What I Am Reading: "The Honourable Schoolboy" by John le Carré
I wasn’t interested in spy novels before Donald Trump became President. As the recipient of a political science education that investigated the world more in terms of nation-building and asymmetrical warfare than in terms of great power politics, I used to believe that the Cold War was best left where it lay. But, suddenly, Russia has come back in to our lives; and I decided to at least stick a toe in the genre that drew its lifeblood from the same sort of secretive conflict that seems to be exposed to more sunlight every day as the Mueller investigation progresses.
Being a part-time snob, I passed over the airport thrillers in favor of some of the genre’s sophisticates. I was particularly drawn to John le Carré because of an article I came across contrasting him with Ian Fleming; and his recurring protagonist, George Smiley, with James Bond (le Carré’s own remarks on the subject over the years have made this a topic of plenty of articles). This sat well with me: I confess to not having much familiarity with James Bond beyond his general cultural presence, but I was glad to find a rebuttal to this cartoonish icon of square-jawed masculinity. You can thank Joss Whedon and Season 5 of “Angel” for imbuing me with the conviction that we owe more to bureaucrats than we do to action heroes; and George Smiley is le Carré’s embrace of that ethos. He is famously a schlubby, unintimidating spymaster with an unfaithful wife, who is most often found in a research library or waging departmental battles. Le Carré tried to model Smiley and other characters realistically, on his experiences working for British intelligence agencies in the ‘50s and early ‘60s.
I first read “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” earlier in 2018, wanting to jump right in to le Carré’s best work. “The Honourable Schoolboy” is a sequel, the continuation of the “Karla Trilogy” that pits le Carré against his Soviet equivalent. This novel is set in the far east, contemporaneous with America’s pullout from Vietnam. (Le Carré in fact pays homage to another novel on my list: Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American,” set during America’s entrée to Vietnam). Like “Tinker,” “Schoolboy” follows the characters as they uncover a plot; but neither book is a whodunit, and the characters are frequently in possession of knowledge that is not revealed to the reader until dramatically appropriate. Despite this, le Carré narrates the story in the past tense, and often frames a segment in Smiley’s favor by noting the inaccuracy of any criticisms of his actions on the subsequent pages. When I occasionally have difficulty following the complicated plot, I proceed onward and trust that it is will all be revealed by the characters in due time.
In brief, the novel is about an attempt by MI6 (“the Circus,” in le Carré’s fictional jargon) to appropriate a Chinese agent that the Russians are trying to retrieve. The novel features a cast of old journalists and China hands that have collected in and moved between Hong Kong and several other bastions of colonialism in the final days of empire. Le Carré apparently traveled around the region at the time for research purposes. The book ends on an ambiguous note, as the mission is not wholly successful. Despite being part of a trilogy, the novel could easily stand alone as its own story. Despite this, I am eager to proceed to Smiley’s showdown with Karla, the Soviet spymaster. I am at the point where I avoid reading any analyses of Smiley, as I don’t want anything spoiled. This would indicate that le Carré is doing something right.