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more LeCarré reading
I've been reading lots of John LeCarré recently; I've finished the Smiley books and am now cautiously branching out into the others.
The Honourable Schoolboy didn't do much for me, perhaps because I found the protagonist, Jerry Westerby, both tedious and unsympathetic, and Smiley and co. were barely in it (although it was interesting to see them in a near-antagonist role). Smiley's People wrapped up the Smiley-Karla relationship in a moving, if not always believable, way.
After finishing those, I went back to the early Smiley books, Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality. Call for the Dead amped up the general aura of m/m homoeroticism in Le Carré's work with the extraordinary relationship between Smiley and Dieter Frey, who is first Smiley's student at a German university in the 1930s, then an agent working under him during WWII, and finally an East German operative. This is how Smiley describes him to his new friend and colleague Mendel:
At the end of the book, when Smiley has to kill Dieter by pushing him off a bridge, he's devastated:
Alongside this tragic male/male love story, the book features a happier, domestic one in Smiley's relationship with Mendel, a police officer who helps Smiley with his investigations. There's a near-instant rapport between them, and after Smiley is attacked in his own flat, he ends up staying with Mendel, who looks after him with cups of tea and (when Smiley is attacked again and hospitalized) a pot of honey from Fortnum's and a book about beekeeping, which is Mendel's hobby. Mendel is unmarried, and when he gives Smiley a tour of the house, "Smiley was amused to notice the extreme tidiness, the almost feminine neatness of everything about him" (42). Mendel's affection and domesticity put him in something of a wifely role to Smiley, a "good wife" whose counterpart is Ann, Smiley's actual "bad" wife, who is living in Zurich with a lover. The novel concludes with two contrasting scenes: Smiley, Mendel, and Peter Guillam having a pleasant dinner at Smiley's all-male club, and Smiley catching a midnight flight to Zurich to rejoin Ann, although he no longer hopes for happiness with her. Contented male domesticity is a refuge, but not a permanent possibility.
To be fair, contented domesticity of any kind never lasts long in the Le Carré novels I've read. It's interrupted by betrayal, by circumstances, or occasionally by the man's own inability to commit himself to a woman (e.g. Peter Guillam's new woman in every book). Nevertheless, men's relationships with other men read as both more important and (generally) more satisfying for the people involved than male/female relationships, in part because Le Carré seems incapable of writing a three-dimensional female character; they're all either dangerous betrayers (Ann, Elsa Fennan) or clingy emotional masochists. It's an example of what I think of as the difficulty (impossibility?) of heterosexuality in a patriarchal society. If a man thinks of women as less human than men, how can he possibly love one? Surely the only appropriate objects for his love are other men . . . except that that's forbidden, and such love can only be felt in an incomplete, shadowy form.
Unsurprisingly, actual gay or bisexual men don't generally fare well in the Le Carré books I've read. There's Bill Haydon, the liar and betrayer. There's Fielding, the sociopathic killer in A Murder of Quality. And there are a few minor figures, such as weak, gossippy, malicious Roddy Martindale. The only exception in this sorry bunch is Jim Prideaux, Bill Haydon's (implied) lover, who ultimately repudiates Haydon in the strongest possible terms by killing him. And yet Prideaux's love for Haydon is not unlike Smiley's for Ann, and Le Carré sets up clear parallels between the two relationships. I have the sense, reading Le Carré, of a writer struggling with culturally-engrained homophobia; it'll be interesting to see if his later books are better in that respect. (ETA: I should also have mentioned the one f/f relationship I've seen in Le Carré, Connie Sachs's with Hillary. It doesn't seem like an emotionally healthy relationship, and Connie is pretty much a mess, but then she was already a mess in Tinker, Tailor, long before we readers (and possibly Le Carré himself) knew she was a lesbian. I was amused by the moment when Connie dismissively mentions all the classic arguments for why she should break up with the younger, more feminine Hillary and let her have a "normal" life; there's a definite satirical element to the scene.)
Today at the library I picked up Our Game (1995), The Secret Pilgrim (1991), which I'm nervously looking forward to because it features Bill Haydon backstory, and Le Carré's only "mainstream" novel, The Naive and Sentimental Lover (1971). I've skimmed through some of the last, having heard about it, and it looks to be in the running for "most homoerotic novel ever written about two ostensibly straight character by a non-LGBT identified writer." Seriously, folks. It features two men who call each other "lover," say "I love you," sleep in the same bed, kiss, and yet never have sex because they are Not Queer. I will definitely be posting about this one once I've read it properly.
The Honourable Schoolboy didn't do much for me, perhaps because I found the protagonist, Jerry Westerby, both tedious and unsympathetic, and Smiley and co. were barely in it (although it was interesting to see them in a near-antagonist role). Smiley's People wrapped up the Smiley-Karla relationship in a moving, if not always believable, way.
After finishing those, I went back to the early Smiley books, Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality. Call for the Dead amped up the general aura of m/m homoeroticism in Le Carré's work with the extraordinary relationship between Smiley and Dieter Frey, who is first Smiley's student at a German university in the 1930s, then an agent working under him during WWII, and finally an East German operative. This is how Smiley describes him to his new friend and colleague Mendel:
He was a pupil of mine, an intelligent boy and remarkable to look at. (. . .) Dieter was a very handsome boy, with a high forehead and a lot of unruly black hair. The lower part of his body was deformed, I think by infantile paralysis. He carried a stick and leaned heavily upon it when he walked. Naturally he cut a rather romantic figure at a small university; they thought him Byronic and so on. In fact I could never find him romantic myself. The Germans have a passion for discovering young genius, you know, from Herder to Stefan George--somebody lionized them practically from the cradle. But you couldn't lionize Dieter. There was a fierce independence, a ruthlessness about him which scared off the most determined patron. This defensiveness in Dieter derived not only from his deformity, but his race, which was Jewish. How on earth he kept his place at University I could never understand. It was possible that they didn't know he was a Jew--his beauty might have been southern, I suppose, Italian, but I don't really see how. To me he was obviously Jewish. (86)If you weren't keeping score, that was three mentions of Dieter's physical attractiveness in just over half a page.
At the end of the book, when Smiley has to kill Dieter by pushing him off a bridge, he's devastated:
He looked down into the fog and could see nothing.Besides Smiley's grief, there's guilt. "Dieter had let him do it," Smiley thinks later. He "had not fired the gun, had remembered their friendship when Smiley had not" (139). Smiley is led to doubt the morality of his own work for British intelligence ("Dieter, mercurial, absolute, had fought to build a civilization. Smiley, rationalistic, protective, had fought to prevent him." [139]) and the book concludes with Smiley in despair.
"Dieter!" he cried in anguish. "Dieter!" He shouted again, but his voice choked and tears sprang to his eyes. "Oh dear God what have I done, oh Christ, Dieter, why didn't you stop me, why didn't you hit me with the gun, why didn't you shoot?" He pressed his clenched hands to his face, tasting the salt blood in the palms mixed with the salt of his tears. He leant against the parapet and cried like a child. (135)
Alongside this tragic male/male love story, the book features a happier, domestic one in Smiley's relationship with Mendel, a police officer who helps Smiley with his investigations. There's a near-instant rapport between them, and after Smiley is attacked in his own flat, he ends up staying with Mendel, who looks after him with cups of tea and (when Smiley is attacked again and hospitalized) a pot of honey from Fortnum's and a book about beekeeping, which is Mendel's hobby. Mendel is unmarried, and when he gives Smiley a tour of the house, "Smiley was amused to notice the extreme tidiness, the almost feminine neatness of everything about him" (42). Mendel's affection and domesticity put him in something of a wifely role to Smiley, a "good wife" whose counterpart is Ann, Smiley's actual "bad" wife, who is living in Zurich with a lover. The novel concludes with two contrasting scenes: Smiley, Mendel, and Peter Guillam having a pleasant dinner at Smiley's all-male club, and Smiley catching a midnight flight to Zurich to rejoin Ann, although he no longer hopes for happiness with her. Contented male domesticity is a refuge, but not a permanent possibility.
To be fair, contented domesticity of any kind never lasts long in the Le Carré novels I've read. It's interrupted by betrayal, by circumstances, or occasionally by the man's own inability to commit himself to a woman (e.g. Peter Guillam's new woman in every book). Nevertheless, men's relationships with other men read as both more important and (generally) more satisfying for the people involved than male/female relationships, in part because Le Carré seems incapable of writing a three-dimensional female character; they're all either dangerous betrayers (Ann, Elsa Fennan) or clingy emotional masochists. It's an example of what I think of as the difficulty (impossibility?) of heterosexuality in a patriarchal society. If a man thinks of women as less human than men, how can he possibly love one? Surely the only appropriate objects for his love are other men . . . except that that's forbidden, and such love can only be felt in an incomplete, shadowy form.
Unsurprisingly, actual gay or bisexual men don't generally fare well in the Le Carré books I've read. There's Bill Haydon, the liar and betrayer. There's Fielding, the sociopathic killer in A Murder of Quality. And there are a few minor figures, such as weak, gossippy, malicious Roddy Martindale. The only exception in this sorry bunch is Jim Prideaux, Bill Haydon's (implied) lover, who ultimately repudiates Haydon in the strongest possible terms by killing him. And yet Prideaux's love for Haydon is not unlike Smiley's for Ann, and Le Carré sets up clear parallels between the two relationships. I have the sense, reading Le Carré, of a writer struggling with culturally-engrained homophobia; it'll be interesting to see if his later books are better in that respect. (ETA: I should also have mentioned the one f/f relationship I've seen in Le Carré, Connie Sachs's with Hillary. It doesn't seem like an emotionally healthy relationship, and Connie is pretty much a mess, but then she was already a mess in Tinker, Tailor, long before we readers (and possibly Le Carré himself) knew she was a lesbian. I was amused by the moment when Connie dismissively mentions all the classic arguments for why she should break up with the younger, more feminine Hillary and let her have a "normal" life; there's a definite satirical element to the scene.)
Today at the library I picked up Our Game (1995), The Secret Pilgrim (1991), which I'm nervously looking forward to because it features Bill Haydon backstory, and Le Carré's only "mainstream" novel, The Naive and Sentimental Lover (1971). I've skimmed through some of the last, having heard about it, and it looks to be in the running for "most homoerotic novel ever written about two ostensibly straight character by a non-LGBT identified writer." Seriously, folks. It features two men who call each other "lover," say "I love you," sleep in the same bed, kiss, and yet never have sex because they are Not Queer. I will definitely be posting about this one once I've read it properly.