Revisiting a classic …

… John Le Carré’s Great Cold War Movie : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

When the novel was published in 1963, it excited a certain dismay in Britain and the United States, for here was Western intelligence acting with the same deviousness as the enemy—if anything with greater deviousness. The assumed polarities of good (West) and evil (East) were knocked askew, the heroic romance of spying ended. Spying had become a vicious but perhaps irrelevant game of blow and counter-blow, an exercise for its own sake, independent of causes, “values,” or ideals. Leamas no longer believes in what he’s doing, but he plays his part brilliantly. He may be the most self-disgusted hero in movie history.