I was going to write a few quick thoughts on spy fiction when I googled le Carré and found out he'd died over the weekend (I'm on a bit of a twitter break and so a bit behind in the news).
His novels are so compelling, though for me it wasn't the George Smiley book that have been my favourite. I think I'd place A Perfect Spy top of the list, with Our Kind of Traitor just behind, and Hoffman in A Most Wanted Man as my favourite adaptation.
What I loved most was the worldbuilding. I always thought that Paris Review interview where he compares himself to Tolkien was very apt:
I haven't quite figured it out yet, but there's something about the way spy fiction imbues ordinary objects and routines with meaning that I find compelling. It brings to mind Tolkien's idea of Recovery, summarized here by L. Sprague de Camp:
Tolkien discussed what he considered the purposes of a fairy story. These are three: Recovery, Escape, and Consolation.
Recovery, he said, was the regaining of a clear view of the things of this world, which he called the Primary World, by living for a while in an imaginary Secondary World. One might liken it to stirring up one’s sense of wonder so that one can view commonplace things with it. “We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red…. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness.” In an oft-quoted sentence, he concludes: “By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.
With le Carré it's the same, but instead of swords and unicorns we're dealing with umbrellas and microfiche, secret messages instead of magic.
