Day 192: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy First Impressions

I started on my last spy novel (for now) a few days ago and once again LeCarre has pulled me in deep in the first few chapters. His voice is so thick with suspense that even the most innocuous moments become something to wonder about, question, and ultimately find highly suspicious. A schoolboy watching his hunchback teacher in the rain, a portly man walking down the street, or an umbrella that is suspiciously dry. Things that a normal person would never think twice about. But the umbrella is dry because the man who arrived came before the rain, the portly man is only so portly because he moves in circles where he can afford to be, and the watchful boy has the first and last trait of a good spy. LeCarre is able to drag opposites together in stunning form to create tension within just single sentences, bringing a life to every line that is so hard to capture as regularly and evenly as he does. My favorite line so far exemplifies this part of his style perfectly:

'He drove languidly, but fast.'

Languid on its own means to do something slowly or even lazily, so you almost never see it right up next to the word fast. The car is fast. The driver is slow. When you read this sentence it immediately captures the sense of danger that retired spy George Smiley felt while riding along with an old colleague to a meeting he knew not the purpose of. Going someplace he hasn't been in years, likely to perform a role he thought he'd retired from, the suspense is incredible, but it's hard to convey. How can a shared feeling be generated in the reader? Describe his emotions directly? No, says LeCarre. Put the the reader in a semi-runaway vehicle in the pouring rain with a lazy driver who won't shut up about old secret missions. That'll make you feel like a spy in a hot second. It's so ingenious and I wish I could capture the same feeling in my own writing. Hopefully if I keep reading some of it will rub off.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley