The Honourable Schoolboy

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In the review I wrote for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy I mentioned that it took me a while to accustom myself to the spy jargon as well as many of the British idioms. It gave me a very strange feeling to start reading this episode (# 6 in the George Smiley series) and discover: (1) the British idioms are offset by the fact that the Circus (centre of espionage in London) is balanced, and often explained by the Cousins (their American counterparts, based in Langley, Virginia); and (2) the definitions of the spy terms are woven seamlessly into the narrative itself. So we not only know who the Circus and the Cousins are, but we also know what Housekeeping is, what the Nursery is, and the many other phrases for departments within the British secret service. Like a lot of John le Carre novels, especially the Karla trilogy, this novel explored the notions of the individual, loyalty, and humanity. The juxtaposition of George Smiley, representing the old, fast-fading notion of national loyalty, and Jerry Westerby, representing an individual's search for humanity in an increasingly cynical and violent world, was very interesting. urn:oclc:796091406 Scandate 20090723183144 Scanner scribe9.rich.archive.org Scanningcenter rich Source His previous big hit was 'In from the Cold'. What was that tale--at its heart--about? A British agent being planted over the lines in an attempt nail a powerful Russian spy chief. Slightly different kind of structure; but still archetypical. Published in 1977, The Honourable Schoolboy feels different from its predecessors; this isn't a criticism. My only quibble was that I

This novel takes place largely in China – Hong Kong, for the most part. However, it also takes us to other parts of Asia and there are a few side-trips to London where George Smiley has been doing everything possible to pull together a stronger team after exposing the mole Russia had planted high in the ranks of the Circus. (See Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for that story). While he is busy ensuring all bugs are cleaned out and missing records are cobbled together out of the pieces that remain, an entire Chinese development is underway. This the second in the Smiley/Karla trilogy - the only one (as far as I'm aware) that hasn't been dramatised and as such the least known of the three. Yet it is my favourite by far.While the Americans are adding another five metres of concrete to the Embassy roof, and the soldiers are crouching in capes under their trees, and the journalists are drinking whisky, and the generals are at the opium houses, the Khmer Rouge will come out of the jungle and cut our throats. (346) Part 3 of the Karla Trilogy. When a Russian émigré is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, Smiley is called out of retirement to exorcise some Cold War ghosts from his clandestine past. What follows is Smiley the human being at his most vulnerable and Smiley the case officer at his most brilliant; and it takes to a thrilling conclusion his career-long, serpentine battle with the enigmatic and ruthless Russian spymaster Karla Le Carré used to be famous for showing us the bleak, tawdry reality of the spy’s career. He still provides plenty of bleak tawdriness, but romanticism comes shining through. Jerry Westerby, it emerges, has that “watchfulness” which “the instinct” of “the very discerning” describes as “professional.” You would think that if Westerby really gave off these vibrations it would make him useless as a spy. But le Carré does not seem to notice that he is indulging himself in the same kind of transparently silly detail which Mark Twain found so abundant in Fenimore Cooper. L]ittle ships, as Craw knew very well, cannot change course as easily as the winds that drive them. (192)

This is the second in John le Carré’s trilogy starring George Smiley as the most important character although the main protagonist is really the man of the title, The Honourable Gerald Westerby, known as Jerry (shouldn’t that be Gerry?) Chronologically, this book follows Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but is complete in itself and the two stories are only loosely connected, so you can read this quite happily if you haven’t read TTSS. Like its predecessor, this is complicated, exciting, incredibly well thought out, difficult to predict and a joy to read. I'm not done yet. I can--and shall--go on with my review. The praise I've ladled out so far may sound extravagant, but I've hardly scratched-the-surface. Let me put it this way: 'Schoolboy' is not just my favorite spy novel; it is also my personal favorite British novel since WWII, and actually...yes, maybe even of the entire Twentieth century. A sweeping statement from me; but yes, it is that superb. And I'll explain why. Positively, the book vividly describes the expat life in early Seventies in HK, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand etc. It takes a while to overcome the inherent biases, but when one moves beyond what was an acceptable behaviour of so called heroes of the time, the book provides a good narration of interplay between people of various races then and there.Recalled in 1943, he marries - to general astonishment - the beautiful but eternally unfaithful Lady Ann Sercomb. 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 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. of undercover agents, or "moles," is compromised. Smiley's job is to patch things up, to salvage something from the long season against the Bolsheviks. He ought not to be wandering around alone at night in the rain. It is

In this life you can give yourself or withhold yourself as you please, my dear. But never lend yourself. That way you're worse than a spy. Smiley dispatches Jerry Westerby, a newspaper reporter and occasional Circus operative, to Hong Kong under the guise of a sports journalist. Westerby traces the Soviet money to Drake Ko, a local businessman with links to both the criminal underworld and the British establishment. London establishes that Drake Ko has a brother, Nelson, who is a high-ranking Chinese official and who has been spying on the Chinese for the Soviets. What did he do in 'Schoolboy'? He was running out of grand, unifying plots and he needed one which would still seem fresh. He couldn't do another 'mole' story. The Karla Trilogy is not a true trilogy but a marketing spin and this book proves it in more ways than one.The usual snafu. Bad guys are too weak to take the towns, good guys are too crapped out to take the countryside and nobody wants to fight except the Coms. Students ready to set fire to the place soon as they’re no longer exempt from the war, food riots any day now, corruption like there was no tomorrow, no one can live on his salary, fortunes being made and the place bleeding to death. Palace is unreal and the Embassy is a nut-house, more spooks than straight guys and all pretending they’ve got a secret. Want more?” Ocr ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.11 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Openlibrary_edition 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." And George It's 1974 and George Smiley - following his exposure of Bill Haydon as the mole - is the new acting chief of the Circus where he, and analysts Connie Sachs and Doc di Salis, look into investigations unreasonably suppressed by Haydon. They discover that Sam Collins's investigation of a money laundering operation in Laos could point to involvement by Karla.

A retired missionary and his daughter, a Hong Kong policeman, an Italian orphan, an English schoolmaster, an American narcotics agent, a slovenly Kremlinologist, a mad bodyguard, the quite splendid Craw -- all are burned on the brain of the reader. If one's contract. Lizzie will dream on. The Cousins, as ever, arrive by helicopter. Smiley is spared, because someone must be left to feel bad. I first encountered my mother’s copy of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in the house as a teenager, but I didn’t read the book until I was an adult. Le Carré’s generation of espionage writers perfected the classic third-person point of view that I and many other spy authors use to this day. Tinker Tailor weaves a tense and grim cold war tale of betrayal among men. It features few female characters, and most romantic storylines have a grimness of their own. Both TV and film adaptations open and close with the gripping, labyrinthine plot. Recruited into the "Circus" in the late 1920s, when he might so easily have become an Oxford don, George Smiley spends the 1930s and early 1940s working undercover in Nazi Germany in daily fear of betrayal and death.There are more than several novels inside "The Honourable Schoolboy." There is the novel of Jerry and Lizzie, who is one of those inexplicable femmes fatale who simply don't understand the world they live in -- a sort of English Judith In fact, no one has yet attempted to film The Honourable Schoolboy, either for television or for Hollywood, and the prospects seem dismal. Compressing Tinker, Tailor into two hours, Tomas Alfredson chose to combine the roles of Jerry Westerby and Sam Collins; since Westerby is the hero of Schoolboy, and since Collins likewise plays a major role, this conflation suggests that Alfredson has no ambitions to adapt the full Karla trilogy. Lovers of the novel are still permitted to dream. he arrive in Hong Kong than he falls in love with the dumb-blond consort of the Chinese businessman who is receiving all the Russian money.