Word: perfectly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Perfect Spy arrives in the U.S. with its cover blown. Published last month in the U.K., John le Carre's eleventh novel could hardly pass review without someone noting that the main character is a British intelligence officer, as was the author, and that another persona is a dead ringer for Le Carre's father, a notorious con man named Ronald Cornwell...
Cynics might say that he did it for the publicity, and cynics might be right. But a fair reading of the novel suggests more complex motives. A Perfect Spy has all the strengths and some of the weaknesses of an extended emotional purge: intensity, authenticity, flashes of black humor, a tendency to camp on obsessions and nurse the morose. Le Carre's job is not easy. In order finally to put his father to rest with forgiveness and love, he must first disinter the scoundrel, who died in 1975. Draped in the same checkered past as Ronald Cornwell, Rickie...
...ironic burden of being a Perfect Spy is that the distinction is based on distortion. Masters of deceit, according to Le Carre, are borderline psychopaths. One of Magnus' colleagues speculates, "What I recognise in Pym is what I recognise in myself: a spirit so wayward that, even while I am playing a game of Scrabble with my kids it can swing between the options of suicide, rape and assassination." Pym's first wife Belinda contributes the observation, "He was a new man every day. He'd come home one person, I'd try to match him. In the morning...
...Pentagon planners, was dictated by the military necessity of hitting Libya in the middle of the night. It was just one factor in an enormously complex operation that involved 150 aircraft and resulted in the launching of more than 60 tons of bombs. The outcome was far from perfect: the U.S. lost one F-111 fighter-bomber along with its two-man crew and unintentionally caused some civilian casualties and damage. But El Dorado also produced more than a few nuggets of military gold, including severe damage to at least eight Soviet-built Libyan planes and Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi...
UMASS is far from perfect: some lab facilities are crowded, as are many classrooms, and the school has none of the usual collegial amenities for the all-commuter student body or staff. McCormack's director, Edmund Beard, admits that UMASS "has all the problems of a new kid on the block and then some." But, he adds, "it's well on the way to making a name for itself, and it's the greatest educational bargain (next year's in-state tuition: $1,296) in New England...