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To Catch a Spy
Book by Scott, Chris
291 pages, Hardcover
First published November 20, 1978
8 people want to read
About the author
Chris Scott
5 books5 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Born in Hull, Yorkshire, England, he was educated at the University of Hull (B.A., 1966), Manchester University (M.A., 1967), and then at the University of Pennsylvania. After a period of teaching at York University, Toronto, he moved to a small town north of Kingston.
He became a Canadian citizen in 1975, and resided on a farm in Lanark County, Ontario during much of his writing career. He is noted for his mixture of genre literature with experimental fiction.
Scott unleashed his formidable literary learning in Bartleby (1971), an anti-novel, in which the reader is guided by a Shandean narrator through a series of intricate, clever literary parodies. Much of the novel turns on literary puns and references. To catch a spy (1978) takes the delicate convolutions of the Le Carré thriller a step further—towards a world in which the doubleness of agents is both assumed and unprovable. The plot is a fictional response to the Burgess-MacLean-Philby spy scandals of the Cold War years that moves towards a meditation on the necessity of living with borrowed faiths and contingent truths in the face of an inscrutable divinity.
Antichthon (1982), a historical novel, continues where the spy novel left off, exploring the universal suspicion in the Renaissance world of casuistry and the Inquisition in which Giordano Bruno is burnt as a heretic. Like the previous novel, it centres on a ‘fictional’ death, whose reality is called into question, making truth itself the subtlest corrosive in a corrupt world. Scott's concept of the suppleness of truth underlies the vitality he has brought to two otherwise hackneyed genres—the espionage novel and the historical novel.
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Born in Hull, Yorkshire, England, he was educated at the University of Hull (B.A., 1966), Manchester University (M.A., 1967), and then at the University of Pennsylvania. After a period of teaching at York University, Toronto, he moved to a small town north of Kingston.
He became a Canadian citizen in 1975, and resided on a farm in Lanark County, Ontario during much of his writing career. He is noted for his mixture of genre literature with experimental fiction.
Scott unleashed his formidable literary learning in Bartleby (1971), an anti-novel, in which the reader is guided by a Shandean narrator through a series of intricate, clever literary parodies. Much of the novel turns on literary puns and references. To catch a spy (1978) takes the delicate convolutions of the Le Carré thriller a step further—towards a world in which the doubleness of agents is both assumed and unprovable. The plot is a fictional response to the Burgess-MacLean-Philby spy scandals of the Cold War years that moves towards a meditation on the necessity of living with borrowed faiths and contingent truths in the face of an inscrutable divinity.
Antichthon (1982), a historical novel, continues where the spy novel left off, exploring the universal suspicion in the Renaissance world of casuistry and the Inquisition in which Giordano Bruno is burnt as a heretic. Like the previous novel, it centres on a ‘fictional’ death, whose reality is called into question, making truth itself the subtlest corrosive in a corrupt world. Scott's concept of the suppleness of truth underlies the vitality he has brought to two otherwise hackneyed genres—the espionage novel and the historical novel.
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August 6, 2017a) Yes. I read a spy/espionage/thriller novel thing.
b) Because Chris Scott wrote that metaTrainWreck, Bartleby: A Novel which has been recently and generously reissued by Verbivoracious Press.
c) If you've got the balls/cajones/eggs to write a book like Bartleby, you deserve just a bit of attention re: your other books.
d) Bartleby is BURIED and his other books fare no better.
e) Similar is the case of D. Keith Mano and his trippy Take Five and his other unRead and BURIED Books.
f) So, under no illusion that his other books are repeats of the Bartleby stunt, I just went right ahead and strolled out into the book market place and bought up all of his other books.
e) This is one of them. This is one of the books Chris Scott authored.
g) Here you can see some of the other books he's author'd :: Chris Scott.
h) btw, The Heretic and Antichthon are the same book. Not to worry ; I've got it covered. Got a copy of each. The Anti- in an unfortunate ex-libris pb. But Heretic in an attractive hd.
i) Anti-/Heretic is about "the life, trial, and execution of Giordano Bruno." There's this one guy who circulates on gr purporting to be a sort of expert on GB. I do wonder if he's entdeckt this little novel yet. You can't miss the guy ; each comment will contain mention of his previous academic positions and/or friends' academic positions and who might have taught what when to whom. Really rather charming.
j) One of his other books is Hitler's Bomb (ex-libris hd) and here's the first line from the prologue :: "Carlo Peat met Johnson in the lobby...." ; in other words, same characters as To Catch a Spy.
k) And then there's Jack, a novel about Jack The Ripper.
l) To Catch a Spy is fine. It's pretty smart. There are a few lit=geek things get dropped here and there which makes it fun.
m) Here's the thing though. There's a lot of information in this book. [....] But we now know it as "cruft". Ie, the back blurb :: "murky cobwebs cloud the air".
n) Also from the backcover :: "Had he been the unknown man behind Philby? Was he a double--or a triple--agent? Was he murdered by one side of the other? Is he still alive?" And in answer to these Q's I give you my -- I don't know ; I don't care. It's not why I read, this kind of being led around by the nose. It's too much work figuring out what all this information is supposed to be. That is, without a certain overriding aesthetic function.
0) It's probably a very good spy/espionage/thriller novel thing. Maclean's blurb claims to place Chris Scott alongside the genre masters, ie "Graham Green, John le Carre, Len Deighton, Eric Ambler". I dunno. Maybe he is that good. Why not give him a go? No one else is.
p) Here is Stevie Vai and Devin Townsend on the Jay Leno Show ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ynE...
q) There's more soundtrack (random) embedded above. Check it out.
r) Does anyone write Read Reviews on gr anymore?
s) And here's Devin at Download ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kHKo...
t) If you're at all familiar with SYL you'll recognize their indebtedness to Handke's Publikumsbeschimpfung.
u) Watch the rest of the Download set ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa1r1...
v) Ziltoid of course is looking for the ultimate cup of coffee ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r98Jx...
w) And of course since one of my burrs-in-my=ass is the misUse of "deconstruction", here's Deconstruction ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-t4...
x) In the interest of holding your interest, this Review confesses to having moved totally elsewhere for no reason.
y) Because as Depaak Chopra has taught us, quantum physics means anything can happen at any time for no reason
z) z means more Ziltoid ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sDc2...
b) Because Chris Scott wrote that metaTrainWreck, Bartleby: A Novel which has been recently and generously reissued by Verbivoracious Press.
c) If you've got the balls/cajones/eggs to write a book like Bartleby, you deserve just a bit of attention re: your other books.
d) Bartleby is BURIED and his other books fare no better.
e) Similar is the case of D. Keith Mano and his trippy Take Five and his other unRead and BURIED Books.
f) So, under no illusion that his other books are repeats of the Bartleby stunt, I just went right ahead and strolled out into the book market place and bought up all of his other books.
e) This is one of them. This is one of the books Chris Scott authored.
g) Here you can see some of the other books he's author'd :: Chris Scott.
h) btw, The Heretic and Antichthon are the same book. Not to worry ; I've got it covered. Got a copy of each. The Anti- in an unfortunate ex-libris pb. But Heretic in an attractive hd.
i) Anti-/Heretic is about "the life, trial, and execution of Giordano Bruno." There's this one guy who circulates on gr purporting to be a sort of expert on GB. I do wonder if he's entdeckt this little novel yet. You can't miss the guy ; each comment will contain mention of his previous academic positions and/or friends' academic positions and who might have taught what when to whom. Really rather charming.
j) One of his other books is Hitler's Bomb (ex-libris hd) and here's the first line from the prologue :: "Carlo Peat met Johnson in the lobby...." ; in other words, same characters as To Catch a Spy.
k) And then there's Jack, a novel about Jack The Ripper.
l) To Catch a Spy is fine. It's pretty smart. There are a few lit=geek things get dropped here and there which makes it fun.
m) Here's the thing though. There's a lot of information in this book. [....] But we now know it as "cruft". Ie, the back blurb :: "murky cobwebs cloud the air".
n) Also from the backcover :: "Had he been the unknown man behind Philby? Was he a double--or a triple--agent? Was he murdered by one side of the other? Is he still alive?" And in answer to these Q's I give you my -- I don't know ; I don't care. It's not why I read, this kind of being led around by the nose. It's too much work figuring out what all this information is supposed to be. That is, without a certain overriding aesthetic function.
0) It's probably a very good spy/espionage/thriller novel thing. Maclean's blurb claims to place Chris Scott alongside the genre masters, ie "Graham Green, John le Carre, Len Deighton, Eric Ambler". I dunno. Maybe he is that good. Why not give him a go? No one else is.
p) Here is Stevie Vai and Devin Townsend on the Jay Leno Show ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ynE...
q) There's more soundtrack (random) embedded above. Check it out.
r) Does anyone write Read Reviews on gr anymore?
s) And here's Devin at Download ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kHKo...
t) If you're at all familiar with SYL you'll recognize their indebtedness to Handke's Publikumsbeschimpfung.
u) Watch the rest of the Download set ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa1r1...
v) Ziltoid of course is looking for the ultimate cup of coffee ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r98Jx...
w) And of course since one of my burrs-in-my=ass is the misUse of "deconstruction", here's Deconstruction ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-t4...
x) In the interest of holding your interest, this Review confesses to having moved totally elsewhere for no reason.
y) Because as Depaak Chopra has taught us, quantum physics means anything can happen at any time for no reason
z) z means more Ziltoid ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sDc2...
August 19, 2017
This is two books in one, akin to Moby Dick and Les Miserables, but whereas Moby Dick is about 50-50 philosophical whaling guide/novel, To Catch a Spy is 75-25 philosophical inquiry/spy novel. Mr. Scott strikes you immediately as one who feels very strongly about knowing words and is compelled to impress you with them. He namedrops most of the Beatles/Beach Boys' spiritual mentors early on, proliferates the book with antique literary references, and just generally makes the book difficult to read. I'm by no means a skilled, quality reader, so maybe it's just me and my infacility with language and words and things. And stuffs and items. We are bombarded with several names and codenames at the beginning of the book, so much so one will have great difficulty remembering who is whom throughout, even perhaps until after the book is over, and while that is part of the spy atmosphere, it doesn't make for an enjoyable reading experience of a spy atmosphere, for most of the book.
Much of this work, as I said, is a psychological treatment on the good ol' spy game back in the glory days of the Cold War, when men were men and Bruce was Scarecrow and Pierce was Remington and life was good. Aside from all the horrible things that were going on at the time, of course. But the Spy Game was a Gentleman's Game back in the day, when agents and double agents and triple agents all seemed to know each other and hang out at all the old familiar places. Or did they...
We are treated to the mentality of the different players in this game: what it's like to investigate why an agent switches allegiances, what it's like to be a high-level strategist who concocts plots and counterplots, what it's like to be a Russian puppetmaster/tightrope walker standing in the gap between trust and betrayal, and what it's like to be a tool-turned-tool user. Or are we...
Suddenly, all the psychological underpinnings are swept away and we are LeCarred away into a breakneck spy catching thriller ... but which spy are we catching? And which do we want to catch? The last few pages have a significant number of twists and countertwists jam-packed and slam-banged together, which may "salvage" the book for some who thought it would be more Ian Fleming-like than John LeCarre-ish. I found it rough going for awhile, but the ending "made up" for it (though I won't be keeping it and reading it again in my life).
Much of this work, as I said, is a psychological treatment on the good ol' spy game back in the glory days of the Cold War, when men were men and Bruce was Scarecrow and Pierce was Remington and life was good. Aside from all the horrible things that were going on at the time, of course. But the Spy Game was a Gentleman's Game back in the day, when agents and double agents and triple agents all seemed to know each other and hang out at all the old familiar places. Or did they...
We are treated to the mentality of the different players in this game: what it's like to investigate why an agent switches allegiances, what it's like to be a high-level strategist who concocts plots and counterplots, what it's like to be a Russian puppetmaster/tightrope walker standing in the gap between trust and betrayal, and what it's like to be a tool-turned-tool user. Or are we...
Suddenly, all the psychological underpinnings are swept away and we are LeCarred away into a breakneck spy catching thriller ... but which spy are we catching? And which do we want to catch? The last few pages have a significant number of twists and countertwists jam-packed and slam-banged together, which may "salvage" the book for some who thought it would be more Ian Fleming-like than John LeCarre-ish. I found it rough going for awhile, but the ending "made up" for it (though I won't be keeping it and reading it again in my life).
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