Fair enough, it's just that when I hear people use that description, or terms like it, a lot of the time it's in a slightly sneering manner or articulated as an admission of something, intellectual debasement or whatever.
John Le Carré - Worth Bothering With?
- Thread starter El Jefe
- Start date
Fair enough, it's just that when I hear people use that description, or terms like it, a lot of the time it's in a slightly sneering manner or articulated as an admission of something, intellectual debasement or whatever.
not my intention. i don't like the genre as a rule, but I'm sure there's good and bad airport fiction, same as anything..
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Airport thrillers do what they say on the tin. Nobody is expecting great art therein. Fucked if I'll spend a week in the sun struggling with Tolstoy. Nah I'll get some by the numbers sci fi or a good spy thriller.
Just cos it isn't high art doesn't mean t ain't worth your time. And it certainly doesn't mean it's easy to write.
Just cos it isn't high art doesn't mean t ain't worth your time. And it certainly doesn't mean it's easy to write.
quite. You've only got to look at how fucking badly Mieville fucked up "hard boiled" to see that.
"Poor George. Life's such a puzzle to you, isn't it?"
hammerntongues
Well-Known Member
Le Carre is hard work sometimes but worth the effort , the devil is in the detail and Le Carre goes into minor details of a character , the Smiley novels are a perfect example , characters sometimes take more than one novel to become important , minor events in one become major turning points in the next , he doesn`t over explain the plot ( which personally I hate ) he treats the reader like an adult , unlike Ludlum IMO .
I usually find the need to go back and re-read passages from earlier in the book to refresh my memory on details , most notably the characters are totally believable , no James Bondesque heroes or Goldfinger villains but characters with human weaknesses , one of may favourite authors , even the Post Cold war novels
I usually find the need to go back and re-read passages from earlier in the book to refresh my memory on details , most notably the characters are totally believable , no James Bondesque heroes or Goldfinger villains but characters with human weaknesses , one of may favourite authors , even the Post Cold war novels
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Sounds tedius.
I would like to read a story about spies as they really are though, psycopathic liers, manipulators and theives with only a dried up forgotten patriotism at the core of their zombie heart. The gadjets, the guns and the car-chases are irrelevent.
well like I said, i don't pay attention to the whole spy genre and it's generally potboiler stuff that does fall into the airport novel category. But that's the point of the thread, I'd realised that perhaps I was doing LeCarré a disservice and was checking
He's hard work. You've gotta concentrate - a la henry james - maybe it would be good for a flight actually...
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
I love Le Carré, but then I love genre fiction - James Clavell, Tom Clancey (his earlier stuff like Red October, Red Storm Rising and suchlike - hi later output like the NetForce stuff is utter bollocks). The Smiley books are all great, as indeed are the BBC adaptations of them, recently repeated on BBC4...
hammerntongues
Well-Known Member
Alec Guiness IS George Smiley
gnoriac
lowly seer
From the radio dramatisations the Smiley stuff seems excellent. Characters damaged by WW2 experiences living in grotty bedsits, miserable East German concrete cells and Smiley at the heart of it playing complex mind games. About as far away from James Bond as you can get. Must get round to reading the books as soon as I have some dosh.
And the TV adaptations if you havent seen them!
fakeplasticgirl
Keirleader
one of my best mate's is le carre's grandson, so i'd say yes just for that reason 
krtek a houby
Saoirse don Phalaistín!
red & green
Well-Known Member
I’m very late to this thread but I can recommend any of the books on audible actually read by John Le Carre - he’s a great reader and really brings the books to life . R.I.P
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