- 12 Oct 2019 22:10
#15041520
The first time I read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, I had to read it a second time. The triple cross he created is so devious, that it can catch you by surprise even if you know it's coming.
A character you see in a number of his books is Smiley. Smiley is the opposite of James Bond. His face is forgettable. His beautiful wife is having an affair. He invariably resolves the crisis he is in with intelligence, not muscle, not guns.
For all that, Smiley is kind of amazing.
He understands.
“Yes it is, because in the first place reason has no natural voice. Mob orators of the sort we have, the Boris Johnson sort, do not speak reason. When you get into that category, your task is to fire up the people with nostalgia, with anger."
“It is my considered opinion,” one of the characters declares to Nat, “that for Britain and Europe, and for liberal democracy across the entire world as a whole, Britain’s departure from the European Union in the time of Donald Trump, and Britain’s consequent unqualified dependence on the United States in an era when the US is heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism, is an unmitigated clusterfuck bar none.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/ ... -away-with
A character you see in a number of his books is Smiley. Smiley is the opposite of James Bond. His face is forgettable. His beautiful wife is having an affair. He invariably resolves the crisis he is in with intelligence, not muscle, not guns.
For all that, Smiley is kind of amazing.
He understands.
“Yes it is, because in the first place reason has no natural voice. Mob orators of the sort we have, the Boris Johnson sort, do not speak reason. When you get into that category, your task is to fire up the people with nostalgia, with anger."
“It is my considered opinion,” one of the characters declares to Nat, “that for Britain and Europe, and for liberal democracy across the entire world as a whole, Britain’s departure from the European Union in the time of Donald Trump, and Britain’s consequent unqualified dependence on the United States in an era when the US is heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism, is an unmitigated clusterfuck bar none.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/ ... -away-with
Facts have a well known liberal bias