Call for the Dead

[are_youready]

I am very excited at the prospect that soon I will be more than half of the fics posted on AO3 for a particular fandom. To be fair, that isn't hard, since the fandom in question is Call for the Dead by John le Carre, a little known 1961 crime thriller whose only modern relevance is that its protagonist George Smiley went on to, more than a decade later, star in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. But honestly? I've been a fan of the Smiley series for a year and a half now, and read most of them multiple times. CFTD is actually a wonderful little book, which makes its little point really well and paints extremely vivid characters.

Spoilers below, I expect.
 Now, I've read this book three, maybe four times in the last year, and listened to the BBC Radio adaptation at least twice. The only reason I've never seen the 1966 film is because I can't find it. And honestly? I feel like CFTD showcases some aspects of the Smiley series that I love, some of which even get overturned in later books.

We see what brings George joy. George, in this book.... he's morally conflicted, true, and of course he's very sad, because George is a fundamentally melancholic person, but we see another side, too, one that's overshadowed by personal tragedy and vendetta in later books: George likes his job. He's the sort of person that, in the absence of morals, would take people apart to see how they work. We see him seeking thrills and enjoying investigating. He's also, and I feel very embarrassed saying this because it sounds very sexual, and quite honestly it is, a man who likes to admire. CFTD is full of men who George likes and admires, (Fennan, Mendel, Dieter), whereas other books surround him with the kind of people he despises, or people he needs to use, or tragic victims and worthy adversaries. No one he can make a personal connection with.  Quite honestly, Elsa Fennan may have been protecting herself with that little speech but she was also right, and everyone knows it. Secret Police are Secret Police, and they're evil wherever they are. And they're not "good men at the mercy of a bad system" no matter how many times George quits his job to try and distance himself from the administrators who give him his orders. He's not Leamas, a Good Hard Working Slightly Proletarian Mascy McMasc Who Is Honorable And Has Integrity. He's an aging ugly emasculated hypocrite who knows the status quo is evil and goes along anyway, and takes pleasure from doing so.In Call for the Dead, George really is an "ordinary" spy. In later books, he is a spymaster: he is the best at what he does, good guys love him, bad guys hate him, and everybody admires him just a little bit. Sometimes people can Just Tell he's a Goodguy by looking at him. This really undercuts the whole painful humiliating miasma of mediocrity George lives under. In CFTD, he's just a guy who sits at a desk and interviews civil servants, and you know, he's fairly clever, and he's a good investigator, but "genius" would be a stretch. He is not "special." I once saw George described as something along the lines of "a complete failure as a man and a complete success as a spy," and I think that aspect of him is interesting in the later books, but honestly, I like the fact that he has no way of compensating for his masculine failures in CFTD. the story works better for me this way I think.Last but certainly not least, I really love the homoerotic elements of CFTD. Now, many le Carre novels include characters that can be read as repressed gays, or even characters who are extremely difficult not to read that way. In Tinker, Tailor, Some of the depth of the story and the symbolism, in my opinion, depends on reading George with the assumption that he is gay and unaware. That fits perfectly into the themes of TTSS, and it explains a lot about his interactions with Karla, Control, and Ann. However, CFTD does something different, and honestly even better: while the characters aren't explicitly gay and in fact I am certain the author did not intend them to be read that way, parts of CFTD read as though George and Mendel are actively flirting. There's a chunk that practically reads like a romcom where the two main characters keep trying to find some "alone time" together but bad stuff keeps interrupting them. It's difficult to read them in a non-sexual way. Of course George can have his repression cake and eat it too since Dieter, whose relationship with George is far closer to the Karla relationship, is there, but Mendel is what makes CFTD stick out. (This whole situation contradicts him being repressed in TTSS, but the Smiley Series is where continuity goes to die, so whatever)

  

Comments

[pegasuswrites]

Now this is what I call Content™!

Honestly, reading this entry makes me want to go back and re-reead CFTD so much. For such a short book it's so rich in ... well. Subtext~~

[jazzypizzaz]

Awww.... CFTD really is sweet in this way! Especially interesting is the different versions of his competency, re: spy vs man, between the books... hmmm

I love George so much ;_;

[are_youready]

Yeah like...... I want George to be a "clever little man" but the mythical and universally beloved/hated spymaster schtick always rang a tad false to me given the rest of the books.