Seriously fuck 2020

[sabotabby]

John le Carré has died. He was one of my favourite authors, and yes, 89 is quite old, but I'm still devastated as I've read a few of his recent books and he was still writing amazing stories right up until the end. I like this quote a lot from the obituary:

“Thematically, le Carré’s true subject is not spying,” Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The New Yorker in 1999. “It is the endlessly deceptive maze of human relations: the betrayal that is a kind of love, the lie that is a sort of truth, good men serving bad causes and bad men serving good.”

 

He wrote complicated, complicit characters with a profound humanism. In all of the jingoism and ideology of the Cold War, he found the nuance, the vulnerability, and the grace in people, and continued to do so for other conflicts, for many decades later.

Rest In Power.

Comments

[kore]

AHHHHHHHHHH MAN FUCKING FUCK.

[sabotabby]

This fucking year.

[kore]

I actually just reread Tinker Tailor for the nth fucking time, man. Cliche, but it's my absolute favourite. Once I actually read it for a grad level lit class (it was mysteries -- all the way from Singing Sands to Le Carre, including Christie and PD James and so on) (which REALLY pissed off people in the Eng Dept in 1994, fucking LOL). If you analyze the structure it's amazing, how it goes back and forth in a tightening circle.

[sabotabby]

It's fucking amazing. I think when I read it I actually knew how it ended, for some reason, and it takes nothing from the horrific tension to know that.

[kore]

I LOVE love love the miniseries with Alec Guinness, too. And the guy who played Guillam, Michael Jayston, does the audiobook, he's excellent. There's a dramatized version with Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, I haven't listened to that but want to get it. https://www.audible.com/pd/Tinker-Tailor-Soldier-Spy-Dramatised-Audiobook/B0036GMGVQ

The movie fucking sucked, tho.

[sabotabby]

The Alec Guinness one is so good. I don't think I'd have hated the movie if it was something else, but it had to compare to the Alec Guinness one, which like. Why would you bother doing another Smiley when the best possible version of Smiley exists.

[kore]

ALSO, did you know Florence Pugh was in a mini of Little Drummer Girl? She was excellent. (The film, with Diane Keaton, sucked. I think we're seeing a pattern here. I don't think Le Carre's stories are well served by film adaptations.)

[sabotabby]

Oh, the miniseries was incredible. Didn't see the movie.

Our Kind of Traitor was quite good.

[sara]

Oh fuck he was great.

[sabotabby]

Consistently amazing.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

<3

[sabotabby]

:(

[silmaril]

What all you said. I was very bummed. I think my mother is even more bummed; she is a huge fan and she was the one who introduced me to his works.

[sabotabby]

My condolences to your mom, too.