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George Smiley Comes To Me In Dream..
Jan. 12th, 2012 09:50 amDespite saying I wouldn’t reread Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I immediately began rereading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Irrespective of what you may feel about espionage novels, from a literary perspective it is a brilliant book: that in media res circling into the narrative, the amazing dialogue, that camouflage of objective POV, to wit:
Jim Prideaux was a poor white of the teaching community. He belonged to the same sad bunch as the late Mrs. Loveday who had a Persian Lamb coat and stood in for junior divinity until her cheques bounced, or the late Mr. Maltby, the pianist who’d been called in from choir practice to help the police and for all anyone knew was helping them to this day, for Maltby’s trunk still lay in the cellar, awaiting instructions...
Jim Prideaux, of course, is the MacGuffin, as well as a key character, and the instrument of a retribution that has the beautiful symmetry of a Greek tragedy rewritten by Oscar Wilde. Le Carré makes his characters carry a lot of freight.
So last night I dreamed of George Smiley – the real George Smiley, which is to say Alec Guinness, not Gary Oldham – chainsmoking in a smokey room, creating and running a whole bunch of characters in a game that was something like Second Life. The characters were designed to appear like innocent players, but of course they were promoting the Agenda. On the other side of his screen sits the lone Iraqi terrorist, to whom the game had become so real that loyalty to virtual friends and nations trumped loyalty to the terror cell, faith and fatherland.
Woke up and thought: What a great plot for a spy novel!
Too bad I absolutely don’t have the chops to write a spy novel.
In other news, I’m finishing the pitch to Mid-level Business Magazine Edited By Old Pal on content brokering and contemplating pitching a business proposal to Old Friend Who Has Become Big Web Juju on how he should expand the business to include content brokering and put moi in charge of that side of the business.
And now I must get back to real work. Sigh…
Irrespective of what you may feel about espionage novels, from a literary perspective it is a brilliant book: that in media res circling into the narrative, the amazing dialogue, that camouflage of objective POV, to wit:
Jim Prideaux was a poor white of the teaching community. He belonged to the same sad bunch as the late Mrs. Loveday who had a Persian Lamb coat and stood in for junior divinity until her cheques bounced, or the late Mr. Maltby, the pianist who’d been called in from choir practice to help the police and for all anyone knew was helping them to this day, for Maltby’s trunk still lay in the cellar, awaiting instructions...
Jim Prideaux, of course, is the MacGuffin, as well as a key character, and the instrument of a retribution that has the beautiful symmetry of a Greek tragedy rewritten by Oscar Wilde. Le Carré makes his characters carry a lot of freight.
So last night I dreamed of George Smiley – the real George Smiley, which is to say Alec Guinness, not Gary Oldham – chainsmoking in a smokey room, creating and running a whole bunch of characters in a game that was something like Second Life. The characters were designed to appear like innocent players, but of course they were promoting the Agenda. On the other side of his screen sits the lone Iraqi terrorist, to whom the game had become so real that loyalty to virtual friends and nations trumped loyalty to the terror cell, faith and fatherland.
Woke up and thought: What a great plot for a spy novel!
Too bad I absolutely don’t have the chops to write a spy novel.
In other news, I’m finishing the pitch to Mid-level Business Magazine Edited By Old Pal on content brokering and contemplating pitching a business proposal to Old Friend Who Has Become Big Web Juju on how he should expand the business to include content brokering and put moi in charge of that side of the business.
And now I must get back to real work. Sigh…
