Monday 23 January 2012
John Le Carré’s spies might not be as famous as Bond or Bourne but, says Peter Aspden, they are the most authentic.
Who would have thought it? The twilight antics of George Smiley, John Le Carré's downtrodden spy, are back in fashion. The cinematic release of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy brings to life for a new generation the drab monotony of Cold War espionage.
Ian Fleming’s novels spawned James Bond, the most glamorous spy of all, and Graham Greene’s guilt-ridden works provided a heftier dose of existential anxiety, but it is Le Carré, we instinctively feel, who tells it like it is. The dull hours waiting on street corners, the appalling brusqueness of office politics, the meticulous attention to detail that may - or may not - yield some minor epiphany: no one makes the spy's world more wearisome than Le Carré. Here he is, describing Smiley's appearance at the beginning of Tinker, Tailor: ‘His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting and extremely wet.’ It is the antithesis of Bond. Was Soviet intelligence reading this, back in the day? It must have given the KGB no end of encouragement, to learn that their antagonists appeared so flaccid, unworldly, examples of ‘London's meek who do not inherit the earth’. Le Carré invested in Smiley the glorious effectiveness of British understatement. Bond was always going to end up in Hollywood, but we knew deep down that the Cold War would not be won by knowing a Lafite from a Latour. Le Carré's world was different. Smiley, abandoned in love, quietly dedicated, shuffling around his lonely home in a dressing gown, plodded towards his prey. But how sure and focused was his progress, and how lacking in hubris his slowly earned triumphs. Back in the 1970s, Alec Guinness performed the definitive version of Smiley. It seemed there would be no call for further impressions. But we needed reminding, after the bombastics of Bond and Bourne, that espionage was an altogether humbler art.
No one portrayed it like Le Carré, who could wring as much tension out of a mishandled handover in a Czech coffee house as others did in the casinos and silk-sheeted bedrooms of spy-fantasy land. Le Carré makes us believe that spies work for a living, and their work actually matters. The proof?
Look what happened to the Russians: they now buy Picassos and west London football clubs, and watch Spooks to give themselves a laugh at the weekend. Smiley's people won the war. If you want to find out how, read Le Carré.
Peter Aspden is the Financial Times’ arts writer.
Image courtesy of the Associated Press.
