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The spy who entertained us The 5 best movies based on books by John le Carré
“Karla” trilogy (after “The Honourable Schoolboy”) became another BBC miniseries (six episodes). It again starred Guinness and concludes the titanic struggle between Smiley and Karla, his archenemy in East German intelligence, who ran the British mole and seemed to know Smiley better than he knew himself. Patrick Stewart has a brief but unforgettable nonspeaking scene as Karla.
By Mary Ann Gwinn
Chelsea Boisen, concert promoter, Lawrence “The Keith Richards autobiography (‘Life’).”
Clay Benedict, Allen Press, Perry “I’m looking for the latest in the ‘Game of Thrones’ series for someone else. I still need to finish the first one myself.”
Sharon Skafe, self-employed, Lawrence “‘Vengence’ by Jan Burke. I’m big into mysteries.”
Brandon Williams, KU Bookstore, Lawrence “Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ I started it at work and want to finish.”
Sunday, December 25, 2011
The Seattle Times
I’ve spent much of my reading life trying to figure it out: What is it about the work of John le Carré that draws me back to his books again and again? Le Carré (real name, David Cornwell), a former British spy turned best-selling novelist, is a master plotter, but so is Arthur Conan Doyle. He’s a marvelous creator of dialogue, but so is Elmore Leonard. He is darkly hilarious in that dry, British manner, but so are any number of contemporary English novelists. My humble conclusion: It’s the themes of loyalty and betrayal at the core of le Carré’s work that have made some of his stories tales for the ages. It’s so human to want to belong heart and soul to something, whether it’s a person, a family, an institution or a country. Le Carré’s novels portray the cost of letting loyalty blind you to the truth, and often the truth is very hard indeed. Most of le Carré’s books have been made into movies. Skipping over the lesser productions (“The Looking Glass War,” “The Little Drummer Girl”), here’s a shortlist of the best films and TV shows made from le Carré’s books, all available on DVD. Not so coincidentally, most feature le Carré’s George Smiley, a British bureaucrat in the spy service whose bland bespectacled facade masks a passionate intellect, a broken heart and a sixth sense for betrayal that eventually sees through every kind of deceit. Will the new version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” starring Gary Oldman earn a spot on this list of favorites? We shall see.
As the Great War drew to a close, a young Englishwoman named Nancy Cooper wrote wearily in her diary that, “By the end of 1916, every boy I had ever danced with was dead.” David Childers, In fact, an entire generadata administrator, tion (and more) of English, Lawrence French and German youth “‘The Physics Of was gone, shredded by shrapConsciousness: The Quantum nel, riddled by machine-gun Mind And The Meaning Of bullets or burned and scariLife’ by Evan Harris Walker. fied by mustard gas, their A scientist loses his girlfriend body parts scattered across in college and tries to find a the fields of the Somme, or scientific explanation of the Paschendale in Belgium, essence of her.” where they mixed with oozing mud and rat excrement and finally disappeared. Granite tombstones by the hundreds of thousands are mere memorials, not graves. Those who made it home did so missing arms and legs, or eyes, or with their lungs roasted or faces mangled horribly. And then there were the lucky few like the young mountaineer George Mallory, who made it home to Cheshire with invisible wounds. Master historian, ethnographer and world-renowned eco-traveler, Wade Davis (currently National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and the author of many acclaimed books about
The darker sides of Christmas Day Linger near the edge Where greens and reds fade into gray By a steeper ledge. They gather there amidst the gloom ’Til it’s time to bring Bad news into a festive room Where we had meant to sing.
Accidents, illness, pain, delays Break into our now. We tiptoe through a twisted maze, “A Perfect Spy” (1987): Managing somehow. The BBC miniseries version of le Carré’s finest novel after Another message comes as well, “Tinker, Tailor” is almost as devastating as the 1986 novel, Always. Every year. which Philip Roth called “the Shining coincidence to tell best English novel since the Of stronger than drear. war” when it came out. The seven-episode series portrays Of Greens that may refuse to fade, the disintegration of Magnus Pym, a British spy recruited Eternal Reds of flame’ by Axel, a Czech student And Rosy songs that Music made, he met (and betrayed) as a young man. Axel has become Proclaiming the Name. an operative in Czech intelli— Sarah Casad, Lawrence gence (at that point Czechoslovakia was a Soviet puppet regime) and enlists Magnus as a double agent, to spy on his own country. Magnus’ character and moral compass have been Our Poet’s Showcase forever distorted by his refeatures work by area lationship with his con-man poets. Submit your poetry father. The relationship bevia email with a subject tween the spy Pym and his line of Poet’s Showcase to scoundrel father, Rick Pym, danderson@ljworld.com. is highly autobiographical Include your hometown — le Carré’s father was a and contact information. confidence man whose escapades had a profound impact on le Carré’s upbringing and outlook. Peter Egan stars as Magnus and le Carré had a hand in the screenplay.
Photo courtesy of Krimidoedel
JOHN LE CARRÉ, pictured at the Zeit Forum Kultur on Nov. 10, 2008, in Hamburg, Germany, has penned many international spy thrillers, most of which have been made into films, including the current remake of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” fuss when this movie came out. Its bleak view of the spy trade shocked an American audience steeped in the West-good, Soviets-bad polemics of the Cold War. Shot in black and white, “Spy” tells the story of a burned-out British spy, Alec Leamas, who is sent to East Germany to sow disinformation. But his entanglement with an idealistic young woman makes him begin to doubt the wisdom and morality of his mission. Richard Burton, a ’60s heartthrob because of his affair with Elizabeth Taylor, showed his chops as an actor with his gritty, depressing and thoroughly realistic portrayal of the tormented Leamas. George Smiley plays a secondary role as Leamas’ handler.
BEST-SELLERS
“A Murder of Quality” (1991): I recently rediscovered this adaptation of le Carré’s second novel. Though he doesn’t quite approach the gravitas of Alec Guinness’ characterization, Denholm Elliott is still marvelous as Smiley, a self-effacing little man and the butt of jokes about his wife’s unfaithfulness, whose bland exterior masks a dogged determination to get to the bottom of things. When Smiley is asked by a friend to investigate the death of a faculty wife at Carne, a boy’s prep school, he digs into a pile of class conflict, blackmail and town vs. gown resentment. Le Carré wrote the screenplay, and a young Christian Bale plays a prep-school student who knows more than he ought to.
exploration, ethnology and botany) has written a genuinely gripping, thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated book about the period of 1921-24, which saw an intrepid group of British, Canadian and Australian war veterans set about to conquer, in a series of three dangerous expeditions, Mount Everest, then an unknown massif hovering menacingly, yet fascinatingly, on the border between Nepal and Tibet, territories which were themselves almost entirely unknown to the West. “Into the Silence” begins where the Great War ends, when the last vestige of the Old Order was shattered and death had made a mockery of notions like honor, valor and glory. Before the war, the Geographical Society in London, together with the Alpine Club, had upheld the British notion of empire by sending off its members to conquer peaks in the Alps in the name of English aristocracy. But the long hallucination of the war had produced a universal torpor and melancholy, a sense of isolation and a loss of center. The dozen or so young men who composed the British Empire’s expedi-
tions to Everest in the early 1920s were as much a part of the Lost Generation as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. They climbed into a void in order to discover their souls and to escape the crushing boredom of bourgeois life. “Into the Silence” was 10 years in the writing and is remarkable on many levels. It tells the story of courageous, bull-headed, and often unpredictable English climbers, men like Guy Bullock, the best alpinist of his day; Sandy Irvine, an accomplished rock climber who died on the shoulder of the North Col with Mallory in 1924; and the indomitable George Finch, the Alpine Club’s best rock climber and a man whose endurance matched, and at times, overmatched even Mallory’s. These men, along with surveyors for the Raj, botanists, translators, and the elderly leader of the expedition, Gen. Charles Bruce, often camped at elevations as high as 22,000 feet, climbing even higher with Sherpas and local Tibetans for guides. In the first expedition of 1921, seven Sherpas died at the base of Everest in an avalanche. On another level, “Into the
Here are the best-sellers for the week that ended Dec. 17, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.
Fiction
1. “11/22/63.” Stephen King. Scribner, $35. 2. “Locked On.” Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney. Putnam, $28.95. 3. “The Litigators.” John Grisham. Doubleday, $28.95. 4. “Kill Alex Cross.” James Patterson. Little, Brown, $28.99. 5. “Death Comes to Pemberley.” P.D. James. Knopf, $25.95. 6. “The Best of Me. Nicholas Sparks. Grand Central, $25.99. 7. “Red Mist.” Patricia Cornwell. Putnam, $27.95. 8. “Explosive Eighteen.” Janet Evanovich. Bantam, $28. 9. “The Drop.” Michael Connelly. Little, Brown, $27.99. 10. “V Is for Vengeance.” Sue Grafton. Putnam, $27.95. 11. “A Dance with Dragons.” George R.R. Martin. Bantam, $35. 12. “Micro.” Michael Crichton & Richard Preston. Harper, Silence” is a moving psycho$28.99. logical romance. What, after all, 13. “1Q84.” Haruki Murakawould compel Mallory to climb mi. Knopf, $30.50. up and beyond 26,000 feet in an era of hobnail boots and woolen vests, when the use of oxygen Nonfiction was both little known and mis1. “Steve Jobs.” Walter Isaactrusted —while, at home, his son. Simon & Schuster, $35. wife and two small children 2. “Killing Lincoln.” Bill O’Reilly waited with broken hearts? & Martin Dugard. Holt, $28. Davis answers the question 3. “Unbroken.” Laura Hillenmasterfully by delving into war brand. Random House, $27. diaries, journals and regimental 4. “Go the **** to Sleep.” histories, each of which present Adam Mansbach, illus. by Ria sometimes clinical exposition cardo Cortes. Akashic, $14.95. of violence’s effect on the hu5. “Jack Kennedy.” Chris man mind. Matthews. Simon & Schuster, And finally, “Into the Si$27.50. lence” opens a window onto 6. “Nearing Home.” Billy Gralittle-known Tibetan history, ham. Thomas Nelson, $19.99. topography, ethnobotany and 7. “Being George Washingreligion. In those days the ton.” Glenn Beck. Threshold, British weren’t admitted to $26. Nepal at all and their adven8. “Paula Deen’s Southern tures in Tibet were usually Cooking Bible.” Paula Deen highly restricted, frowned with Melissa Clark. Simon & on by the Chinese, who covSchuster, $29.99. eted the Tibetan plateau (it is 9. “Guinness World Records partly Britain’s fault that the 2012.” Guinness World ReTibetans lost their indepencords, $28.95. dence) and observed jealous10. “Through My Eyes.” Tim ly by ever-expanding Russia. Tebow with Nathan Whitaker. In 1999, a team of AmeriHarperOne, $26.99. can climbers found Mallory’s 11. “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” body at the bottom of a sheer, Daniel Kahneman. Farrar, 300-foot cliff of ice beneath Straus & Giroux, $30. the North Col and its final 12. “Cook’s Illustrated daunting shoulder. One leg Cookbook.” Cook’s Illustrated had been broken in a long Editors. Cook’s Illustrated, $40. fall. Irvine was just gone, like 13. “Catherine the Great.” so many on the Somme beRobert K. Massie. Random fore him. House, $35.
‘Into the Silence’ puts Mallory’s Everest expedition in its post-World War I context McClatchy Newspapers
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television ever made. The expanded format allowed a full exposition of le Carré’s labrynthine plot. Based on the first book of le Carré’s “Karla” trilogy, “Tinker, Tailor” features the incomparable Alec Guinness as Smiley, who is brought back out of forced retirement and charged with ferreting out a mole in British intelligence. As Smiley investigates, he confronts the service’s moral and strategic failures and finds his own loyalties shaken to the core. In a 1999 Seattle Arts & Lectures appearance, le Carré told the audience that Guinness’ Smiley entered his head and wouldn’t leave: “I had my character stolen by Alec Guinness. His voice and mannerisms entered my soul — to the extent that I didn’t “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, know if I could finish the trilSpy” (1979): This six-ep- ogy,” he said. “The Spy Who Came in isode miniseries, made for From the Cold” (1965): I am the BBC, has been hailed by “Smiley’s People” (1982): old enough to remember the many as some of the best The third book in le Carré’s
By Gaylord Dold
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