John Le Carre

jc100 said:
John le Carré: Cold War novelist dies aged 89 John le Carré: Cold War novelist dies aged 89

One of my favourite authors.

Movie binge for the rest of the week. The excellent Tailor of Panama for this evening.
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Funny, I just watched this the other week. Mainly because it was mentioned by Charley Boorman on an episode of Long Way Up. His father, John Boorman directed that film.

Charley was swimming in the Panama Canal because of a scene in that movie, where Jamie Lee Curtis and Pierce Brosnan were also swimming in the same place.
 
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Lightcycle said:
Funny, I just watched this the other week. Mainly because it was mentioned by Charley Boorman on an episode of Long Way Up. His father, John Boorman directed that film.

Charley was swimming in the Panama Canal because of a scene in that movie, where Jamie Lee Curtis and Pierce Brosnan were also swimming in the same place.
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I saw that bit too.

It's not a bad film at all but there’s better Le Carre ones.
 
A very sad day. Le Carré was one of my favourite authors, someone who told stories of individuals subsumed by organisations, and often destroyed by them. The cold war stuff was obviously personal due to his own history in MI6, and does cover his best work. But his books written after the fall of the Soviet Union have, if anything, even more rage and cynicism about global corporations, unbridled capitalism, and exploitation by the 'West'.

He also ruined all other spy novels for me, except maybe Graham Greene, because they seemed silly and implausible. The grey beauracracy in his books had an authenticity that was impossible to dismiss.

Time to re-read the Karla trilogy...
 
Priller said:
A very sad day. Le Carré was one of my favourite authors, someone who told stories of individuals subsumed by organisations, and often destroyed by them. The cold war stuff was obviously personal due to his own history in MI6, and does cover his best work. But his books written after the fall of the Soviet Union have, if anything, even more rage and cynicism about global corporations, unbridled capitalism, and exploitation by the 'West'.

He also ruined all other spy novels for me, except maybe Graham Greene, because they seemed silly and implausible. The grey beauracracy in his books had an authenticity that was impossible to dismiss.

Time to re-read the Karla trilogy...
Click to expand...
JLC's wrote spy novels that were gritty, realistic and the antithesis of the novels from the other ex-MI6 author of "shaken not stirred" fame.
 
If anyone is interested, the BBC miniseries productions of Tinker Tailor and Smiley's People with Alec Guinness are on YouTube. Both are extremely well done, but brutally stingy with exposition, so can be hard to follow. Like the books, they drop you in without hand-holding (names and jargon are left for you to parse), so it takes a while to get your bearings. But once oriented, they're incredible: Guinness becomes Smiley, they grey world of the Circus comes to life, and the story drags you along.
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