Monday, June 29, 2009

The Complete Smiley

Radio 4 is continuing its series of dramatizations of John le Carré's spy novels with George Smiley. This Sunday, July 4, brings "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold". The first two, "Call For the Dead" and "A Murder of Quality", were excellently done: in particular, for those who remember the novels, Smiley's imaginary conversations with his estranged (divorced?) wife Lady Ann.

In the late 70s and early 80s, I read all of le Carré up to and including "The Little Drummer Girl". I read a lot of "complete works in progress" back then, as well as "complete works" where death had conveniently drawn the line. Those in English were my only respite from 24/7 German. I read everything I could get my hands on by Eric Ambler, Dorothy Sayers, Barbara Pym, Raymond Chandler, Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Bowen, Margaret Drabble, Beckett, Trollope, Thackeray, Nietzsche (the lot), Dickens ...

Later, in the 80s and 90s, it was Max Frisch, Fay Weldon, Thomas Bernhard (alles), Schopenhauer, Sloterdijk, Robert Walser, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Eudora Welty, Margaret Atwood, Barbara Gowdy, Fontane, Alice Munro, Barbara Kingsolver ...

While reading each writer, I was in a special mood and atmosphere that I can still remember. The Radio 4 series brought that back for le Carré.

There are plenty of lady writers in those reading lists, and not by accident. Too often I would become fascinated with a writer like Bellow, Thomas Mann or Frisch, then suddenly be fed up with the smug, intelligent-adolescent personalities of their main characters. Great prose, of course, but populated by predatory, self-pitying intellectuals. I meantersay, no self-respecting man can spend much time in front of a mirror, reading such stuff. So depressing.

11 comments:

AJP CROWN said...

I'd be happy to listen to Radio 4 all day long, but I don't know how it's done.

A writer I'm getting increasingly pissed-off with is C.V. Wedgwood -- she of The Thirty Years War, & much more -- God, she's got such a dated, pompous style which she was, clearly, very pleased with.

Stuart Clayton said...

I sent you a link to the Radio 4 home page. All you need to have installed is RealPlayer, then you can use the "Listen" button in the top righthand corner. Do you use a Mac? Do you use Firefox?

Stuart Clayton said...

Don't know Wedgwood. Does/did she write on historical topics? I've had the impression you read a lot of history. The little I know about history accretes slowly, and indirectly, as I read philosophy and sociology.

AJP CROWN said...

Mac & firefox, yes. Actually I prefer safari, but I've got firefox.

AJP CROWN said...

Yes, she writes, or wrote, on the English Civil War & the 30 years war -- the seventeenth century, in other words. As Steve /LH said, she's very good at untangling complicated situations. A good writer, too.

i don't know anything about sociology. I'm interested in some philosophy, Nietzsche, nothing too academic, but it's too time consuming to give it the attention it deserves. I'm interested in learning a bit more about Wittgenstein though, as I keep saying.

Stuart Clayton said...

A good writer with a "dated, pompous style"?

Stuart Clayton said...

if you have trouble finding the BBC version of RealPlayer to download (supposing you don't already have it), I can send it to you. Zipped, it's 14 MB in size.

jamessal said...

Too often I would become fascinated with a writer like Bellow, Thomas Mann or Frisch, then suddenly be fed up

I know exactly what you mean about Bellow. I love him to pieces right until I can't stand another fucking word. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I happened to hate the novella of his I most recently read, A Theft. I've been pretty crazy about him otherwise.

AJP CROWN said...

A good writer with a "dated, pompous style"?
Yes, I'd say that sums her up. I bet they've got her at your local library, they have such good ones in Germany.

AJP CROWN said...

I love Saul Bellow.

AJP CROWN said...

I meant of course Bellow the man. Terrible writer.

Thanks for the Radio 4 link. I've now got it marked at the top of my screen. I'll try the Smiley, though he's got to beat Alec Guinness, which is hard.