Even a reviewer for The New York Times can't be fooled by the newest bit of pseudo-literary hogwash by David Cornwell, aka John le Carré.
"Absolute Friends," John le Carré's ham-handed and didactic new novel, is really three very different books.It is an old-fashioned bildungsroman, tracing the sentimental and moral education of a typical le Carré hero as he is drawn into the shadowy world of espionage during the cold war and an even murkier world of terrorists and political operatives in the new millennium.
It is also a far-fetched action-adventure-thriller with nerve-racking cat-and-mouse games with double agents, a frightening reconnaissance mission and a bloody shootout with SWAT teams and special forces. And last and most disappointing, it is a clumsy, hectoring, conspiracy-minded message-novel meant to drive home the argument that American imperialism poses a grave danger to the new world order.
Cornwell, of course, is famous for such thoughtful geopolitical analysis as this from early 2003:
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent opinion poll tells us that one in two Americans now believes Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being threatened, bullied, browbeaten and kept in a permanent state of ignorance and fear, with a consequent dependence upon its leadership. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should, with any luck, carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
And this, from the same longwinded polemic:
To be an acceptable member of the Bush team it seems you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. I think I may be Evil for writing this, but I'll have to check.What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil -- but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Iran's, next door, is to possess the world's largest repositories of natural gas. Bush wants both, and who helps him get them will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.
Egad. I'm just thankful that he saved his new bit of drivel for after the holidays, just so that no well-intentioned relative or friend gave it to me as a gift. In earlier years, we might have expected better from the author of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People."
Posted by Alan at January 7, 2004 09:16 PM