The Honourable Schoolboy

Apparently, many people read John Le Carré’s spy novels for a glimpse at what the world of international espionage is really like; in other words, they read them like a kind of journalism about the shady world of Intelligence Services. And there certainly is something to it – we’ve grown used to a more realistic perspective on secret services, but we can still imagine what it must have been like to read a novel like The Spy Who Came In from the Cold for someone whose idea of spy thrillers were Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Le Carré profoundly debunked the myths about the spy trade, showing it to be a world not of elegant womanizers lounging in luxurious surroundings, but of middle-aged men holding bureaucratic meetings in show more dull offices, not of noble deeds and lofty aims but of petty infighting and political maneuvering. The novels of Le Carré were filled with detailed descriptions and precise observations, and had authenticity written all over them and thoroughly destroyed any conception of glamour clinging to the spy profession – today, nobody would consider a James Bond novel anything but fantasy.

The Honourable Schoolboy lends itself with particular ease to such a journalistic reading due to the place and time it is set in: a very large part of the novel takes place in Hong Kong and South-East Asia during the retreat of the United States from Vietnam and a lot of room is given to highly atmospheric descriptions of the situation, of the feelings of uncertainty, unrest and frustration pervading the area during that period – making this by far the longest book of Le Carré’s so far. Even though Le Carré’s account is fictional, he appears to have done an impressive amount of research for it, and I doubt any journalistic, presumably non-fictional report could do a better job at painting a picture that is both authentic and immersive.

Therefore, one might consider The Honourable Schoolboy worth reading on those merits alone. But Le Carré’s ambition for this and his other novels does not extend to merely being reportage, this novel, like his previous ones, aims for something more, and I think that it is this which makes them stand out. And this is not just true for the novels’ content but for their form, too – quite often, the apparently realistic exterior of Le Carré’s spy novels conceals inner mechanisms that do not run by the same rules governing realistic narratives but are structurally quite experimental. The Honourable Schoolboy is another example of this – its main thematic concern is with truth and its uses, and the novel’s forms reflects this, even if it is by adding its own distortions in the process.

Towards the end of the novel, one of the characters quotes from a poem by John Donne:

On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go,
And what the hill’s suddenness resists, win so.

This, even if it comes late in the novel, after its plot and its protagonists have taken many turns about and about, constitutes something like the motto for The Honourable Schoolboy. Indeed the whole novel could be taken as a variation on the poem those lines comes from, Donne’s Satire III, to the point where it feels that one might place both works next to each other and draw in the correspondences. Correspondence is part of the novel’s theme, too, as it is set not just in Asia but has London as a major setting too, and the events in both spheres, while never shown to result from each other immediately, do influence each other in oblique ways that had me think more than once of the Renaissance alchemy concept of correspondence, where things not directly connected still work upon each other by way of mystic similarities. Except, of course, that there is nothing mystical at place here, but the driving forces are mostly political in nature – but not really any less obscure for that.

There is a recurring image in the novel of truth as a small circle or kernel, surrounded by layers upon layers of untruth that grow steadily larger, up to the outer ring which is a vast area of rumour and obfuscation. The novel in fact starts with out rumours, and continues to refer to them, in the plot and by way of its anonymous narrator who tries to pierce through the mist of lies and half-truths surrounding “Operation Dolphin” to arrive at its kernel of truth. And both Jerry Westerby and George Smiley, the novel’s main protagonists, are surrounded by rumours, putting the reader in a very similar position of having to cross through obfuscation to arrive at the truth. A truth that becomes ever more elusive the further the novel proceeds, and it eventually becomes clear that for all its descriptive vividness and journalistic authenticity, the novel lets us see its kernel of truth only through a thick haze of distraction and misinformation. In fact, its undoubtedly brilliant journalistic element might constitute precisely that haze – one can hardly consider it accidental that so much of the novel takes place among journalist and that one of its main protagonists is a journalist who has no scruples to manipulate the truth when it serves his purposes and who in turn is manipulated by his employers in London. By the end of The Honourable Schoolboy it is by no means that there every was any kernel of truth at all, and if there was, it might be impossible to find – but not for epistemological reasons but because it has been so distorted and hidden under layers and layers of obfuscation by political power plays that it is simply gone, and the wanderer, when he takes that last turn that last turn that will take him up to the summit of that hill, finds himself on top of a sheer cliff, stepping off into the air. show less

Warning: The first paragraph of this review contains potential spoilers for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

A great follow-up to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and quite possibly easier to follow. (I say "quite possibly" because that was the case for me personally.) In the wake of "The Fall", as The Circus calls the exposure of a Soviet double agent within their ranks, George Smiley is appointed head of the Circus and is tasked with cleaning up the fallout. Upon learning that his nemesis Karla has set up a "gold seam" (a secret bank account) based in Hong Kong, Smiley sends the titular character, Jerry Westerby, into action.

Naturally, as befits a spy novel, there's a lot of intrigue and second-guessing and trying to outwit the "Cousins" (aka show more the CIA), just as much as or perhaps more than the outwitting of the KGB. The novel is also peopled with colourful characters, such as the eloquent old newspaper reporter Craw, jovial and resourceful Jerry, the persistent and highly knowledgeable Connie Sachs, and of course Smiley himself.

Le Carré has an excellent knack for describing these characters and indeed the story as a whole. For example, he says of Connie that she "had the affectation of assuming everything was alive and potentially recalcitrant", and deftly illustrates the extreme car-friendliness of an area by saying that "[a]t Star Heights, pedestrians were in bad taste." (Another quote I was quite fond of was the bit about the "remains of a ham sandwich that had died of old age.")

The story held my attention fairly consistently throughout -- I never wanted to put it down, even when my brain was overflowing with all the information and description I was taking in. The ending delivered a punch to the gut (I literally sat there with my mouth hanging open at one point) and was overall satisfying from a narrative standpoint. It would make an excellent film, I think, especially now that Tinker Tailor is on the big screen. show less

This was my first LeCarre. I think I was sixteen. I loved the writing, the characters, the setting. I didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. The story was too complex, the real-world politics and conflicts utterly beyond me. And yet, I sat in the bus in freezing cold evening eating dry-roasted peanuts and immersed myself in world as alien to me as Middle Earth, more alien, because I knew it was really my world, to which I was an alien, and which completely defeated my comprehension.

Now I think it's an amazing book, the second in a trilogy, about the crumbling of a dreadful old world order and the establishment of a newer, even nastier and darker one. Smiley chases one slender thread from the ruins left by the mole Gerald, show more seeking to redeem and reinvigorate the secret service to which he has devoted his life. Even as he does so, the vultures are circling to snatch it away, and surely he's too canny an operator to be as unaware as he appears. Jerry Westerby is dispatched to Hong Kong to follow the thread, to war-torn Cambodia and Thailand and back, and the moment of triumph is debased with the humanity of his quixotic despair and futility. A bitter, thrilling epic of espionage, that somehow knits together the first and third books depicting Smiley's battles with Karla. show less

This is the second book in Le Carre's Karla trilogy which began with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The British spy organisation, the Circus, has been left thoroughly discredited after George Smiley ferreted out a mole who had been working for the Soviets for many years. Now in charge of the Circus, Smiley desperately needs a success to sell to his masters and so he chooses experienced operative Jerry Westerby to Hong Kong to investigate a hunch that rich businessman Drake Ko may be a Soviet agent.
Oh God! This was hard work and I was mightily relieved when I finally made it to the end. This novel was 250 pages longer than it needed to be. There's a big section about Westerby's adventures in Cambodia which could have been heavily cut without show more harming the story, for example. There were too many plots within plots and a labyrinthine structure that probably needed some notes taking to keep things in mind. Dense to the point of not being enjoyable and I think I will rest Le Carre and George Smiley for a while. show less

The second book in the Karla Trilogy (which includes Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy [1974] and Smiley's People [1979]; all three books were collected in omnibus form as The Quest for Karla in 1982) and the sixth novel featuring John Le Carré's "fat spy" George Smiley, The Honourable Schoolboy is a quietly gripping, intelligent spy thriller that gradually furthers the struggle of Britain's foreign intelligence service (MI6, here styled "the Circus") against Smiley's opposite number in the Soviet Union's KGB, Karla, after Smiley's pyrrhic victory in rooting out Karla's highly-placed Soviet mole within the Circus in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

The Honourable Schoolboy unfolds largely through a series of multiple flashbacks (more show more accurately, flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks within -- you get the idea), recounting events during the final year or two of the Vietnam War; much of the action, when it finally starts, occurs in the then-British colony of Hong Kong and Vietnam, and is carried forward in a somewhat haphazard fashion by a reserve operative of the Circus, the "honourable schoolboy" (the adjective is deployed here in at least two senses) of the title, Gerald "Jerry" Westerby, the son of a self-made newspaper baron (in both senses of the word) and a disillusioned foreign correspondent attempting to write a book, who is tasked with bringing Karla's banker, the reclusive Hong Kong tycoon Drake Ko, to book, so as to undercut Karla's scope of operations.

That's it, and the proceedings could have, in lesser hands, been a deadly dull affair; however, despite the relative paucity of conventional thriller-type action, I found The Honourable Schoolboy a riveting affair, and was sorry to come to the book's end. Le Carré deftly walks a fine line between presenting a by-the-numbers textbook case of practical espionage and a compelling psychological thriller salted with flavorful instances of local color and action. Smiley himself has arguably even more interest and power here than in Tinker, Tailor due to his being presented solely through the eyes of the other characters (call it the Gatsby effect). Jerry, a big, good-natured, slightly shabby, somewhat apologetic "lad," thinks he more or less knows what drives Smiley -- something close to a religious devotion and faith, but to the Circus itself rather than to the nation as a whole or to Western capitalism or to, well, religion -- but, ultimately, Smiley and, indeed, Jerry himself, are unknowable in the way that we all are, even to ourselves.

If I liked Honourable Schoolboy somewhat less than Tinker, Tailor, the difference in my enjoyment levels was very slight, and probably due to the fact that Le Carré allowed more air into Schoolboy's narrative than he did into Tinker, Tailor's. If the reader is beguiled with the illusion that there are more quiet moments in Schoolboy than in Tinker, Tailor (a subplot about a budding romance between Smiley's aide-de-camp, Peter Guillam, and a young female employee of the Circus, carried over from Tinker, Tailor, is particularly amusing and welcome, if too subtle to be properly termed comic relief), these nominal lulls only serve to make the climax more climactic, more wrenching: the emotions that the reader will likely feel at book's end are a rich melange that preclude simplistic feelings of joy over victory or depression over defeat, and superbly bait the hook for him to proceed to the last book of the trilogy, Smiley's People. show less

Most long novels would benefit from a firmer editorial hand. Anything over 400 pages is suspect. The Honourable Schoolboy is 600 pages or so. It has its merits, but it’s a bloated, indulgent book, like a bad extended director’s cut of Le Carré’s stellar earlier work.

We’re again immersed in the world of the British Secret Service as its head, George Smiley, tries to get one over his Russian nemesis Karla by disrupting some kind of operation in Hong Kong, China, and sundry other countries of the region. Smiley’s main weapon of disruption is a somewhat erratic agent called Jerry Westerby.

The main indulgence is the decision to give equal time to both Smiley’s efforts in London and Westerby’s in the field. We effectively get show more two novels, one a strangely gripping tale of Smiley’s low-key burrowing in files, tense committee meetings, and interviews with sources, the other a strangely ungripping story of Westerby’s Bond-lite traipsing around the South China Sea under tenuous journalistic cover. Either one would have done, preferably the former.

The main bloat seems to come from an author trying a little too hard, in several respects. First, this book perhaps marks the point at which Le Carré is no longer writing from first-hand experience and leaning instead on research and imagination, and so perhaps is laying on rather too thick the spycraft jargon and local atmosphere in a bid to convince us that he still knows what he’s talking about.

Second, where earlier works set scenes and dealt with elisions quickly and neatly, here Le Carré spends ages getting things going (with barbs about journalisms and publishing that again indicate his firm establishment in a different world), and talks round obfuscations by employing a very tricksy and slightly annoying authorial voice to explain in great detail how nobody really knows anything about this particular plot point. It’s like he’s overthinking how to be a writer as opposed to just writing.

Third, the plot is incredibly convoluted—both the plot of the book and the Russian plot that is being uncovered. I suppose we expect that, but again it does feel just a little like there’s too much thought going in to making this as complicated as possible.

The bloat also means that minor problems in Le Carré’s earlier work are amplified. He was always weak with women, for example, but got away with it because they were minor characters. Here, we have a fairly incredible femme fatale type figure playing a key role, getting seasoned spies and hardened criminals into all sorts of trouble by being really very attractive. She’s in the Westerby bits, obviously. In general, there’s an air of the ludicrous in a lot of the Westerby that you don’t find in, for example, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

Being a director’s cut, though, all the good stuff is still there—as I say, the book has its merits. The plot is convoluted, but also a marvel of engineering. There are exciting committee meetings. There are good thriller-ish scenes, some good bits in Vietnam. Smiley is great. The air overall is still bleak enough to please the cynic about the spy game. I guess overall I enjoyed it, I just think I would have enjoyed less of it more. show less

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. - W.H. Auden

What if you devoted your entire life to something because you thought it was the right thing, the good thing, the moral thing, and then you ended your life wondering if you had been completely wrong? It happens to a lot of people, particularly because things shift on us as the years go by and change in ways we do not notice or acknowledge, and because with age comes wisdom, or if not wisdom, perhaps just clearer vision.

MacArthur famously said, “Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away.” Perhaps the same can be said of old spies, cold wars, and people who live on the fringe of society, just clambering for survival. And, if show more they have not died, but are only faded, can they be restored?

These were some of the thoughts I had while reading this novel, because John le Carre is one of those who sees the underbelly of life, and the betrayals it contains, and does not flinch. The time is 1974-75, Vietnam is falling from the hands of the Americans, Southeast Asia is a hotbed of activity, legal and illegal, the British still exercise control of a sort over Hong Kong, and all the major powers are jockeying for power. The Russians are actively working the Asian world for intelligence, and Karla, Smiley’s nemesis is playing cards that the British and Americans don’t even know he is holding.

Enter George Smiley, an aging British spy, who still carries the moral code and convictions of World War II, but must try to fit that image of the world into a more cynical, less forgiving, reality. He releases into this malestrom a seasoned operative by the name of Jerry Westerby, a man who seems so isolated and lonely that he made me ache, another man who has given his life to an occupation that breeds doubt and insecurity in men who are so seemingly strong and fearless. And, another man who is questioning what it has all been about.

Peter Guilliam sums it up rather well, I thought, and in doing so lays out the basic premise of the entire book:

One day, thought Guillam, as he continued listening, one of two things will happen to George. He’ll cease to care or the paradox will kill him. If he ceases to care, he’ll be half the operator he is. If he doesn’t, that little chest will blow up from the struggle of trying to find the explanation for what we do.

This is the sixth book in the Smiley series, and the second in the Karla Trilogy, and what I have observed in reading them is that George Smiley’s struggle to reconcile the job he does--the terrible consequences that often go with it, the deception and the sacrifices--is constant, never-ending, and personally costly. That he survives at all is miraculous, but he does, because he is the heart and conscience of the Circus, and eventually the heart is needed or the body dies.

One last thought, if anyone can write a more complex, intricate, entangled plot without failing to leave even the slightest element dangling, I have never encountered them. This is a spy novel, of course, but it is oh so much more. When you close the book, you will not leave the characters or the story behind, and you will see parallels all around you in our own society, in the duplicitousness of government, in the way some people play chess with other people’s lives, in the way sometimes everyone loses. show less