A Perfect Spy
Carré, John le
A PERFECT SPY John le Cane/Alfred A. Knopf/$18.95 Claudia Rosett If you're in the market for some bleak and tedious reading, then John le Carr has a book for you. A Perfect Spy is the story of...
...Axel is arrested and taken away in the middle of the night, and Pym, having proved his mettle, goes on to inform on left-wing student groups at Oxford...
...The problems with this book exist, like Pym, on many levels...
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...And, as Stephen Tonsor notes of the obsession with "praxis," It is odd indeed that 475 years after the Reformation and the condemnation by both Luther and the council of Trent of a religion of works, that a religion of works Faculty, students, administrators, business and governmental leaders are cordially invited to become members of the CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE PRESIDENCY, a non-profit educational corporation chartered by the Board of Regents of the State of New York...
...But the in-credulous Brits simply won't believe Pym is a traitor until he fails to return to Vienna...
...But though the implied parallels between Pym and the author may be poignant, they don't redeem this book...
...Most of the action takes place in memory alone...
...CHURCHES ON THE WRONG ROAD Edited by Stanley Atkins and Theodore McConnell Regnery Gateway/$7.95 paper T. John Jamieson looking for our holed-up hero...
...Churches answers, like that old parody of the liberal Protestant hymn, "Stand Up, 0 Men of God": Sit down, 0 men of God: His Kingdom He will bring T John Jamieson is a writer living in Evanston, Illinois Exactly when it pleases Him—You cannot do a thing...
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...In fact, radical theologians desire the suppression of orthodox supernaturalism, because it distracts people from revolutionary "praxis...
...The trick is always to say what the per-son in front of him wants to hear...
...Roman Catholicism used to be the religion of dramatic conversions, like John Henry Newman's...
...Spies may employ the tricks of the confidence man, but then, both writers and forgers use ink...
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...What remains is the portrait of a ruined man...
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...But if le Carre writes more books on the order of A Perfect Spy his readers would do well to defect...
...When who just can't leave anyone unbetrayed, rolls up his sleeves and starts handing over British secrets to the Czechs...
...Instead, he ushers us into a private world in which love and spying are wretchedly intertwined, like a frigid couple on a cold night...
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...This is a pity, because le Carre does have the ability to write good books...
...He doesn't really care how the British, Americans, and Czechs go about cleaning up his mess...
...And, in case there's not already enough deceit among friends, le Carle introduces some handy double-dealing between the Americans and the British...
...He hears that young fundamentalists and evangelicals, yearning for a reasoned faith and formal worship, are turning to Anglicanism, with C. S. Lewis and the Book of Common Prayer as their guides...
...Some critics have objected to the Smiley books on the grounds that le Cane routinely muddies the crucial distinctions between the Soviet and British political systems his characters serve...
...Many clerics and theologians hide their atheism in a linguistic blind taken from German Idealism (Hegel), but the fact remains that they do not believe in a transcendent, real, personal God...
...A symposium with such standard conservative authors as Schall, Kirk, Niemeyer, Tonsor, and John Howard, and several less well-known Anglican authors, Churches on the Wrong Road makes a timeless, largely apolitical condemnation of political religion—that is, without referring specifically to topical heresies such as Sandinista worship, or typical partisans such as Bishop Gumbleton...
...That doesn't mean they're in the same business...
...There, in the natural cradle of the spy trade, he makes two friends who help him ruin the rest of his life: British intelligence officer Jack Brotherhood, and East European drifter Axel H. Since friendship for Pym is the flip side of betrayal, he diligently informs on Axel at Brother-hood's behest—making up a few de-tails to provide a salable story...
...Yet Schall doesn't single out "liberation theology," be-cause the radical anti-orthodox enter-prise is much bigger than the Brazilian school of Friar Boff...
...That leaves only the socialist utopia to believe in, and they are rewriting Christian dog-ma, to read as revolutionary allegory...
...To Anglicanism maybe, but not to official modern Episcopalianism...
...dollars...
...What triggers Pym's elephantine feat of recollection is the death of his father, Rick—a charming swindler who was always too busy hustling the world to love anyone, even his son...
...Since the bulk of this 475-page novel is devoted to Pym's pondering, by the end we know the significance of every pressed flower, old snapshot, and cryptic message in his dreary and duplicitous career...
...And it's just a matter of time until frantic agents converge on little Miss Dubber's doorstep...
...Along the way he acquires a wife who has both worked for and slept with Jack Brotherhood, and a son who will presumably have the joy of slogging through Pym's confessions someday...
...Born the son of a confidence man, reared as an unloved huckster, trained as a resentful secret agent, he is a pathetic, empty creature...
...Worse, he serves as the author's vehiTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986one of Rick's lovers kills herself, the ten-year-old Pym engages in his "first clandestine operation," pilfering letters from her room that might incriminate Rick...
...CIA agent Grant Lederer is dispatched to Vienna to become Pym's close buddy and observer...
...Orthodoxy is on the defensive throughout the Church...
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...But le Canes newest protagonist, Pym, the "perfect spy," is a disaster on every level...
...The plot unrolls as predictably as an old carpet, raising a cloud of dusty detail in its path...
...He attends Rick's funeral in England, but instead of re-turning to his wife and his undercover work in Vienna he heads for a quaint English town by the seaside...
...And on that subject, le Carr has always offered up ugly visions...
...Even in the Smiley books, adultery, contempt, and betrayal formed the core of family life...
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...We're also de-tested by America's political and social frauds, bureaucrats and flimflam artists...
...While Pym is doing a stint in the U.S...
...The whole corpus of Catholic doctrine is being refashioned"—and one sees the new doctrine, again and again, "at the very heart of the Church...
...He went on doing his job even after his wife and friends had abandoned and deceived him...
...He is a confidence man for whom spying is just another con, a way to scam a little love before hightailing it out of town...
...But Rome no longer stands, in many minds, for the Universal Faith...
...Mean-while the Czechs are also furiously Name (please print) Address Apt...
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...Distinguished board of editors including Harry A. Bailey, Jr., Thomas E. Cronin, Kenneth E. Davison, Hedley W. Donovan, Fred I. Greenstein, Erwin C. Hargrove, Dorothy B. James, Richard S. Kirkendall, Louis W. Koenig, Seymour Martin Upset, Harvey C. Mansfield, Ruth P. Morgan, Richard E. Neustadt, C. Dwight Waldo, and Aaron Wildaysky...
...later Pym fakes appendicitis"his first operational cover"--to get Rick back...
...A Perfect Spy is the story of Magnus Pym, a British secret agent who leads a sad life, betrays everything in reach, and finally sneaks off to ponder his past, leaving his panicky spymasters on both sides of the Iron Curtain to figure out where he's gone...
...And by creating a central character who has no standards at all, who will betray every-body in order to be loved by everybody, le Carre ultimately devalues Pym's deceit...
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...Smiley may not have unfurled the Union Jack on every page, but he was nonetheless a man of integrity...
...under diplomatic cover, his name pops up on a CIA computer list of suspect spooks...
...Claudia Rosett is book review editor of the Wall Street Journal...
...In fact, as the book opens Pym already accepts that his espionage medicine show is over...
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...Radicalism and anti-supernaturalism are now one enterprise...
...For Pym, unlike Smiley, there is no duty thatmust be done...
...the rejection of supernatural doctrines such as the Resurrection is not just amateurish skepticism among self-indulgent biblical scholars...
...If you like political humor, Sting is it...
...When, well into the book, Pym provides the insight that "love is whatever you can still betray," it just isn't tempting to read on and find out what's next on the agenda...
...Against the odds, he found the Soviet mole in the British secret service and later brought down Karla...
...The irony is that "basic Christian theses never seemed more intellectually valid...
...Pym, however, tolerates no such distractions...
...There he hides out in the boarding house of cheery old Miss Dubber, a "dignified little lady" who is the incarnation of all the dull and homey remnants of the decayed British empire...
...We're rowdily funny, cussedly individualistic, often unpredictable, al-ways outspoken...
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...Then Brotherhood starts lying to the Americans so they won't know Pym has disappeared...
...Pym, IF YOU LIKE SATIRE YOU'LL LOVE STING If you've begun to despair that satirical humor may be lost forever —rejoice...
...The editors of Churches on the Wrong Road are High Church Episcopalians, sick of their communion's political manias...
...r^ 47 cle for meditating not only on the nature of espionage, but also on the nature of love...
...When Rick is arrested, Pym protects him by lying to the police...
...per year...
...His George Smiley stories, especially Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People, were excellent, intriguing tales, thanks mainly to the deeds of their patient, aging protagonist...
...Anyone who has looked at "liberation theology" knows it to be a theology without God about a liberation without freedom...
...Also, he was the best in the business...
...The experience is something like spending a week in the warehouse of a down-atthe-heels Citizen Kane...
...One of the two most remarkable essays is Father Schall's, which frankly asserts that radical leftism in the Church, and the blatant contempt of dogma that goes with it, are no longer mere aberrations...
...This is sad not least because the character of Pym's father, Rick, is modeled somewhat on le Cane's own father, while le Carre himself once worked for British Intelligence...
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...10021 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986...
...Raised by his father in a world of confidence games, dirty money, and interchangeable floozies, Pym learns as a child to lie sweetly and often, to live "on several planes at once," in order to survive...
...The Episcopal Church elected a new primate last year, one who could be described as a classical McGovernite...
...Fortunately, Smiley had other preoccupations—the cold war, for example...
...202, Blue Bell, Pa...
...The trouble with the Church seems to be that there is no one about who can think about them...
...Instead, it attacks the generic heresy of millennialism, well represented by William Blake's famous gnostic hymn: I will not cease from Mental Fight Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land...
...As Miss Dubber feeds her pet canary and drinks her cocoa, Pym sits upstairs and writes a long very long—confessional letter to his son, Tom...
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...The 53-year-old Pym, who has spent his life trying to earn Rick's affection, suddenly feels "free...
...The story that unfolds, told partly in Pym's own words, partly in the third person, suggests that it is a short leap from huckster to spy, and that both are degrading professions...
...the rest doesn't matter much because all the characters are obviously doomed from the start...
...according to James Schall S.J., it's now widely perceived as standing for universal leftism...
...For a brochure call (215) 277-6496...
...their book makes a clear, well-moderated attack on the political perversion of Christianity in all denominations...
...The equation between hucksterism and espionage also breaks down...
...It was absorbing to watch Smiley go it alone against both the British bureaucracy and the Soviet masterspy, Karla...
...But in fiction, bad politics can sometimes mix with fine characters and solid plots...
...John Paul II is a voice crying in the wilderness: hierarchy and clergy in Europe and the Americas generally tolerate the anti-religious left and fail to assert sound doctrine strikingly or effectively...
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...Radical leftism is not just a strain of humanitarian sympathy anymore...
...As a teenager, Pym wends his way to Switzerland on an aborted errand for his father...
...A Perfect Spy is currently a best-seller, no doubt on the strength of George Smiley's worthy reputation...
...lb the young Protestant looking for a living, authoritative tradition and a piety rooted in dignified liturgy, Rome was the place to go...
...Years later, when Pym is well on his way to becoming a full-fledged spy under the sponsorship of Jack Brother-hood, Axel reappears, now clearly working for Czech intelligence...
Vol. 19 • September 1986 • No. 9
