Posted on 08/23/2010 5:03:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It's still spy author vs. spy.
Famed espionage writer John Le Carré remains no fan of James Bond, the martini-loving super spy created by Ian Fleming.
"I dislike Bond. I'm not sure that Bond is a spy," the "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" author said in 1966, during a BBC interview that will be re-broadcast next week.
Today, the 78-year-old Le Carré told the Radio Times that while he may have been harsh 40 years ago, he's still not sure Bond is much of a spy.
"At the root of Bond there was something neo-fascistic and totally materialist," said Le Carré, who once worked with the British Foreign Service. "You felt he would have gone through the same antics for any country really, if the girls had been so pretty and the Martinis so dry."
Le Carré - whose real name is David Cornwell - described 007 as more of an "international gangster" who sported a "license to kill," and had no real loyalty to England.
"I think that it's a great mistake if one's talking about espionage literature to include Bond in this category at all," he said.
Le Carré's own spy character, George Smiley, appears in several of the author's works and stands in stark contrast to the Fleming creation. The author admits that his approach to spy novels is far more realistic than the gadget-obsessed adventures of James Bond.
"I had written about the reality in 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,'" he told Radio Times. "The Fleming stuff was a deliberate fantasisation."
Granger would be an excellent smiley!
Those were based on novels by Len Deighton. I liked Le Carre's early stuff, but the last ten years he's revealed himself as a fanatic ultra leftie.
I still read Le Carre. Don't like his politics.
I just finished McEwan's The Innocents, based on a true story of espionage in Berlin in the 1950s--excellent. Good portraits of American vs. British spies. Seems very true to life and historically accurate.
Fleming and Bond will still be renowned far into the future....Fleming was the first author that got me to actually read. He also got me in lots of trouble with the nuns who wanted me to study in study hall. I told them I was studying....England, the Caribbean, Russia, etc.
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