Salon.com > John Le Carre

Salman Rushdie and John le Carré reconcile after 15-year feud

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:42:00 +0000

After more than a decade of what the Guardian has called "one of the most gloriously vituperative literary feuds of recent times," the writers John le Carré and Salman Rushdie have reconciled. The Guardian reports:

Last month, Rushdie told an audience at the Cheltenham literature festival that he "really" admired Le Carré as a writer. "I wish we hadn't done it," he said of the 15-year-old feud which played out in the letters pages of the Guardian in 1997.

...Now Le Carré has also extended an olive branch. "I too regret the dispute," he told the Times.

According to the Times, the two began arguing "about the merits of freedom of speech versus the limits of religious tolerance," which began in 1997 when Rushdie penned a letter in the Guardian:

British spy agency feeling shaken, not stirred

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:45:00 +0000

He may have held a license to kill for 50 years — but in the chiseled form of actor Daniel Craig, James Bond has never looked better. If only the same could be said for his real-life counterparts.

Friday has been named James Bond Day to mark half a century to the day since Sean Connery first brandished his Walther PPK revolver onscreen, and movie theaters worldwide will screen “Skyfall,” 007’s latest big-screen outing, in coming weeks.

But while the rest of the world revels in hoary old Bond clichés, staff in the corridors of MI6 — the organization whose officers and agents are charged with safeguarding Britain from foreign threats — are likely to be too shaken and stirred by their own problems to join the fun.

Hit by a series of allegations that threatens to disrupt its clandestine operations, the British spy agency — officially known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) — is currently undergoing one of the most troubling periods of its hundred-year existence.

“Killer Elite”: Jason Statham and Clive Owen's dark, stylish thriller

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:30:00 +0000

I somehow keep forgetting that the spy thriller called "Killer Elite" actually exists and that I've seen it. That probably reflects the fact that it's a generically enjoyable action film with a bit of hardboiled based-on-a-true-story-ness about it, and since it's set in the '80s and feels like an '80s movie, it seems a lot like something you must have seen years ago. This is shaping up as an awfully tepid endorsement, isn't it? But I had a reasonably good time, on the whole; if you'd enjoy watching Jason Statham and Clive Owen blow things up, and the idea of a movie that splits the difference between, say, Statham's "Transporter" films and the cynical espionage universe of John le Carré's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" appeals to you, then this is a highly viable Saturday night option. Put that on your poster!

“Our Kind of Traitor”: Has John le Carr

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:01:00 +0000

It's hard enough when presidents younger than you get elected. Imagine the day in almost every popular writer's career when he starts writing heroes younger than he is. That day came long ago for John le Carré, who used to write about older men, like his famous spymaster George Smiley. Now, turning 79, le Carré creates mostly more youthful protagonists, like the brilliant, idealistic, naive amateur spy Perry Makepiece in his 22nd novel, "Our Kind of Traitor."

Perry -- and he's always, fondly, Perry, more like a son than a hero -- is likable enough, but there's something unformed about him. We don't want to suspect commercial motives in a writer as strong as le Carré, any more than we care to suspect lechery in a friend's May-December affair. But there's something less than seemly when a writer of le Carré's pedigree and maturity keeps writing main characters playable by movie stars instead of character actors. It's as if the author of "The Perfect Spy," after a career spent making literature out of espionage, has decided he wants to be Ian Fleming after all.

“A great country is being propelled by the wrong forces”

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:00:00 +0000

Spy novels are supposed to be a form of escapism, and most still feature cardboard characters, easy moral decisions and reasonably tidy endings. But a separate vein in espionage fiction, with its roots in novels by Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, takes the spy -- an assumer of false identities and a trader in information, compelled by circumstances to betray his own values -- as an exemplar of the modern man or woman: just like us, only more so. John le Carré is today's master of the unromantic espionage novel. In "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and his other books, hardly anyone is glamorous and by the end you can't always be sure who, if anyone, is on the side of right. As a result, le Carré never runs out of timely material, no matter what the geopolitical situation may be.

Since the end of the Cold War, le Carré -- who years ago admitted to playing a "tiny" part in the conflict during a stint as a British spy in Germany from 1959 to 1964 -- has found plenty to write about in the contemporary scene. From the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 to the soulless skulduggery of multinational pharmaceutical corporations in Africa, he seems more engaged -- and decidedly more outraged -- than ever before. Le Carré's latest novel, "Absolute Friends" (to be published Jan. 12), takes on the War on Terror and the U.S. invasion of Iraq; if anything, he finds the wilderness of smoke and mirrors surrounding both more treacherous than the old-school intrigues between the Soviets and the West.

John Boorman

Mon, 02 Apr 2001 14:30:00 +0000

The 19th century French decadent Octave Mirbeau once wrote that the only thing more mysteriously attractive than beauty was corruption. Were Mirbeau around today, he'd probably smack his lips at British director John Boorman's latest film, "The Tailor of Panama." Based on the bestseller by John le Carri, the picture revels in the seedy, humid orgy of Panama in the late '90s and the various international intrigues surrounding that country's famous canal.

Boorman's playful dip into the tropical fleshpots is greatly assisted by a cast led by Pierce Brosnan as MI6 operative Andy Osnard, a scheming, avaricious scalawag hornier than Brosnan's Bond and lacking 007's redemptive patriotism. British intelligence assigns Osnard to the Panamanian backwater as punishment for his sins. Once there, he enlists expatriate ex-con Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a tailor to Panama's political elite, in an effort to destabilize the country and enrich themselves in the process. Along the way, Brosnan's whiskey-swilling Osnard attempts to screw every female in the land, including Harry's wife, Louisa, played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

“The Tailor of Panama”

Fri, 30 Mar 2001 20:32:00 +0000

Watching "The Tailor of Panama" feels a little like seeing some strange, exotic bird alight in front of you. John Boorman's film of the John le Carré novel is a sophisticated, subtle adult entertainment that is also a compliment to the audience -- it expresses faith that it will be at home with the tricky, shifting tone.

As strange as it is amid the surrounding fauna, this bird has a lineage. Le Carré's 1996 novel is itself a gloss on Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana"; Boorman's film recalls Carol Reed's marvelous 1960 film of the Graham book. They're both about innocents who cause chaos in a setting of tropical corruption. Graham's story was about a vacuum cleaner salesman (played in the film by Sir Alec Guinness) recruited by British intelligence. He's desperate for the extra money the part-time spying brings his way but he can find nothing to report on. So he makes up stories and feeds them to his intelligence handlers. The arrangement works well until his stories lead to real intrigue and real death.

“The Constant Gardener” by John le Carr

Fri, 02 Feb 2001 20:51:00 +0000

The Dostoevskian pessimism that has marked the greatest work of John le Carré reaches a new level in his latest book, "The Constant Gardener." And once it's over, the reader is astonished to read this disclaimer in an afterword from the famously opaque author: "By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard."

In the book, a pharmaceutical conglomerate tests an unstable new drug on a large number of Africans, with deadly results; crushes opposition from doctors who question the testing process; suborns the governments of nations large and small; operates its own secret service; and, not least, creatively tortures and murders those who might work against it.

This Robert Ludlum-scale conception is tame? It may be true that certain international pharmaceuticals are behaving this badly, but this unthrilling thriller so lacks momentum and grace that it's not going to force the issue into the public consciousness.

I'm going to discuss the plot in detail, so stop reading if you don't want it ruined. Le Carré's message, unsubtle here, is despairing: that in the face of such nefarious corporate power there's little to be done. Indeed, even the hero of a spy novel -- in this case, Justin Quayle, a minor British diplomat stationed in Nairobi, Kenya -- can't hope to compete.

Le Carr

Fri, 08 Dec 2000 09:00:00 +0000

John Le Carré was born David Cornwell in Poole, Dorsetshire, England in 1931. Le Carré is a spy-novel master; Graham Greene once called his 1963 bestselling book "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" the best spy novel he had ever read. Le Carré actually was a spy in the 1950s, though he denied this in 1993; for a while he considered joining a monastery.

Instead, since 1961, Le Carré has written 17 novels. Among his best are "The Looking Glass War," "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "The Honorable Schoolboy" and "Smiley's People."

In this interview with George Plimpton, Le Carré reveals why he changed his name, his time working in the intelligence service during the Cold War and why he's a total bore.

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Blame the hookers

Wed, 04 Oct 2000 19:33:00 +0000

Sony-Columbia studio executives learned a significant lesson during production of a film in Panama this month. Combining a crew of horny set builders from Ireland with the friendly climate toward prostitution in Panama does not always result in the highest levels of productivity.

The film in question is an adaptation of John le Carri's thriller "The Tailor of Panama," starring Pierce "007" Brosnan. But it might be more aptly titled "The Tail Chasers of Panama."

According to news sources in the U.K., the film's production has been delayed because Irish crew members have discovered the wonders of Panama's brothels. The crew is reportedly staying up until all hours, enraptured with sampling local examples of the world's oldest profession. When it comes time for work the next day, the spent men have lost their stamina and proceed at a snail's pace.

The Salon Interview: Ken Follett

Wed, 02 Dec 1998 19:37:00 +0000

Bestselling thriller author Ken Follett recently sat down to chat about his new book, "Hammer of
Eden." It's about a terrorist group that threatens to level San Francisco
with a man-made earthquake. Follett, a friendly, trim Englishman in
his 50s, made himself available during a visit to Manhattan, where he resided in splendor in a 35th-floor luxury hotel suite.

I hear you're heading out to San Francisco after this.
If fate is kind to you there will be an earth tremor when you arrive.

A little one, that would be nice. A big one would be not. [He laughs. Note: Follett's laugh is a simple, straightforward, "Ha
ha ha."]

You're pretty safe in New York. Apparently there are no earthquake fault
lines here.

Somebody told me that there's a fault line that runs right through the
middle of Manhattan. I don't believe it is true. We don't have the edge of
a tectonic plate here, do we?

Did you spend a lot of time out west researching "Hammer of Eden"?

Not a lot of time. I spent probably in total three or four weeks.

Do you do a lot of research? Do you have a staff to assist you?

The year in books

Wed, 24 Dec 1997 20:00:00 +0000

James Dickey died this year. So did Allen Ginsberg, who got off the best line about "Deliverance," Dickey's lone bestseller ("What James Dickey doesn't realize," Ginsberg mused, "is that being fucked in the ass isn't the worst thing that can happen to you in American life"). Isaiah Berlin died. So did Kathy Acker, William S. Burroughs, Michael Dorris, J. Anthony Lukas, James Michener, V.S. Pritchett and Murray Kempton.