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New: Smiley timeline and maps [spoilers]
Movie reviews: rave; rave; Boorman interview
Reallife parallel to 'Constant Gardener' plot
Reviews: NYmag pan
New: audio interview
New tidbit: Boorman's 'Tailor of Panama' delayed till early 2001 [IMDb]
New: donates land
NEW: short praise
New: 'Tailor' shooting
New: mailing list
NEW: Revisits Bonn
1931: Born David John Moore Cornwell in Poole, Dorsetshire, on 19 October
1936: Mother deserts, father in and out of jail
English boarding schools with younger brother
1947: stages 'nervous breakdown' to avoid returning to Sherborne
1947: Berne University (Switzerland)
Oxford: first in modern languages, degree in German literature
Intelligence officer
Two years teaching at Eton
c1958-63: British foreign service, five years in Bonn and Hamburg, translates for five different British prime ministers
Wife: Jane; four sons and eleven grandchildren
Lives in Cornwall and Hampstead
Refused honour from Margaret Thatcher
1987: First visit to Russia "the most exciting single cultural leap I ever made"
199?: Newsweek reports (March '99) that Stanley Kubrick was friends with le Carré and asked him to work on the film, Eyes Wide Shut. But they couldn't agree on how to adapt it: "Locking minds with him was very exciting," said le Carré, "but mercifully, I never wrote for him. Every writer who did said they lost years of their lives. Stanley was very seductive, but he wanted writers to write what he saw in his own head. I suspect half a dozen writers went through the same sheep-dip on the movie."
1997: Internet connection for research (hi JlC! many thanks for the great great reading! :^)
1997: Defends Islamic fatwah against Rushdie, slaughtered in letters column [Harper's article]
March 1999 comments on UK spy service
Modern favorites: John Cheever, Saul Bellow, GG Marquez interview about faves, short note
Sources: Very thorough fan page, detailed interview-bio, publisher page, bio sketch from a Jewish perspective; Salon chat, fanpage, another fanpage, short Encarta bio, short fanpage, short profile, Encyclopedia Britannica w/funny pic, Nat'l Review bio, short CNN
"John le Carré-with-an-accented-e" is a searchpattern from hell-- will the accent matter? the capitalisation? the embedded blankspace?
takes place winter 1961
recurring characters: Smiley, Guillam, Maston, Inspector Mendel, Mundt
Movie version 1967, Sidney Lumet's "The Deadly Affair" IMDb
takes place spring 1960 (before Call for the Dead)
recurring characters: Smiley
TV version 1991: IMDb
recurring characters: Control, Mundt, Smiley, Guillam
Huge success. Classy 1965 film version by Martin Ritt with Richard Burton also successful. IMDb
"Call for the Dead" plus "Murder of Quality", I think
I have a special affection for this one.
recurring characters: Smiley, Control, Guillam
Movie version 1970 IMDb
This one left me cold.
His least successful novel, not about spying, but his side of a surely-unique case in which all three members of a menage a trois have published separate versions of the experience. (I have the names of the other two versions somewhere, but I'm not sure when I'll track them down. One was a novel by the other man, one a short story or essay by the woman.)
One of the three died young in a car accident-- the woman, I think.
timeline and maps: [spoilers]
recurring characters: Smiley, Ann, Karla, Control, Peter Guillam, Inspector Mendel, Connie Sachs, Percy Alleline, Bill Haydon, Roy Bland, Toby Esterhase, Sam Collins, Jerry Westerby, Fawn, Nick de Silsky, Paul Skordeno, Millie McCraig, Steve Mackelvore, Tufty Thesinger, Oliver Lacon, Roddy Martindale, Miles Sercombe
Massively successful, the first of the Karla sequence, built around a whodunit that's 'spoilered' in the later books of the series (so read this one first!).
The characters in these books are some of the most beautifully drawn in modern literature.
TV miniseries 1980 IMDb with Alec Guinness as Smiley. Le Carré said Guinness's performance, while excellent, did not match his inner image, which was so overwhelmed he's lost the ability to write about Smiley (for now).
LeCarré on Smiley: "He grew out of two people. One was a spook I was working with who wrote novels under the name of John Bingham and was otherwise the Lord Clanmorris." Le Carré did not name the other man, saying only that he was a favorite Oxford lecturer "who became effectively my confessor and godfather." The Sunday Times newspaper said he was the Rev. Vivian Green, Le Carré's former tutor at Oxford.
timeline and maps: [spoilers]
timeline and maps: [spoilers]
TV miniseries 1982: IMDb
timeline and maps: [spoilers]
Issue: Israel-Palestine
Le Carré "received such awful letters from organized Jewish groups that I never felt on safe ground after that"
Movie version 1984 by George Roy Hill with Diane Keaton IMDb (le Carré makes a cameo appearance)
Quote: "I would like somebody to remake The Little Drummer Girl and eradicate the memory of the existing version." [source]
Closely modelled on le Carré's conman father
TV miniseries 1984: IMDb
Issue: Cold War arms race
Movie version 1990 IMDb
My view of this is that it's a James Bond parody, with the cliches-- supercriminal, island fortress, incognito infiltrator, hot love-babe-- shrunk to plausibly human scale.
Issue: International arms trade
Paramount bought movie rights, Sydney Pollack was to have directed, Robert Towne wrote a version that was rejected
Issue: Ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus Mountains.
An odd little reworking of Graham Greene's entertainment, "Our Man in Havana". To be filmed by Tony Scott? [Rumor source]
Issue: US imperialism in Central America
Audio excerpt (AIFF format, slow to load, many four-letter words)
Salon interview, another interview
Issue: post-Communist-Russian organised crime
Positive reviews: UK Times "master of the psychological novel", UK Times w/plot summary and spoilers "credible and compelling hero", Telegraph "well written",
Christian Science Monitor "exciting, thoughtful story", Irish Times "beautifully written, impeccably researched and suffused with humanity", APB "deftly plotted", Booklist "the reader marvels", Time "fascinating journey", Nat'l Review "a decidedly unusual, satisfying book", Entertainment Weekly "A Minus"
Somewhat negative: Houston "one is reminded of James Bond"
Epinions page: Kiersten "a page-turner", Harriet "a well-done tale", Jorn "familiar territory"
The Constant Gardener
(2000)
Reviews: positive: UK Telegraph; tepid ThisIsLondon
Uncollected story: "The Growth of Marie Louise"
JlC recommends Wodehouse, and Ford's Good Soldier. Also Barbara Tuchman
Chapter on Smiley from a book on le Carré
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A Perfect Spy
(1986)
The Russia House
(1989)
The Secret Pilgrim
(1990)
The Night Manager
(1993)
Our Game
(1995)
The Tailor Of Panama
(1996)
Misc:
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