[HN Gopher] John le Carre's private life, revealed in letters an...
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John le Carre's private life, revealed in letters and a kiss-and-
tell
Author : pepys
Score : 18 points
Date : 2022-10-17 18:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spectator.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spectator.co.uk)
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| His son (Nick Harkaway) is one of my favorite authors, and one of
| the best in SF right now.
| taude wrote:
| which book would you suggest someone starts with?
| W-Stool wrote:
| I have a large book collection and one of the cornerstones is a
| first edition of every John le Carre book published. I've read
| them all, and while he is probably best known for "Tinker Tailor
| ..." and "Smiley's People", I found "The Perfect Spy" to be just
| an exceptional work of literature - and at times it is also
| autobiographical (his father was a con man). I'm not surprised he
| was at times profoundly unhappy - in my experience, many highly
| creative people never find contentment.
|
| The TV miniseries of "Tinker Tailor ...", "Smiley's People", "The
| Perfect Spy", and "The Night Manager" are just amazingly well
| done and highly recommended.
|
| RIP David Cornwell.
| madrox wrote:
| I watch Smiley's People with Alec Guinness once a year. You
| can't make film like that today.
| W-Stool wrote:
| The scene with Toby Esterhase and George Smiley in the
| basement office of Toby's gallery is one of my favorite
| scenes on film of all time.
| lqet wrote:
| Definitely. I think it is even better than "Tinker Tailor
| Soldier Spy" (also with Alec Guinness). The execution, the
| acting, the plot, the screenplay, everything is just
| marvelous.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I read Call for the Dead and unfortunately found it pretty
| boring. Do you think I would probably also find Smileys People
| boring?
| Mizza wrote:
| The best is "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold". It's a short
| read but a wallop of an ending.
| thakoppno wrote:
| Interesting I'm about eighty pages into it and was
| beginning to question the Le Carre hype.
| taude wrote:
| His style and pace is a lot different than the modern
| genre writers like Vince Flynn, Lee Child, and even
| Ludlum (though Ludlam was of similar age) which excel at
| fast plot driven stories. A lot of Le Carre's stuff is
| from the '60s and '70s, and I'm not sure how well it
| actually ages. (I haven't read him since 1990ish, and
| I've been wanting to read the Tinker series, just never
| got past the first chapter.)
|
| I remember that even the movie version of The Russia
| house was a little slow, and it came out on the tail end
| of the cold war era.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/NnH7W
| ggm wrote:
| Many of his books carry a subtext of small and big personal
| betrayals. I wonder if he projected his own desires into the
| narrative.
|
| Smiley is deceived. Anne and Haydon's relationship is written
| down to Haydon doing what his paymasters ordered but Anne's role
| is unclear. Willing participation is implied.
|
| The perfect spy is a super book.
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