Little libraries to the rescue: John Le Carre

Hello:

The public library is closed, and I have been scavenging from little libraries, easily found on my many walks around the city. Frequently filled with terrible junk that should be recycled, I have found some jewels among the trash. Recently, from Vic West,  I scored an old yellowed book written in 1965, which was John Le Carre's The Looking Glass War,  the second title in the author's series about George Smiley and the cold war.

I was really amazed. "Wow," I thought, "this guy can really write." Structured in three sections, Taylor's Run, Avery's Run and Leiser's Run, Le Carre presents a world of nearly complete incompetence, in which the departments in charge of security and spying, send hapless human beings on impossible errands, often to their deaths.

Le Carre's vivid descriptions present a world in which it is always raining, always cold, you always fall in the mud, you never feel good, your perceptions about impending disaster are always ignored by those in charge who try to wrap you in cocoons of illusion. You are always betrayed. 

The buildings around you are shabby, corrupt, old, inadequate, the beds are hard, the food is inedible, the liquor flows. Everyone is always drinking, to their detriment. Love doesn't help, the women are desperate or nasty, or helpless to intervene in a fool's errand.

All of this is very enjoyable to read about because Le Carre is a master storyteller, terribly good at creating a world filled with real people in appalling situations about to enter their undoing. I highly recommend the diversions of Le Carre's spy series.