Word: smileyness
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...Russia House (1989). That fiasco was not Ned's fault, to be sure, but he has been punished by his Service superiors anyhow, unplugged from the power loop and farmed out to teach spycraft to young recruits. On an inspired whim, Ned manages to lure his old mentor, George Smiley, out of retirement to spend an evening talking with these students. As the legendary Smiley reminisces aloud about the past history of the Service, Ned finds himself privately doing the same...
Another of the book's blessings is the reappearance of George Smiley, who has not been seen in Le Carre's fiction since Smiley's People (1980). In what is basically a walk-on or, in this case, a sit-down role, Smiley retains his enigmatic, nondescript power. At the after-dinner session, introduced by Ned as a "legend of the Service," Smiley tells the expectant students, "Oh, I don't think I'm a legend at all. I think I'm just a rather fat old man wedged between the pudding and the port." Not true. Ned paraphrases...
Good reasons exist for hoping that Smiley is wrong, although writers and readers of espionage thrillers may confess to mixed emotions on the matter. In the meantime, The Secret Pilgrim bridges a gap between the recent past and the unforeseeable future. No longer able, because of the innate honesty that has characterized his storytelling career, to offer a full-blown cold war drama, Le Carre pops out some discrete and satisfactorily chilling ice cubes...
Sooner or later, we have to start by leaving the party of self-congratulation behind, and to stop taking seriously the co-opted, grinning 60s smiley-face that proclaims, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." When we do that, we can confront the real America in the face. Did you know that the number of Americans living below the poverty level (earning less than $6000 a year) rose more than 20 percent in the decade leading to 1988, to 32 million...
...Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don't understand 'em," says Smiley in Mark Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. "Maybe you've had experience and maybe you ain't only an amature, as it were." Seattle animal importer Andy Koffman ain't no amateur. In 1986, while visiting the African nation of Cameroon, Koffman watched a 10-lb. Goliath frog leap 30 ft. across a river, and jumped to a conclusion. "The first thing I thought was, 'Wouldn't it be fun to win the Calaveras contest?' " recalls Koffman...