Reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy During a Hot War

As I continue along my life path of being an aging dad I have picked up various aging dad habits. I give over too much effort to yard work and try to deliberately embarrass my children. Most of all, I have become addiction to spy novels and history, some of the daddest dad lit of all time.

This addiction has grown so powerful that I am re-reading spy novels I have already read. This is strange considering that I pretty much stopped re-reading books once I got to grad school and realized there were too many damn books out there that needed reading. Re-reading was a luxury I could no longer afford.

Yet here I am, having just completed a second read of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on my way to a re-read of the whole Karla Trilogy. (I also admit to viewing the film version at least a dozen times.) The current war has had me thinking about the legacy of the Cold War and diving back into it. This book in particular speaks to the current moment in unexpected ways.

One of my other obsessions is the 1970s, and TTSP came out in 1974, during the brutal mid-decade malaise. The "Circus" spies have gone from Bond allure to begging a cash-strapped government for funding. In the period of Detente the Cold War continues on a lower boil, but outside of the "secret world" few seem to care all that much. The UK is no longer a world power, its spies must wonder what the point is, anyway.

(BEWARE, SPOILERS BE HERE)

A lot goes on in the novel, but something I noticed this time is how the hunt for the mole in the Circus (as Le Carre called MI6) reinvigorated the aging and prematurely retired George Smiley. Just when he and the service he worked for seemed completely cooked, the mole was found and Karla and his Soviet agents put on the back foot. At the same time, when the mole is finally caught, George Smiley's victory is bittersweet. When he interviews the traitor Bill Haydon he finds himself agreeing with much of the substance of his critique of the West and particularly of the United States. However, Smiley notes that while he enjoys the "music" he cannot abide the "tone." Deep down, despite his reservations about America and the Cold War, Smiley knows the USSR represents something even worse. 

This got me thinking about the war in Ukraine. For the past few years the West has appeared to be as decadent and crumbling as Bill Haydon claimed. Brexit and the election of Trump were omens of a new age of decline, or at least that's what we fought. When faced with the Ukraine crisis, the West is suddenly showing cohesion and backbone again. Beneath the ratty, disorganized surface the West still persisted, it just needed a cause to rally behind. Despite this country's manifest failures and injustices, Vladimir Putin has come along to remind us all of how there are far worse things that can exist in this world. If anything I hope this moment provides some missing clarity in the public discourse. 

Like Smiley however, I hope in our fever to support Ukraine in the current war, we don't lose sight of our own manifest flaws. If not we will be back in crisis mode sooner or later.

Reading Le Carre in the Age of Trump

Behold 1970s London, in all its grimy, depressing glory

After dabbling with the works of John Le Carre over the years, I recently got completely hooked on him. I am currently on Smiley's People, my fourth Le Carre novel since March with no signs of slowing down.

As much as I love Le Carre's writing by itself, I think the current moment has made his work a big draw for me. This might seem paradoxical, since I've been reading his Cold War novels, which appear to describe a political world completely foreign to our own. This is especially the case with his "Karla Trilogy" of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People. They were written in the 1970s, when the Cold War's intensity waned and the prestige of spying had worn off. The spies in these novels continue to play a deadly game that most people have stopped caring to watch. This gray 1970s world seems so unlike our own overheated, garish Trumpian fantasia.

Le Carre's main thesis in the Smiley novels is the futility of the Cold War spy game. The agencies are lost in a maze of mirrors, unable to see clearly through the haze of paranoia and confusion. While he has an obvious dislike of the Soviet Union, Le Carre shows the West doing terrible things to try to win the game. In the process it diminishes the ideals that it is supposedly fighting to protect. This all seems especially futile in the 1970s, after three decades of fighting a conflict with no end in sight. While I am much more convinced of the justice of the cause of stopping the global wave of nationalism than Smiley may have been of his own, I am feeling a similar futility. I do not think the war will be won. It won't necessarily be lost either. I see stretched out before me decades of conflict and costly yet ineffectual struggle.

Another feature of Le Carre's books is how Smiley and other agents must constantly deal with the fatuous nature of politicians and higher-ups within the agency. The leaders of the system they are defending are lame and uninspiring. I've been thinking about this a lot in regards to the current political situation. I have stayed engage despite, rather than because, of the political leaders of the Democratic party. Trump keeps discovering new ways to abuse his power, but Pelosi and others keep ruling out impeachment, the exact legal remedy for these situations. They have become so comfortable in their power that they don't want to have to actually take a risk. In this regard they remind me of Oliver Lacon, a recurring Le Carre character. He's a product of the upper class and a civilian overseer of the secret service. Lacon is typically concerned with what can't be done, as opposed to what can be done. He's not all that desperate to get things done because deep down, he knows that he will be okay.

Back in November of 2016 I was depressed. In 2017 and 2018 I was extremely politically active, but now it seems that so many people who pledged to resist the current regime have just gone home. It's hard to participate in protest and political agitation by myself, which is basically the current situation. Like George Smiley, I can't give up a fight that may ultimately be futile. It's a strange thing to commit oneself to, and I am glad I have John Le Carre novels to help me along.