The Spy Novels of John le Carre: Balancing Ethics and Politics (review)

Abstract

Myron Aronoff, a political scientist, has written a fine full-length study of the complex interplay of ethics and politics in the work of John le Carré. This kind of ethical criticism may not be the latest thing in this age of "critical theory" when neo-freudianism, race and gender analysis, and cultural studies vie with the residue of literary deconstructionism, but it is just the ticket for this writer. Le Carré has long had an ambiguous relationship to the contemporary literary canon. Since he is a perennially best-selling writer whose work grows out of the popular tradition of the spy thriller, critics have found it difficult to place him in a contemporary canon dominated by postmodern narrative experiments. However, le Carré continues to go his own way, working with traditional structures like tightly plotted stories, chronological narrative, and consistent points of view. He is certainly aware of race and gender issues, but these are not, on the whole, central to his tales. Aronoff's careful study of all of le Carré's fiction, except for his most recent novel, Single and Single, makes a very persuasive case for him as one of our greatest political novelists. In the course of his discussion, Aronoff also makes some interesting points about the political novel as a literary genre, and offers, as well, some useful insights into the climate of opinion that shaped the course of the Cold War. [End Page 527]