The 'Who Cares?' Attitude of Le Carre

I will be honest. I consider the writing of John le Carre exquisite. Imagery, language, plot, deep-thinking, even the incompleteness that tropes through his prose, makes him irresistible.

But I do know his limits.

A previous book "Little Drummer Girl", dealing with my neck-of-the-woods, had a good few factual errors as well as a left-wing bias. (*)

And so, I loved it when I caught this in the New York Times' review of his latest novel, "A Most Wanted Man":-

“I know about interrogation,” he said, alluding to his days as a British spy in the 1950s. “I’ve done interrogations, and I can tell you this: By extracting information under torture, you make a fool of yourself. You obtain information that isn’t true. You receive names of people who are supposedly guilty and aren’t...

Mr. le Carré was recruited as a spy while still a college student. Working for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat-cum-secret agent, he began writing thrillers under a pseudonym. (His real name is David Cornwell.) His earlier books had the cold war as their backdrop, and while he is not nostalgic for that time, he said it “was a softer world, of course, mine.”

“I probably lived in a charmed time,” he added. “The cold war was fought between people of the same culture. Basically, it was.”

“Of course, the Russians tortured wholesale,” he continued.

Whew. He almost overlooked that.



(*)

The Little Drummer Girl was a controversial book which managed to offend both Palestinians and Israelis by presenting the justice of both of their causes and the savagery of both sides' methods...(it) concerns an Israeli plot to catch one of the most important Palestinian terrorists, Khalil. The Israeli scheme centers on the terrorist's preference for using European women recruited to the Palestinian cause, and the relative visibility of Khalil's brother, who is part of the terrorist organization. To make the plot work, Kurtz, the Israeli leading the operation, must infiltrate an agent into the terrorist group. He chooses Charlie, an actress with pro-Palestinian leanings. Kurtz's first task is to convince Charlie to do it against her convictions. The method used is brilliant, playing on Charlie's deepest insecurities and need for love rather than trying to convert her to the Israeli point of view. Now Charlie is ready to start on an adventure that will take her across Europe and to Palestinian training camps in Lebanon...The Little Drummer Girl represents an unusual thematic departure from Hollywood's usual pro-Israel line, only possible because it was based on a novel whose moral ambiguities could not be safely rewritten while preserving the essential qualities of the novel. This film presents a point of view many people have never seen...