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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I have been obsessed with the BBC miniseries of the same name, ever since my good friend Mim told me about it. You can't go wrong with Sir Alec Guinness in the role of George Smiley. It's a spy story, from the novel by John le Carre. The author himself was a spy for British intelligence, apparently until the traitor Kim Philby blew his cover in the early '60s. I'm not going to spoil the story, and I'm not sure why I'm telling you this. Recently on the blog here, I've been sharing spiritual insights. Well, I guess I could say that there is nothing more unspiritual than a person trying to say something spiritually meaningful.

I suppose I tell you about this story, and potentially subsequent stories, because when I felt that my world was falling apart, Smiley and his friends--and his enemies--have brought me comfort. I definitely fought the urge to buy the books in the trilogy involving George Smiley. Suffice to say that when I get my next Audible credit, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is next on my list. They did a clever and great thing for that Audible edition: they're going to have Michael Jayston, who played Peter Guillam in the BBC miniseries, as the reader. Ostensibly this edition celebrates the recent 2011 film, but it's a great sign of respect to pay homage to the miniseries. Sir Alec Guinness is absolutely mesmerizing in the film, and in the film Smiley's People, produced a few years later.

I don't know why the stories bring me comfort; I don't know why I can repeatedly watch them without becoming bored. I suppose that the pandemic is also playing a role in our tendency to reach for the familiar.

On another hand still, I know a few people drawn to these stories who use them as an excuse to draw up elaborate conspiracies concerning current events. I suppose if someone is inclined to yell, "Don't trust the media!" they could find plenty of material to validate the idea that the most straightforward explanation is not necessarily the right one.

What also intrigues me about Smiley's People is that I had to watch it through about five times before I understood what was taking place. The author respects his audience enough not to participate in the dumbing-down of the material, even for a television audience. Some of the jargon is intuitive, and you get used to it, but some is most certainly not. I think one reason I appreciate these stories is that the Cold War represented an opportunity for broad Western consensus concerning political values; namely, an opposition to statist communism. The political consensus was never as total as romance would have us pretend, especially after the fact, but I am quite certain of my values, and I see them reflected here, broadly speaking.

This story draws connections in my mind with Tom Clancy's novel, The Hunt for Red October. Both stories reflect a broad Western opposition to Soviet communism, and I share that opposition, though I am no uncritical cheerleader for the capitalist alternative, nor for specific Western actions in pursuit of its goal of communism's destruction. Yet I suppose both stories make me feel patriotic in the best sense, and I have needed to belong.

In any case, I commend the so-called, "Smiley Trilogy" to you, even as I have not read it yet. It reminds us of a tense period in our history, the aftermath of which in its positive aspects, the younger generations cannot help but take for granted.

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