“A Perfect Spy” by John Le Carré, 1986
This is a sprawling, gargantuan story, quite unlike the
tight, plot-driven spy books of Le Carre’s prime. It is his Infinite
Jest, his wander, his cornucopian novel that explains the long makings of a
‘perfect spy.’ It is hard to read actually, as it is a slog at almost 600 pages. In time, it zips back and forth. It is filled with hundreds of
characters. It is tongue-in-cheek satire
to the highest degree. It is a
psychological portrait most of all. It
looks at the impact on a son of a father who is a hypocritical liar and con man. It has manipulative spies working on the same
gullible 17 year old student. It pictures a boy and later, a man with no
particular skills except deception and weak adherence to “Britain.” It makes fun of an apolitical but kind
‘liberal’ who can be on both sides of every story and has more feelings that
brains. It highlights a weak ‘yes’ man –
or so you may think. Yet even yes-men
eventually say no.
Pym is the spy in question, who eventually either goes
rogue with Czech intelligence or didn’t or did.
The story is not really about tradecraft, a plot with a point,
skullduggery or political murder. It is
a long joke about Britain – its classes, its ridiculous characters, its
clichés, its tired architecture and rundown edges – an empire that once was. Le
Carre makes fun of U.K. politicians, spies, business men, the ‘special
relationship,’ petty criminals, military men, voting rubes, chauvinism, royal
titles, silly names and village life. At
the end Le Carré makes fun of the whole spy business and the cold war itself.
The writing is heavily detailed and ornate with a
mysterious “I” occasionally appearing.
The ‘I’ might be Pym writing his own autobiography for his son,
interspersed with a dominant third-person narrator. Every individual is described a bit and then made
fun of. It’s a picture of the various
cultural tribes of Britain. It is a patchwork,
‘kitchen sink’ bildungsroman, but in a good way. And yes, Pym is as middle-class as they
come. In fact he’s from his mother’s
side of titled English gentry, if he says so himself.
Pym spies on young Communists at Oxford. He betrays a new friend in Bern, Switzerland
with a suspicious origin and no papers. He
shuts down a woman whose inheritance was stolen by Pym’s father. He saw Pym Sr.
badly treat his mother, and he alternately hates and sucks up to his dad. He
cannot form a real relationship with a woman – it is only sex or as a cover. He’s
finally recruited to His Majesty’s Service as the ‘natural’ he is and sent to
Vienna.
The ‘spy’ dimension in the book is focused on the Czech Communist
intelligence network and M6’s Austrian Station.
What Le Carre emphasizes is that much spy work is detail-oriented
regarding personal emotional issues and micro-surveillance. Pym becomes an apparently ‘good’ spymaster by
accident and his psychology becomes key after he disappears. Reflecting on his own time in Intelligence,
Le Carre nails the various types of people he worked with – only a few of whom
are actually perceptive, including some genteel British boobs. They might remind us of boardroom types at
the top of a corporate ladder.
Pym gets his start in Austria watching the Russians across
the border, handling ‘never-wozzers’ according to Le Carre. Then he strikes seeming gold because of an
old relationship, and it’s all downhill – or uphill - from there. Pym becomes a 30-year agent for both sides in
the cold war and the global class war, a double-agent and ‘middle-man’ representing
just a tiny country inhabited by two buddies who happen to be spies. In a way
the book belittles the whole, long intrigue between the two blocs. As successful spies they make it to ‘America’
and are promoted to the big time to continue spying until they are caught. And that, evidently, is perfection.
Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search
box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “spy,”
“Le Carre,” “Le Carré,” “CIA.”
And I got this at the Library! May Day Books itself has a significant amount
of books on espionage by the U.S. government, CIA and others.
Kultur Kommissar / July 2, 2025