Word: smileyness
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...SMILEY'S PEOPLE by John le Carré; Knopf; 374pages...
There in a colorless London house lives George Smiley, Master Spy (ret.). Resolutely out of style, fat as the Michelin tire man, he has long been cuckolded by his wife and betrayed by close associates. It is tune the old cold warrior hung up his spites. Not Smiley. Once more, Author John le Carré trots him out in a flawed and misnamed adventure: Smiley's People is actually about the people's Smiley. All of his endearing characteristics, so well catalogued in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy, are herein amplified. Now heading toward...
...Magus, the author sends a Hollywood screenwriter on an engrossing psychological pilgrimage that undermines contemporary modish despair. Falconer by John Cheever. The loneliness of prison and memories is the theme of this deeply emotional novel. The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré. The further adventures of George Smiley, Britain's unlikeliest superspy, as well as a pitiless dissection of contemporary moral dilemmas. The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth. In presenting yet another of his Jewish intellectual heroes wrestling with sex and guilt, Roth enhances his reputation as one of the most consistently readable authors now at work...
...left off in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, le Carre chronicles the efforts of a demoralized Secret Service to regain its reputation and, more important, its sense of self-respect, in the wake of its infiltration by a Soviet double agent. The task falls on the shoulders of George Smiley, typically a shrewd but atypically a paunchy and unglamorous secret agent. Moving to the offensive, Smiley assigns Jerry Westerby--dubbed "the honourable schoolboy" for his noble lineage and his bookish manner--to snarl the operations of the Soviet spy network. In usual fashion, Westerby's mission takes him to Hong Kong...
...stately minuets of Smiley, the waltzes of his subordinates, the frugs and polkas of his rivals and enemies are all perfectly timed and performed in Le Carré's works; the choreographer does indeed know his nation and its people. Nevertheless, the thoroughly English writer relies a bit too heavily on foreign literary sources. Turgenev is a longtime enthusiasm, and Balzac is a novelist toward whom he is idolatrous. The Frenchman, insists Le Carré, is unparalleled for "sheer narrative thrust: everything has a material connection. There's no style, just fact, fact, fact." He has a special affection for an imagined...