pale copies of his earlier, brilliant novels, John Le Carre, now in his latter 80s, came up with one that would happily hold its own against his Smiley books – in fact it is, in a manner of speaking, a Smiley book. He goes back to his first great success, “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold”, and in essence writes its prequel. We get to learn what went on behind the scenes to cause the death of Leamas. Smiley is remembered as the conductor of the operation, though he does not appear until the very end – and a welcome appearance of an old friend it is. The narrative moves between the past and the present day M16 operatives, whose motives of pursuing this matter are, as usual, murky. It all comes to a near-perfect ending and gives much pleasure. Welcome back, John Le Carre.
“Dunbar” by Edward St. Auybin
Every word Edward St. Auybin writes is worth reading, he is such a master of the language. But who would have thought after reading the harrowing “Melrose” novels that the man has a sense of humor, and, far from repeatedly mining his evidently most interesting and painful young years and the difficulties of coping with growing up, he has a much larger scope and is capable of parody, and of empathy. “Dunbar” is a takeoff on “King Lear”. It is such a thoroughly satisfying version that it is hard to put down: the vaguely Murdoch-like main character and his thoroughly believable entourage are hilarious and heartbreaking in turn. A tour de force definitely worth reading.
By Penelope Lively
“How It All Begun”
“Moon Tiger”
“Passing On”
“The Photograph”
“The Road to Litchfield”
“Family Album”
“Judgement Day”
“According to Mark”
These eight novels by the British author Penelope Lively were pure delight, a welcome period of truly enjoyable reading. I had not been aware of her until I read the reviews of her most recent one, “How It All Begun” that described this writer in her eighties who had been quietly producing novel after novel about the daily lives and travails of mainly, though not exclusively, middle-class Brits coping with a changing world. It somehow sounded like a bit of Jane Austen, a bit of Barbara Pym; I plunged. And loved it so much that I went ahead with all eight books, one after another, and loved, loved every bit of it. The stories are as different from each other as one human being is from the next, that is to say, a lot; and yet they all sound the same note: life is difficult but sometimes there is hope; the dreadful is balanced by unexpected redemption, and a sense of irony goes a long way to saving the day. Highly recommended, every one.
*****
And finally I come to the two books that sent me back to the blogposts I had pretty much abandoned: Stefan Zweig’s “The World of Yesterday” and Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair”. On the face of it the two have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, and the juxtaposition certainly wasn’t planned. In fact, the convergence was almost eerie, and played into my recurring themes of the merits of translation and – re-reading.
During the closing months of this year, I had “discovered” “The World of Yesterday”, a book Zweig had written in the early 1940s in Brazil where he lived in exile, a refugee from a Europe overran by the Nazis – and in fact finished only weeks before he and his wife committed suicide. The book had been in and out of print, indifferently translated; I had been aware of it, but being a great fan of Zweig’s novels, somehow his memoirs of a pre-war Europe and the headlong descent into chaos and war that followed did not make me pursue it. Now that I am so conscious of the ease with which a secure-seeming, ever-progressive world can tumble into potential – or real – chaos, I decided to give it a try. That was a good decision. The segments describing the Vienna of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the period Before the War, are riveting for the usual reasons: we know what’s coming. The headlong stumbling of Europe into bloody, horrific and totally unnecessary war is viscerally depicted; and I will return to this shortly, for it has an uncanny resemblance to another, earlier war. – The post-war recovery, the brief period of hopefulness in the early thirties are described from the viewpoint of a successful, productive pan-European artist and intellectual whose world, for the second time in the short space of two decades stumbles into an abyss; this time, with the ascension of Mussolini and Hitler, it appears to Zweig, for good. He does not wait to see the outcome of the battle of good and evil; he kills himself believing the worst had won. The description of the democratically elected Fascists who destroy everything within their reach, with impunity, chilled me to the bones with its contemporary resonance.
I had read “Vanity Fair” in Hungarian when I was perhaps 13, 14 years old; and then again, in English, some thirty years ago. It became one on my mental list that “I will reread – someday”. Some day had arrived a few weeks ago, and I am delighted to be able to say that “Vanity Fair” had improved hugely over the decades! Much as I loved it before, I do so more now; the contemporaneity of it is astounding, the wry, ironic commentary on the characters is hilarious, except where genuinely touching; I found not one superfluous word in it. (Unlike some of the lately-read Dickens, where many were.)
And where the two books, “The World of Yesterday” and “ Vanity Fair” converge is the eerie segments mirroring each other in the description of a giddy, heedlessly gay mood that prevails at the declaration of war, in the one case in 1914, ushering in the First World War, in the other in 1815, the British Army preparing to confront a newly returned Napoleon at Waterloo. One could take large segments out of either book and practically insert it into the other: the expectation, the certainty of winning in a matter of the shortest period of time, almost bloodlessly of course; the visceral hatred of the enemy that only a short time before was just another neighboring country. The mute shock that comes with the discovery of the reality. One hundred years separate the events and yet it could be almost the same event. That we are now at two hundred years from one and one hundred from the other gives one occasion to think.
Looking forward to 2018; perhaps by the end of that year, I can report that the bad guys had been driven back. Fingers crossed.
