Word: carrã
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...Carr??'s astringent, melancholy tones will be familiar to anyone who has read his works or those of such eminences as Eric Ambler (The Mask of Dimitrios) and Graham Greene (The Third Man). Still, Ambler's works are written from the outside with sardonic imagination. Greene's achieve more intimacy, but he is careful to label them as mere "entertainments," like a student caught doodling when he should be cramming for exams. Le Carr?? carries no such liabilities or self-deprecations. His books are written from the inside out. "There is a kind of fatigue which only fieldmen know" observes...
...compensate for his restlessness as a diplomat, whose functions included those of intelligence operative, he began to write fiction. The Foreign Office forbids its staff to publish under their own names; Cornwell claims to have seen the name Le Carr?? ("the square") on a London shop window, though the shop was unlisted in any city directory. "Perhaps," he admits, "it's a lie I've come to believe...
Like one of his fictive double agents, the pseudonymous author scribbled in trains, constructing the character who was to be his later ego. George Smiley bears no physical relationship to his ruddy, unconventionally handsome creator. But like Le Carr??, he is an Oxonian, an avid student of German literature and an intellectual manqué. He too was married to a lady named Ann from whom he was to separate...
Cornwell's marital break did not come at once. The first thriller, Call for the Dead, based on the German connection, and A Murder of Quality, with its Etonian background, convinced critics that Le Carr?? was a real writer, not a civil service dilettante. But the books sold modestly; David Cornwell clung to his true identity and his salary. Upon the publication of his third book, the novelist instructed his accountant to wire in the unlikely event that his bank account reached £20,000. At the time, Cornwell was the father of three growing boys; the magic figure...
...Came In from the Cold earned enough to bankroll the whole Foreign Office staff. Graham Greene granted it a rare encomium: "The best spy novel I have ever read." Three and a half million readers agreed. Cornwell handed in his resignation and assumed the identity of John le Carr??, thriller writer...