I read (listened) to Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice recently and then went back to the BBC audio versions of a bunch of the George Smiley novels. It's fascinating Harkaway can write Smiley so well when the tone of his own novels (which I also like) are so different.

I'm not sure why I like the Smiley novels so much. They're always weirder than I expected -- they are kind of plotty in a detective way -- but really they're most often weirder and sadder. I think I always like an emotionally repressed person who occasionally says something that reveals what all is going on unsaid. I guess that's English-associated. I always think of Remains of the Day as the big example though it's been a long time since I read and watched that.

The le Carre book I think about the most is A Perfect Spy, which I think I got because someone recommended it as his most literary work. It was tough to get through at times -- just because of the bad things piling up -- the indications things were going to a terrible end.

The thing it was best at was demonstrating how weird it is to want to be a spy. How broken of a person you have to be. Interesting to think about in relationship to how much media we have about spies. In this case the character's broken by his relationship to his con-man father. By needing to take care of him. By learning from him even where he didn't want to. There's an unsparing-ness to it that I always find impressive -- like he's willing to see things as they are. (Though that's a fine line -- some art veers towards "if it's the rougher view it's the true one" which is not.)