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John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

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Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#81

Post by mensetmanusman »

appplication wrote: post #80
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #32

"The story of The Spy was really a story of loneliness…" My wife and I just finished watching all of The Americans on Hulu, and this really resonates with me. Somehow, I managed to completely miss the show when it ran from 2013-2018, and was only reminded of its existence after watching and enjoying The Diplomat on Netflix, which also features Keri Russell in a starring role. The Americans is about pair of deep cover…

Tangent: is anyone familiar with a good app to help make a note of what shows you want to watch later? I know Letterboxd sort of does this for movies, but ( last I checked) they ignore the existence of TV. Each platform has its own short implementation of watch lists but they’re all pretty half baked. Is there good 3rd party app?

Notepad

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#82

Post by noirbot »

rcme wrote: post #16
noirbot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious if there's a name for this phenomenon - being unimpressed by something that was a transformative work at the time because of how much it transformed the genre or medium in its image. I often think of The Matrix being a good example of this, both in how it defined the sort of "the world is a computer" trope, but also just action movies for a while. It's still good, but some of the impressiveness of…

This isn't a name per se, but I think the effect you're describing is a result of having a really good, original idea without the supporting artistry to create something that is enduringly great. To use your example, consider The Matrix. As a film, it is cheesy. But the quality of the original idea more than made up for the cheesiness at the time of its release. Now that the idea has aged and its originality has worn…

Perhaps, but I also think there's elements of the film making of The Matrix that also impacted the way that action movies were shot and planned. There's a lot of scenes that seem less cool when you probably saw the Simpsons or Community parody of them before you ever saw The Matrix. That's stuff that was visionary craft at the time, but is now just so much a part of the fabric of the culture that it doesn't elicit the same impression.

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#83

Post by mensetmanusman »

stonogo wrote: post #44
wombatpm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robert Ludlum had many that were great. The original Bourne Identity got my family hooked. Beware the post death authorized books David Morrel also had some good ones. Brotherhood of the Rose was great.

I was an avid Ludlum reader in my youth and recently revisited them. I was blown away by the cultural shift since then. His protagonists spends half the books arranging to use payphones and rent cars in an anonymous way. I can't tell if the job has got easier or harder since those largely stopped being possible.

Or the dozen hand signatures required at the Swiss banks to unlock vast resources…

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#84

Post by noirbot »

perilunar wrote: post #38
noirbot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious if there's a name for this phenomenon - being unimpressed by something that was a transformative work at the time because of how much it transformed the genre or medium in its image. I often think of The Matrix being a good example of this, both in how it defined the sort of "the world is a computer" trope, but also just action movies for a while. It's still good, but some of the impressiveness of…

I asked my son, who's a keen gamer, if he had ever played RtCW, Doom or Quake. They are 'old and boring' apparently, and far too crude. He's not at all curious about trying out the 'originals'. I guess he's too young to have any nostalgia for them. I understand it though — I didn't have much interest in history at that age either.

That's an interesting point of comparison. Games have that element of interaction that makes it different from a movie or a book in terms of how well it ages. For all sorts of technical reasons, even though Doom invented a lot of the genre, it doesn't really hold up the same way as, say, watching Rear Window or reading le Carre does for movies or fiction.

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#85

Post by arethuza »

tptacek wrote: post #33
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #32

"The story of The Spy was really a story of loneliness…" My wife and I just finished watching all of The Americans on Hulu, and this really resonates with me. Somehow, I managed to completely miss the show when it ran from 2013-2018, and was only reminded of its existence after watching and enjoying The Diplomat on Netflix, which also features Keri Russell in a starring role. The Americans is about pair of deep cover…

It's maybe one of the 3 best drama series of the last 20 years, and easily one of the 5 best. For a (nonfic) book in the same vein, try The Billion Dollar Spy.

I can recommend "The Spy and the Traitor" on Oleg Gordievsky, in particular the part about the exfiltration reads like a spy novel even though its all factual!

Right down to the local ambassador (I think it was) who wanted to stop the operation but it was escalated all the way to Thatcher who was at Balmoral at the time and who was outraged at the idea that the UK wouldn't try and rescue him.

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#86

Post by kej »

appplication wrote: post #80
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #32

"The story of The Spy was really a story of loneliness…" My wife and I just finished watching all of The Americans on Hulu, and this really resonates with me. Somehow, I managed to completely miss the show when it ran from 2013-2018, and was only reminded of its existence after watching and enjoying The Diplomat on Netflix, which also features Keri Russell in a starring role. The Americans is about pair of deep cover…

Tangent: is anyone familiar with a good app to help make a note of what shows you want to watch later? I know Letterboxd sort of does this for movies, but ( last I checked) they ignore the existence of TV. Each platform has its own short implementation of watch lists but they’re all pretty half baked. Is there good 3rd party app?

I like justwatch.com for this. You get cross-service watchlists and it tells you when a show or movie becomes available on a service you have.

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#87

Post by elteto »

halicarnassus wrote: post #72

It's a boring stereotype of good and evil, which threw almost half the world's population from the wrong side of the iron curtain under the bus. It chastises the behavior of those people while praising their own behavior, even though it's essentially the same. It sees heroes in spies, even though they are villains. Each side thinks, that they are on the right side. Edit: Even though the novel tries to point this out…

Even with all your misguided moral ambiguity, you can’t ignore that the Berlin wall was only built by one side.

All governance systems are imperfect, but some are more imperfect than others.

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#88

Post by rdubrock »

nocoiner wrote: post #4

Anyone have any recommendations for other classic spy novels like le Carre’s? I’ve read some Greene and Deighton, which were both mentioned in the article, so I suppose I should revisit those, but would be interested in any other works with a similar scene and setting. One of my favorite le Carre tidbits - apparently in the UK and US versions of “Tinker, Tailor,” a character in one version takes a ferry in Hong Kong,…

Charles Mccary is kind of an American John le Carre. The Tears of Autumn is especially good

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#89

Post by specialist »

noirbot wrote: post #13
jhbadger wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is because the novel has entered the subconscious of spy fiction and so many things have been inspired by it intentionally or not that it doesn't seem as fresh as it once did. But at the time, the notion that intelligence work is a dirty game and that everybody follows basically the same rulebook was pretty novel and even shocking. These days this is just generally accepted as true -- even the recent James…

I'm really curious if there's a name for this phenomenon - being unimpressed by something that was a transformative work at the time because of how much it transformed the genre or medium in its image. I often think of The Matrix being a good example of this, both in how it defined the sort of "the world is a computer" trope, but also just action movies for a while. It's still good, but some of the impressiveness of…

McLuhan, Shirky, Postman, or someone(s) like that, wrote about how original ideas catch on and get endlessly repeated, transmuting the sublime into the banal. It's inevitable. (Just like all accusations of "selling out".)

Examples given were the Mona Lisa painting and the yin-yang symbol.

IIRC, I read a bunch of this media criticism (alarmism) stuff during dial-up era (post PC, pre Web). Their warning was that digital reproduction would accelerate the process, up-end our notions of intellectual property, swap all the gatekeepers for a new set of goons, etc.

I'm ambivalent. The more things change, the samer they get.

For my part, I sort of adapted, adopting a pseudo Beginner's Mind viewpoint, to accept and sometimes embrace a creative work both for what is and what it was.

One example.

I try to remain ignorant before viewing art and then back filling the context afterwards. I was totally unimpressed by Rothko. Then got into a (friendly) debate that revealed my puerile closed-mindedness. Then binged on his ideas and works. Now I think he was and remains brilliant.

Also, I don't think the replication banality apocalypse actually happened. Just the opposite. Contemporary music (for one) has never been more exciting to me. Today's artists are creating works my generation only fantasized about.

Sure, Sturgeon's Law is timeless. But today's best works are just as good or better than ever. And we somehow both lowered the barriers to entry and raised the ceiling. (There's probably a bigger lesson in there somewhere.... Hmmm.)

Any way. Thanks for reading this far.

TLDR: Arguments about culture are unending. Just roll with it.

Re: John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' is the ultimate spy novel

#90

Post by joeblubaugh »

appplication wrote: post #80
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #32

"The story of The Spy was really a story of loneliness…" My wife and I just finished watching all of The Americans on Hulu, and this really resonates with me. Somehow, I managed to completely miss the show when it ran from 2013-2018, and was only reminded of its existence after watching and enjoying The Diplomat on Netflix, which also features Keri Russell in a starring role. The Americans is about pair of deep cover…

Tangent: is anyone familiar with a good app to help make a note of what shows you want to watch later? I know Letterboxd sort of does this for movies, but ( last I checked) they ignore the existence of TV. Each platform has its own short implementation of watch lists but they’re all pretty half baked. Is there good 3rd party app?

I use Sofa for books, movies, shows
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