John le Carre: Novelist, spy, teacher of the dark secrets
When I was in my teenage years, if asked who my favorite writer was I would name Ernest Hemingway without hesitation.
He wrote numerous books of fiction about being involved in the world where warfare was a popular topic.
As I slogged through my adult years, I became dedicated to the wondrous spy fictions written by John le Carre, who died this month at age 89, leaving 25 excellent novels on bookshelves around the world.
His work was so well done, many of the novels were converted into delightful screenplays.
My favorite among his films was “The Russia House,” which starred the popular Sean Connery (as Barley, a London book publisher), who had a remarkable, suave personality in every movie role. The “seriously beautiful” Michelle Pfeiffer played the female lead, Katya.
With its wonderful title, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” was published in 1963. It catapulted le Carre to international fame. Famed writer Graham Greene called it “the best spy story I have ever read.”
The writer’s childhood was colorfully spent with a father who could only be called a con man.
After reading several of the novels, I decided that le Carre’s secret was the avoidance of clichés, which I believe often soil many books.
Then one day, I was skimming through one of his books and the phrase “salt of the Earth” leaped off the page.
But later I realize that it was just one of his characters who had sullied the text with the overused phrase, not le Carre himself.
His description of spies explained that “What do you think spies are: Priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes: Pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.”
One of his anchor characters was George Smiley, described as the dowdy, pudgy, restless and brilliant intelligence official. He often faced his Russian nemesis, Karla, a KGB mastermind.
The novels expose many dark-stained characters that most of us believe we’ve never met.
In his later years, le Carre drew such well sketched characters as in “A Most Wanted Man.” One reviewer wrote, “The sheer desperation of those whose job it is to present another 9/11, another Madrid commuter train, another London Tube attack, is written as a slow-burning fire in every line and that’s what makes it nearly impossible to mark the page and go to sleep.”
The death of the sharp spy novelist means that his followers will have to give up on expecting another book from him this or any other year.