Spy Surveillance, Torture, and Other Literary Devices

     Today, I was going to discuss politics but have been sidetracked by a literary discussion. Usually it’s the other way around.

     I just finished reading – for the third time – John LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. This is after watching for at least the third time, the BBC mini-series starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. All this is in pulse-quickening, toe-tapping anticipation of the movie starring Gary Oldman which is supposed to be released December 9^th in the U.S. Unfortunately, I didn’t see a release date for Switzerland or South Africa where I tend to spend most of my time, but I'm sure it's coming within a few months. I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks very good, though it also looks like they added more violence and sex than was in the book – which had almost none of both. But trailers will sometimes try to give that impression just on general principles. 

     How often have you read a thriller and two days later forgotten the plot and possibly even the characters? Happens all the time, and why not? There is a place in the literary world for books that turn off the brain and provide just enough mental stimulation to dull the stresses of life while doing a better job than TV of keeping the synaptic fluid from solidifying. But…there are also those times when the mind wants to be fully engaged and to be astounded at where the writer has taken them. John LeCarre at his best can do that.

     The first two LeCarre books I read (The Russia House and Absolute Friends) provided quite a challenge. Both were a painful slog for me – not through any fault of LeCarre’s, but because my reading mind had become weak and ill-focused from reading too much pablum. Now I’m used to his style and read his books easily, seeing every word, picturing every scene, and catching almost every intended nuance. It was worth the struggle.

     Good fiction can oftentimes better describe reality than a dry work of well documented non-fiction. When you read LeCarre at his best there is a sense that he is describing events the way they actually take place in the real world. Here are two examples: In B-grade thrillers, be it movies or books, it is quite common to have successful surveillances conducted by only a few people? Well, in one Tinker Tailor scene you have a British spy being followed as part of a ‘Grand Slam Operation’ and the intricacy of the surveillance is such that it couldn’t have been done properly with less than a hundred people. And when you think about it, that must be true. In a big city there are taxis and trains to be jumped into, buses blocking views, crowded stores with rear exits to enter. How could a few people possibly cover all situations?

     Also have you ever wondered how real interrogations take place? In most thrillers it’s a few slaps, some torture, maybe a little good cop bad cop, then a clever question or two and soon the subject is singing like a canary. Read Jim Prideaux’s description in Tinker Tailor of how the Russians broke him down over months. Gritty, yes. Harrowing, yes. But so real that you know that this is the way it is really done.

     Okay, next week, back to politics with a discussion on attack ads.

Best regards,

Jim

Zurich      

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Writer

       There have been many books claiming to know the secret to writing ‘blockbusters’ and ‘bestsellers’. I have problems with books like this for two reasons. First, it’s silly to think there is a checklist formula for success in any competitive field.  Second, I’m always skeptical of people who know the secret to success in real estate, finances, or some other lucrative occupation but rather than practicing that secret themselves and getting rich that way, decide it’s a more effective use of their time to write a ‘how-to’ book on the subject.  Hmmm…what’s wrong with this picture?

     However, there are many books on writing where the author simply wants to pass on what they’ve learned after years of dedication to the craft. Some of these books are priceless and offer real gems for aspiring writers. Ever since Homer wrote the Iliad, people have wondered what makes a story compelling, fascinating, and memorable. Well, some people have spent a lifetime trying to figure that out. One of the things we know is that a great story causes the brain to create vivid pictures. So one of the keys to writing better is to understand how little scratches on a piece of paper, or, for that matter, electrical ink on a Kindle, can push those synaptic buttons in the mind.  

     In the course of trying to improve my writing, I have found three books of spectacular quality:

1.       Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. An all time classic. A hundred pages of clearly written pearls of writing wisdom.

2.        The Book of Writing by Paula LaRocque. Two hundred forty pages. Amusing at times, and always insightful.

3.        Keys to Great Writing by Stephen Wilbers. Two hundred sixty two pages of clear principles and great examples.

     All three books make a point about the importance of verbs and how even descriptions of inanimate objects can come alive if tied to action. Wilbers’s book gives two versions of the same description from The Great Gatsby – one that doesn’t utilize the power of verbs to create images, and the other showing how a great writer like Fitzgerald chose to handle it. Version one:      

“The lawn was expansive with sun-dials, and brick walls, and flower gardens. There were vines on the side of the house…”

And Fitzgerald:

“The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens – finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.”

    

     Notice the difference. Both versions use the same nouns, but Fitzgerald’s version adds verbs and action to the description and in so doing adds life, movement, and zest – and activates the brain. 

     At the same time as I read this point in Wilbers book, I was also reading and immensely enjoying John LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and I was curious if LeCarre practiced this technique. I decided to look for it as I read. It wasn’t more than a few pages later, on page thirty-nine, that I came across this little gem:

“They had turned off the road and were passing over gravel. Black walls of foliage rose to either side, lights appeared, then a high porch, and the steepled outline of a rambling house lifted above the treetops. The rain had stopped, but as Smiley stepped into the fresh air he heard all around him the restless ticking of wet leaves.”

     Now, here is the way a less skillful writer might have done it:

“The road was made of gravel. On either side were vines and branches. Up ahead there was a light and a large house with trees around it. The air was fresh and there were wet leaves on the ground.”

     Notice the difference?  It’s no wonder LeCarre is esteemed not just as a great thriller writer but as a great writer, period. In my next posting, it will be back to politics with a look at political attack ads. 

Best regards,

Jim                
Zurich  

Why no swearing in Einsten's Trunk?

The answer to the question posed in the above title  – Ha! I hope you are not expecting anything too profound here –  is that since I don’t swear myself I really have a hard time putting swear words into my characters' mouths. But, I’m not alone in this. If you are a connoisseur of thrillers you know that Lee Childs has very little bad language in his books. Also, I haven’t read any Clive Cussler since he started working with co-authors, but in his heyday he had almost no bad language, though I seem to recall that a few of Mr. Cussler’s earlier books were a little looser in that regards. John LeCarre too, has very little swearing in his novels, though he just did one recently about the Russian Mafia called, “Our Kind of Traitor” that was replete with bad, though presumably accurate, language.

In any case, I enjoyed writing Einstein’s Trunk without the vulgar language. It was a bit of a challenge trying to construct characters that would be taken seriously as villains when the most I would have any of them say was an emphatic, “Aw, heck”, but it was fun to try. I had to spend a little more time on the dialogue and a little more time creating the scenes, but in the end it was a challenge I enjoyed. Yohaba, too, liked to swear until Rulon asked her to knock it off. With Yohaba, I would simply refer to her ‘verbal napalm strikes’ or some such phrase to get the point across.

I’ve decided that in books and movies, writers put in bad language for two reasons. First, it’s an easy way to show that the bad guys are really bad and that the good guys are really tough and street-wise. Second, it’s a way of showing ‘realism’ or ‘grit’.

I think villainy and grit can be achieved in other ways, though, and it makes for a more satisfying read if writers try to do so. Shakespeare woke up one day and decided to write a love story – and he wrote Romeo and Juliet. No illicit sex, no swearing. Just real insight into this mystery we call ‘love’. Four hundred years later, we’re still talking about it. In the same vein, I’ve done a little studying on the psychology of combat and I can tell you without any hesitation that many of the so called ‘gritty’ and ‘realistic’ thrillers today are not emotionally accurate and honest in how they portray people engaged in life and death situations. To me, that’s the realism I most appreciate.

I saw a movie the other day called, “The Company Men”. In the beginning especially, there was a fair amount of bad language but it was an emotionally and intellectually honest movie. It was about people being laid off from a large corporation and the way that affected their lives. After the movie I found myself talking with great respect about the people who wrote, directed, and acted in it. And the funny thing was, the bad language didn’t add one bit to the realism and honesty that made the movie great.     

In my next posting I will talk about movie and book critics and the roll I believe they should play in the world of writers, movie producers, and publishers.  

Best regards,

Jim

Zurich, June 13, 2011  

The Excellence of Martin Cruz Smith

    There are many good thriller writers out there, but there are only a few that are mentioned in the same breath as serious literary writers. At least for me, the ones that come first to mind are: Robert Goddard in his prime, John LeCarre, and, Martin Cruz Smith. LeCarre and Smith have the added distinction of writing novels that defined an entire era for a generation of readers. For LeCarre it was the Cold War. For Smith it’s Russia both before and after Communism.

     Here is why I appreciate Martin Cruz Smith. First, when you have finished one of his books, you have tasted, smelled, felt, heard, and seen the story. If the scene is in Moscow, you see the grime on the old buildings and feel the apathy of the people, you smell the food and the garbage, you sense the despair and the daily grind of life, the long waiting in lines – and all this while an incredibly exciting and intellectually fascinating crime story unfolds.

    Second, the characters are amazingly well-drawn. Before I ever read Gorky Park, Smith’s first Arkady Renko thriller, I read a blurb from a review where it said that Smith develops characters in a way other thriller writers can only dream of – or words to that effect. And how true that was! Read the scene in Gorky Park where Arkady talks to his father. Absolutely amazingly well drawn. No literary tricks. No formulaic writing. Pure art – using words to paint a true picture of an unforgettable character.

    One of the subtle things Smith does is he sometimes has Arkady uncover a clue but then only reveals that Arkady understands the significance of it later through Arkady’s actions. For example, in Havana Bay Arkady has been trying to guess the password into a dead man’s computer. He’s tried for days, and then he happens to talk to a woman who mentions the name of the man’s pet turtle. Smith doesn’t have Arkady think ‘Ah-ha!’ while the women is talking. But later, Arkady goes to the man’s apartment, types in the name, and gets into the computer. It’s a small thing, but so many other writers would have let the cat out of the bag immediately. For some reason, I find that device very effective.

    Finally, Smith does an amazing amount of research and so artfully blends the background information within the story that you hardly know he’s doing it. And, of course, his writing style, his sentence structure, and his descriptions are all creative, unique, and varied.  

    For my next blog, I will write about Revenge in Einstein’s Trunk.   

Jim Haberkorn

Zurich, April 14, 2011