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Author Topic: John Le Carre
rasmus
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posted 07 July 2002 02:29 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Has anyone read any of his recent novels? How are they?
From: Fortune favours the bold | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
pogge
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posted 07 July 2002 02:37 PM      Profile for pogge   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I read The Constant Gardener. I'd say pretty good tho' not his best. But I finished it, which these days says something. My reading list is so long that if a work of fiction doesn't hold my interest I put it down and pick up something else.

Edit: spelling

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: Slim ]


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Zatamon
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posted 07 July 2002 02:41 PM      Profile for Zatamon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I believe I have read everything he has published so far. Ever since the 'Russia House' he has been more and more outspoken against the 'evil' of modern times, especially the 'arms trade', the 'drug trade' and the verious governments' complicity. The "Night Manager", "The Tailor of Panama" and "Single & Single" were particularly bitter and accusing.

I consider LeCarre one of the most important writers of our time. His command of the English language is on par with Huxley's, his characters become intimately familiar in the course ot the story and his plots are breath-taking. Add a passionate (underplayed) and highly ethical social attitude and you see why I like him so much.


From: where hope for 'hope' is contemplated | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
pogge
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posted 07 July 2002 02:42 PM      Profile for pogge   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
And The Constant Gardener certainly continues the themes you've described.

Edit: spelling.

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: Slim ]


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karenas
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posted 07 July 2002 02:45 PM      Profile for karenas     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I read my first Le Carre this winter, after receiving The Constant Gardener as an x-mas gift. I'd definitely reccomend reading it - especially as summer/holiday reading. Suspenseful, gripping, interesting...built around the politics of international aid. Still a crime/spy novel for all that, but probably the best of the genre. Le Carre had a very good story about his father in a recent New Yorker too. Interesting guys, both of them.
From: BC | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Terry Johnson
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posted 07 July 2002 03:57 PM      Profile for Terry Johnson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I like Le Carre. And I've devoured everything he's written. But The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was his best book. And while he has become more polemical in novels like The Constant Gardener, I think it's from a conservative standpoint. Not Fraser Institute conservative, but House of Lords conservative: The world's been going downhill since the 18th Century and the triumph of the American Revolution.

For a good, progressive spy novel, I'd say you can't beat Graham Greene, or Eric Ambler.


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Zatamon
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posted 07 July 2002 09:48 PM      Profile for Zatamon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
My favourite is "The Honourable Schoolboy". That was very, very sad.
From: where hope for 'hope' is contemplated | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Terry Johnson
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posted 08 July 2002 02:42 PM      Profile for Terry Johnson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
All Le Carre's novels are very, very sad.

But not in a bad way. In a kind of knowing and wise, looking back on the foolishness of life with understanding way.

That's what I like abut him.


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ReeferMadness
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posted 23 July 2002 02:27 AM      Profile for ReeferMadness     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've read a lot of le Carre (though certainly not all). Perhaps my tastes have changed but I think he hit his peak with the cold war stuff. The Spy who Came in the the Cold , Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and especially, Smiley's People.
From: Way out there | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 23 July 2002 12:30 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I still think that Tinker, Tailor was the formal triumph, although I love them all, up to the last one I read, which I think is The Night Manager. (It's pure sloth and disorganization on my part that I haven't kept going.)

The excerpts of Constant Gardener that I read last fall seemed a bit loose and sprawling to me, not as formally tight as the Smiley novels, but those who've read it through would know better. I do think of Le Carre as another Greene, not as broad and various, maybe, but in the central Smiley novels very like the master.


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obscurantist
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posted 09 November 2005 08:32 PM      Profile for obscurantist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Le Carre book named best crime novel of last 50 years

quote:
The U.K.-based Crime Writers' Association has named John Le Carré's classic 1963 novel The Spy Who Came In From The Cold the top crime book of the past 50 years.

The group named the veteran spy writer winner of its Dagger of Daggers prize at its annual Dagger Awards Luncheon in London Tuesday.

Le Carré is the pen name of former British Foreign Service agent David John Moore Cornwell. ...


[ 09 November 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]


From: an unweeded garden | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
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posted 09 November 2005 08:58 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've heard The little drummer girl and the tailer of panama on audio cassette. He read them both. He has a lovely voice and a wonderfully smooth style of writing. It's to bad he chose to toe the Likud party line in TLDG though.
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arborman
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posted 09 November 2005 09:04 PM      Profile for arborman     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I read a number of his books many years ago (when I was in a spy novel phase). I don't think I was mature enough to fully 'get' them - all I got was the thriller aspect.

I read The Constant Gardener a month or so ago, and found it excellent. Other than that I've been out of touch with his writing - darn my addiction to science fiction.


From: I'm a solipsist - isn't everyone? | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged
faith
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posted 09 November 2005 09:17 PM      Profile for faith     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I love Le Carre but I wish that just once he would have a happy ending - perhaps not even happy, maybe just let the main character (usually a fairly decent person) live.
I always got the corruption theme to mean that all levels of society were corrupt including and especially the house of lords. Le Carre does not seem overly impressed with the mucky mucks no matter how high their station in life.

From: vancouver | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 09 November 2005 09:21 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I gave Le Carre's TSWCIFTC to my father for Christmas when it came out. He was thrilled with it, as I recall. I've got it here, somewhere. Dad died in 1970.
From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
jrootham
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posted 09 November 2005 10:03 PM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Spoiler Alert

Le Carre is my kind of anarchist. He takes a very dim view of those in power. He (mostly) also takes a very dim view of those who would change the world by violent means. Spy agencies are just about the worst thing he can imagine.

As far as happy endings go, "The Night Manager" not only lived, he got the girl.


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Cougyr
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posted 09 November 2005 11:53 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by faith:
I love Le Carre but I wish that just once he would have a happy ending - perhaps not even happy, maybe just let the main character (usually a fairly decent person) live.

"The Russia House" has a reasonably happy ending; or at least a hopeful ending.

When the Cold War ended, Le Carre progressed to other themes, which is refreshing. Each book takes on a different bogeyman.

I do like Le Carre's little digs at the Americans.


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Andrew_Jay
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posted 09 November 2005 11:57 PM      Profile for Andrew_Jay        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Being my favorite author, I've read pretty much everyone of his books. I especially like the old, George Smiley novels, but this summer read his latest one - Absolute Friends. That was something else, really, the way it came together in the end with nothing but pure vitrol for the Bush and Blair governments. Really interesting.
From: Extremism is easy. You go right and meet those coming around from the far left | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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posted 09 November 2005 11:57 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
"The Russia House" has a reasonably happy ending; or at least a hopeful ending.

So does Smiley's People; or at least not a sad ending, like the two novels that preceded it.


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Andrew_Jay
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posted 10 November 2005 12:04 AM      Profile for Andrew_Jay        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Smiley's People is still pretty sad considering how hollow the victory comes off - what should have been something to celebrate (as many of the characters do) is nothing but for Geroge. But then again, George Smiley is always a sad character.
From: Extremism is easy. You go right and meet those coming around from the far left | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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posted 10 November 2005 12:12 AM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
But then again, George Smiley is always a sad character.

I don't see him so -- not always. True, he's often a sad character. But he's always a restrained, understated character. So a concession like "Yes, I suppose I did [win]" is, by his lights, an admission that he's capable of feelng triumph, or at least of understanding that one can feel triumph.

I'd re-read the book to see if my impression of it is supported by anything at all, except that in all honesty it's not my favourite Smiley novel.


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Andrew_Jay
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posted 10 November 2005 12:42 AM      Profile for Andrew_Jay        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
But also think of what they had to do to "win", certainly nothing principled or moral.

Plus the way he just leaves Anne's lighter on the ground, you get the feeling that he's really just had enough of this, he's too old and tired.

I'd say Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy is my favorite book all in all, and I've only read The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People once each, and haven't had a chance to really get into them (not to mention the last two out of order).

[ 10 November 2005: Message edited by: Andrew_Jay ]


From: Extremism is easy. You go right and meet those coming around from the far left | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged

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