Anticipating Headlines
Myron J. Aronoff
International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence Volume 12, no. 4 (Winter 1999-2000, pp.515-519. A review essay of:
John le Carré: Single & Single: A Novel, New York: Scribner, 1999, 345 p. $26.00
John le Carré has demonstrated uncanny political prescience since the publication of his third novel and first major success, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963), which coincided with the highly publicized flight of the infamous Soviet mole Kim Philby to the Soviet Union. The publication of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) coincided with the exposure of Anthony Blunt, the so-called fifth man and the most senior of the Cambridge spies. Many of his other cold war novels were similarly well timed with breaking news. Le Carré confounded critics who predicted that he would be lost with the end of the cold war by continuing to anticipate the headlines with other subjects of major political importance. For example, The Little Drummer Girl (1983), which dealt with a Mossad counter-terrorist operation, predicted Israel's war in Lebanon that broke out while the book was in press. The Russia House (1989), the story of the undermining of an attempt by a Russian physicist to publicize the inadequacy of the guidance systems on Soviet missiles, was an ode to perestroika published in the year of the end of the cold war regime. Our Game (1995) anticipated the rebellion in Chechenia (in the novel the neighboring Ingush were the rebels).
Single & Single (1999) centers around money-laundering by Russian mobsters through a reputable British investment firm. A front page New York Times article dealing with investigations by British agencies of money-laundering by Russian organized crime (focusing on Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich), notes: "Readers of John le Carré's 'Single & Single,' will find similarities between various elements and characters and Mr. Mogilevich's escapades."(1) His consistently accurate political radar can be attributed to le Carré's prodigious research, his experience in the secret world and continuing contacts with it's practitioners. David Cornwell (his real name) served in both MI5 and MI6 beginning as a seventeen-year-old student at the University of Bern, continuing through his military service in Austria, his studies at Oxford, and a five-year tour in the Foreign Office. He maintains extensive contacts in British intelligence and in counterpart agencies elsewhere.(3)
This new novel revisits themes dealt with in previous novels, but in a very novel situation. There is also a fascinating innovation in characterization. The central character, Oliver Single, combines two contrasting types in le Carré's work. The le Carré hero--constituting the moral center of his novels--is best exemplified by George Smiley. Smiley, his most brilliant and enduring character, personifies the ethical dilemmas at the core of the author's work. The anti-heroes or negative role-models--like his alter-ego Magnus Pym in A Perfect Spy (1986) and Harry Pendel in The Tailor of Panama (1996)--are characters with whom le Carré most closely identifies. A Perfect Spy is le Carré's most autobiographical novel and deals with his highly ambiguous relationship with his father--a notorious confidence man who acquired and lost several fortunes for which he served multiple prison terms. These self-parodying characters allow the author to engage in a form of ambiguous moralizing strikingly similar in style to the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Jan Steen. Whereas the multiple-betrayals of the two previously mentioned characters result in their tragic ends, Oliver Single manages to redeem his betrayal of his crooked father Tiger Single (the head of the corrupt bank that gives the book its title).
This entertaining story can (and should) be read at several levels. On the surface it is a riveting adventure story that begins with the video-taped brutal assassination of a tax attorney representing the British banking house, winds its way through exciting intrigues including the untraceable deposit of five million pounds sterling in a trust account of a child in rural England, the disappearance of Tiger Single, the founder and senior partner of the investment firm, the interception of a Russian freighter loaded with heroin owned by the Russian partners of Single, and concludes with a daring joint operation by British and Russian operatives. The plot, although it moves back and forth in time and in location, is neatly designed to keep the reader turning the pages. At another level, however, David Cornwell's ongoing attempt to come to terms with the ghost of his father is given a more successful literary resolution than previously. At the same time the reader confronts ethical dilemmas involving conflicting personal and institutional loyalties, questions of whether worthy ends justify morally dubious means, and the need to balance dreams with realities. As always with le Carré, these themes are ambiguously expressed through the actions and choices of his richly drawn characters rather then expressed more overtly in ideological prescriptions.
Such ambiguity and indirection, an expression of le Carré's liberal temperament, allows the politics to emerge from encounters and confrontations between the protagonists. A high tolerance for ambiguity is a defining feature of the liberal temperament which is a disposition of the soul rather than an ideological doctrine. In addition, the author's self-described fragmented personality simultaneously holds multiple and even contradictory viewpoints. Many of his characters have a chameleon-like quality expressed in their constantly changing positions. Ambiguity is also an effective literary technique which softens (or disguises) his moral critique and political message. It thereby prevents the ethical critique from becoming a sermon and the political message from becoming a polemical ideological harangue.
The novel's humor ranges from the subtle to broad farce. The first sentence (thought by the lawyer about to be executed), "This gun is not a gun," parodies the title of the post-modernist book This is Not a Pipe. The climax features the dramatic appearance of Oliver's Rambo-like lady friend speaking in a "rich Glaswegian accent delivered with schoolmarmish emphasis." (345) The philosophical viewpoint is the existentialist absurd. Oliver concludes "The answer was as clear to him as the question. That he had found it, and it didn't exist. He had arrived at the last, most hidden room of his search, he had prized open the most top-secret box, and it was empty. Tiger's secret was that he had no secret." (345) Shades of Sartre, Camus, and The Wizard of Oz. I highly recommend this book for an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.
Myron J. Aronoff is professor of political science and anthropology at Rutgers University. His most recent book is The Spy Novels of John le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics which was published by St. Martin's Press (1999).
1. Raymond Bonner, "Russian Gangsters Exploit Capitalism To Increase Profits," New York Times, July 25, 1999, pp.1 and 6. A month later front page banner headlines of the New York Times reported the Russian mob had laundered billions of dollars through the Bank of New York.(2)
2. Raymond Bonner and Timothy L. O'Brien, "Activity at Bank Raises Suspicions of Russia Mob Tie: Billions Thought to Be Laundered Through Bank of New York," New York Times, August 19, 1999, pp. 1 and 10.
3. My request for his records from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act was denied "in the interest of national defense or foreign policy."