A Two-Summer Read

 “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