John Le Carré's novels: still incredibly gay

[kindkit]

I've finished The Naive and Sentimental Lover and will write up a real post about it when I'm less tired.¹ The book turns out to be vastly more self-aware about its homoeroticism than I had expected, and it also features a good deal of ironic humor. I offer the extract below the cut for your delectation.

A little setup first. Cassidy is a married English businessman (his company manufactures prams) who has become enamored of a dissolute, pretentious writer named Shamus and Shamus's wife Helen. Cassidy has taken Shamus with him to Paris to a trade convention, and they've gone out on the tear (including a lot of kissing, snuggling, and dancing together in the street). One night Shamus, upset because his publisher has turned down his latest novel, gets so drunk that he's now passed out on the floor of their hotel bathroom.

Cassidy . . . removed [Shamus's] sodden clothing, sponged down the naked body of his heterosexual friend, and lifted, actually bore him to the double bed, where he was soon well enough to sit up and request a drink of whisky.

"Lover," Shamus said brightly, clapping his hands, "what a clever boy. You done it all alone!"

A few hours later, a few lives later the same preserver of life applied himself painstakingly to the urgent task of restoring to the bedraggled, naked figure in the bed the ideals, dimensions, and glory of his fallen familiar.

By then, the world had turned for Cassidy several times. He woke first to hear the howling of a gale and the hotel cracking like a ship and he imagined the wet pavements heaving in the torrent and the mother whores clinging to the lampposts for their lives. The storm, of Shakespearean timeliness in view of the extreme turbulence of Cassidy's immortal soul, also woke Shamus, whom Cassidy discovered at the window, leaning outwards and down, over three floors to the courtyard below. Without fuss, Cassidy went to him and gently put his arm round the powerful back.

"I dropped my fag," said Shamus.

Sixty feet below, a red ember burned miraculously in the dancing rain.

"That's all we are," Shamus said. "Bloody little glows in a great, big dark."

Having by dint of his latent mechanical skill succeeded in locking the antiquated brass latch, which by means of rods and hooks uncomfortably joined the fat window frames, Cassidy returned Shamus to the bed and climbed in after him.

He did not however sleep.

The storm ended as suddenly as it had begun, it was replaced by a Sunday quietness reminiscent of the house in Abalone Crescent [where Cassidy lives with his wife] on the rare occasions when the builders were not on site.

Straddled across the pramseller's naked limbs, the writer was finally asleep.

I'm still not sure if the implication is that they had sex; they're certainly very awkward the next day. If they did have sex, it's something they never talk about.


Here's one more little extract, unrelated to homoeroticism, that's one of my favorite moments in the book. Cassidy spends an afternoon alone at the cinema:

He liked best those films which praised the British war effort or portrayed with Fearless Honesty the Intimate Sex Life of Scandinavian Teenagers. On this occasion he was fortunate enough to find a double bill.

For some reason, this is the Le Carré novel that all his fans hate. I rather love it.

***


¹Even though my job is only part time, it takes a lot out of me for various reasons. And it's every damn day--I haven't had a full day off from work in over two weeks. Plus I haven't been sleeping well. /grumbling

Comments

[starlady]

...My first impression is that they had sex. But I could be wrong?

[kindkit]

It certainly sounds like they did. But in context it's harder to tell, because they've been doing all this kissing and snuggling while assuring each other that they're Not Gay. Here's an example of their usual behavior together, from the previous day (they've been talking about brain cells dying):

"Don't worry," said Cassidy consolingly. "You'll go on for ever."

Long embraces under the warm blankets.

"I wasn't talking about me," Shamus explained, kissing him. "I was talking about you. My cells get a lovely time. It's yours we're worried about."

If they didn't have sex, it wouldn't actually make much difference to the over-the-top eroticism of their relationship. But I still find it an interesting question.

[starlady]

Wow. Yeah, I can see how the question is almost sort of beside the point.

[kindkit]

There are also theoretically-heterosexual things going on (such as Shamus having sex with female prostitutes while Cassidy watches) but the real erotic energy is all between the two men.

[st_aurafina]

the pramseller's naked limbs

I missed the bit at the start where you explain about Cassidy working for a pram manufacturer. Then I spent some minutes thinking "pramseller" was some old-fashioned analogy for gay man, and wondering how that came into use and what it actually meant.

It's very clear to me what's going on in those excerpts, which makes me wonder how it would read to someone who didn't have experience reading for gay subtext.

[kindkit]

which makes me wonder how it would read to someone who didn't have experience reading for gay subtext

If the descriptions of the book that I've read elsewhere (including in published criticism) are anything to go by: people COMPLETELY FREAKING MISS IT. Despite, you know, the kissing and the use of the word "lover" and other stuff that I will not mention because of spoilers. I've repeatedly seen the book summarized as the story of Cassidy's love for Shamus's wife Helen, which . . . it isn't.

Years ago I put a footnote into my doctoral dissertation about the amazing ingenuity with which critics have managed to avoid queer readings of strongly homoerotic and/or queer-coded texts. In that context I was talking about scholars of Renaissance literature, but it seems to be equally true for critics and scholars of modern novels.

I spent some minutes thinking "pramseller" was some old-fashioned analogy for gay man

I love it! I want to use it in a fic now and see if we can create a new/old euphemism.

[executrix]

I wonder what the pramsellers buy, one half so precious as the stuff they sell!