Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
by John le Carré · first published 1974
31% recommend69% neutral
George Smiley is assigned to uncover the identity of the double agent operating in the highest levels of British Intelligence.
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…productive life, and I hope a happy one, but this is still a great loss. So many of the books are magnificent in their depth. So are the filmed adaptations: the BBC productions of Smiley's People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and the more recent film of the latter; and the Night Manager miniseries. What has also given me a lot of pleasure was the BBC Radio productions of the eight George Smiley books [1]. They've often kept…
on “John le Carré has died” ↗…popularity when written. But maybe it only could get popular at the time, when the English were in need of a certain kind of hero. I decided to re-read (via audiobook) my favorite John Le Carre novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (narrator Michael Jayston, one of the best audiobook performances I have ever listened to). So wildly different to have them back-to-back. It made me appreciate Le Carre all the more. Speaking of audiobooks,…
on “Becoming James Bond” ↗…Who Came in From the Cold". If you enjoyed this movie and the way it is narrated, please do yourself a favor and watch all the BBC mini series from the 70ies/80ies based on John Le Carré books, namely "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "Smiley's People", and "A Perfect Spy" (or read the books, John Le Carré is an excellent writer, and "A Perfect Spy" can be compared to works by Dickens). You usually have no clue what is going on,…
on “The joy of reading books you don't understand” ↗…Faulkner's career - regardless of how much goading you gave it - could produce "As I Lay Dying." Wake me when a GPT model can write a thriller that delivers the rainslick weltschmerz and dread of Le Carre's 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.' Until I see an AI put out something on par with "Move. Once you stop, you never start again: there is a special stage-fright that can make you dry up and walk away, that burns your fingers when you…
on “Google Bans ‘Downloader’ App: TV Outfits Claim Browser Violates Injunction” ↗Are you saying that libraries should only have sensible holdings? Which ones are those? I once checked out le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It was something of an action novel, and it was entertaining. Was that one OK?
on “California Cuts All State Funding for Libraries ” ↗"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" was a thinly fictionalized retelling of this period. John le Carré's contempt for the people in the organizations he wrote about could be seen as a reaction to the excesses of the era Greene wrote about.…
on “Graham Greene Against the World” ↗…Shakespeare authorship controversy than a salvo in it) Ian Banks, Consider Phlebas (first book in the Culture series, well-written but way way longer than it should be, which is annoying) John le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (re-read this spy classic, for Le Carre's style) Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (peppered with nerdy references from the 80ies and 90ies, the style is annoying at first, but grows on…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading right now?” ↗So when I started at college, I took a freshman lit class. So first week, the professor assigns a book for us to read and report on. So I read the book, which was "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" by Carré and turn in my report on it. So then instructor reads and grades our book reports and returns them to us. So I'm expecting all her markup to be related to my review of the story content.…
on “So you want to write a technical book” ↗And they were available in the US about 5 years ago as "flipback books". I have John le Carré's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" in the format. It is kind of cute and smaller than modern phones, but the claims that were made at the time that it was going to be an ebook killer never materialized and eventually they stopped selling…
on “Tiny Books Fit in One Hand. Will They Change the Way We Read?” ↗Counterpoint: I know who Ian Fleming is, but I had to Google Le Carré. I am aware of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and some of his other works, but they aren't lodged in my head the way James Bond is. And I think that's the point of Fleming's essay. He wasn't writing to be high art, he was writing to make money.…
on “Ian Fleming Explains How to Write a Thriller” ↗…Smiley and that's how espionage and operations are really like" Much more realistic of course, but reality is likely more trivial. Like the case about Kim Philby, the famous spy le Carré wrote about in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy". The book is way more complex and the characters engage in way more sophisticated double plays and schemes, than in reality, where they make quite trivial and dumb misstakes all the time.
on “John le Carré’s Search for a Vocation” ↗After le Carré and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy came up here earlier this week[1], I came across a $1.95 copy at a used bookstore. I'm sure I was primed to notice it after having just seen it discussed online, but it still felt like a neat bit of serendipity…
on “English cottage where John le Carré wrote Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is for sale” ↗John Le Carre’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”and Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” were constant companions for me on road trips (sadly no English unabridged “Foucault’s Pendulum” exists)
on “Cassette tapes are making a comeback?” ↗