eleutheria

John le Carre - Call for the Dead

John le Carre - Call for the Dead. In style, this is a cross between 3 of Carre's best books: Absolute Friends, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It describes the time that the George Smiley first came into the secret service.

If power = abuse of power - ie, if by having power, you are already an abuser - what name should be given to the unhypocritical personal strength carried into public life that Carre describes so well in George Smiley?

Here the Spinozist Smiley confronts real power:

"Abruptly [Smiley] felt inside himself the rising panic of frustration beyond endurance. With panic came an uncontrollable fury with this posturing sycophant, this obscene cissy with his greying hair and his reasonable smile."

Smiley's power makes 'success' impossible. Out of some impulse which is cultural/society-self-destructive but personally-self-strengthening, Smiley is unable to compromise. He confronts reality, and so his life is a constant confrontation.

"It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality." Virginia Woolf

le Carre captures how depressing (at best) it is when people you are forced to deal with are removed from reality, and therefore unable to be communicated with or criticised (the people for whose power = abuse of power eg, Tony Blair).

ps, has anyone else noticed the eery similarities between the film Fight Club and John le Carre's The Naive and Sentimental Lover? (Afraid I did buy Chuck Palahniuk's book Fight Club, but never bothered to read it, and then gave it away, so can't say if the likeness come from the book or not.)

Posted by Eleutheria at September 10, 2004 01:54 PM