Salem Press

	Clearly written, skillfully analytical, and critically adept, these four volumes serve as an introduction to the fiction of a wide range of writers of English.
American Reference Books Annual 1988

Masterplots II, British Fiction Series, Rev. Ed.
A Perfect Spy

Author: John Le Carré
Given Name: David John Moore Cornwell
Born: October 19, 1931; Poole, Dorset, England
Type of Work: Espionage
Time of Work: The early 1930's to the 1980's
Locale: England, Switzerland, Vienna, Washington, D.C., and Czechoslovakia
First Published: 1986

Principal Characters
MAGNUS PYM, the protagonist, a British espionage agent
MARY PYM, his wife
RICHARD THOMAS "RICK" PYM, his father
TOM PYM, his son
JACK BROTHERHOOD, the British espionage agent who recruited Pym and to
whom he reports
AXEL HAMPEL (Petz or Zaworski), Pym's friend and a double agent
GRANT LEDERER III, Pym's American counterpart
ANNIE LIPPSIE LIPPSCHITZ, one of Rick's mistresses, who befriends Pym
MISS DUBBER, the landlady of Pym's rooming-house retreat

The Novel
In John le Carré's A Perfect Spy, narrative technique, theme, and plot are inextricably related. At the novel's beginning, Magnus Pym, under the name of Mr. Canterbury, has retreated to a rooming house on the English coast in order to write, though one does not know until the novel's end how desperate a retreat this is. For years, Magnus has been wanting to retire from his work in British espionage and the diplomatic post that is his cover, and write a novel. His father's death gives him an unexpected leave of absence and also the impetus to write not the novel but a memoir for his son, Tom, though he occasionally addresses his wife, Mary, and his controller, Jack Brotherhood, as well. In explaining his own life to Tom, Magnus hopes to free, if not himself, then at least Tom, from the haunting and dominating presence of Magnus' own father, and presumably to free Tom from his, Magnus', own shadow as well.

As the narrative constantly shifts in time and in point of view, from Magnus' first-person account of his life to the third-person narration as the British and their American counterparts track Magnus to his hiding place, more and more facets of Magnus' life and character are revealed. Magnus begins his narrative with an account of his upbringing, that of "a perfect spy." His father, Richard Thomas Pym, known to all as Rick, is a charming con man who has married a woman who is above his station, Dorothy, sister of Sir Makepeace Watermaster. Pym grows up tossed back and forth between the luxurious, freewheeling, and mysterious life his father leads, with a series of "mothers," and the austere home of Sir Makepeace Watermaster and the even more austere public school. Of the "mothers," Annie Lippschitz, "Lippsie," a German-Jewish refugee, is the person to whom he is most attached and who most influences him. Lippsie teaches him German, all he knows about art and culture as a boy, and even handwriting; all of his life, his handwriting retains traces of German script. Magnus has, he speculates, a German soul, the "German need to feel incomplete." Survival in Rick's household, and in those of his mother's relatives, depends on his learning all sorts of deceptions and subterfuges and inventing all sorts of different backgrounds for himself, explanations of what his father does for a living. People and situations are often not what they seem to be, and Magnus learns suspicion and reticence the hard way.

Stranded in Switzerland, "the spiritual home of natural spies," where he has gone on his first "clandestine assignment" as the front man for a confidence game of his father which fails, Magnus manages to survive, thanks to his far-from-perfect German, a series of odd jobs, and a providential encounter with one Herr Ollinger, who offers him a room. It is in Berne, within twelve hours at Christmas time, that he establishes the two relationships which will determine his future. At Ollinger's, he meets Axel Hampel, a refugee with no papers, a limp, a philosopher's curiosity, and no real nationality, a Sudeten German whose home is now part of Czechoslovakia.

Axel perfects Magnus' German and, through massive shared reading, educates him far more than does the university, where Magnus eventually registers, telling Rick he is reading law but in reality studying German. Magnus in turn nurses Axel through the illness he acquired during his escape and brings him books from the library. At the English church, Magnus meets Jack Brotherhood, then a handsome and impressive young man of twenty-four, already involved in work for the Firm, as he refers to the British intelligence operation. He is even then recruiting Magnus, though the latter does not become aware of this for some time. For the seventeen-year-old Magnus, both men are distanced almost a generation from him, not so much by age as by their experiences during World War II. Both seem to fill the gap of father and friend, and he attempts loyalty to both, letting neither one know about the other.

Although he resists the idea, Magnus does become a spy, asking himself for what else was he so well suited. Magnus' narrative, increasingly darker, answers the question and, in so doing, rationalizes what he has made of his life. As he grows older, Magnus slowly becomes aware of his father's illegal dealings, his treatment of Magnus' mother, ending with her insanity, and his treatment of the other women in his life, especially Lippsie. The latter, for whom Rick has somehow procured a teaching post at Pym's public school, commits suicide. Though he overhears a quarrel with Rick in which she accuses him of making her a thief, and he knows her desperation, Magnus himself feels guilty of her death. At school, he also betrays one of the few friends with whom he is to keep in touch, Kenneth Sefton Boyd.

Informing on Axel at Brotherhood's request, Magnus later reencounters him when he is sent on military service to Austria, then divided, as Germany was after World War II. Magnus not only does not admit to Axel that he was the informer but also discusses with him the various people who might have been. Axel knows, but revenge does not seem to be his motive in recruiting Magnus as a double agent. From then on, Magnus leads at least a double life, sometimes juggling even more identities. Brotherhood and the Firm gradually discover more and more evidence of Magnus' duplicity, counterpointed against ever darker revelations about Rick's career and his death, about Magnus' own personal relationships and self-perceptions. The closer the whole affair comes to full disclosure, the closer he becomes to both Axel and Brotherhood. The latter, though he is suspicious and finally disillusioned, defends Magnus to the end at heavy cost to his own career.

A Perfect Spy is an extremely autobiographical work. In a speech given in 1986 at The Johns Hopkins University, le Carré, though warning his audience not to accept anything a writer tells as the truth, gave much information about his own life, which parallels that of Magnus to a remarkable extent. He, too, says he was a perfect spy at the age of five. Like Rick, his father engaged in many dubious enterprises. His mother left when he was five. Le Carré left school at sixteen, studied in Switzerland, knew German and German literature, did his army service in Austria, and worked for the British Foreign Service. Unlike Magnus, he did not continue to make a career but established himself as a writer and left the service.

The Characters
Despite, or perhaps because of, the autobiographical nature of the novel, le Carré here creates some of his most fully developed and believable characters. Unlike many domineering fathers in literature, Rick is lovable as well as despicable. Perhaps the best touch in his whole portrait is the account by Peggy Wentworth of Rick in action. Rick has swindled her invalid husband out of nine thousand pounds, including his farm, his home, and all of his property, causing, Peggy believes, her husband's death. Defensively, she describes to Magnus, then a young man at Oxford, how she confronted Rick, who immediately said that he would "see you right." He buys her clothes and elaborate meals, jewelry, a watch for her son. Mimicking Rick's voice and manner, recalling his exact words, she says, "Wouldn't you try to get something back in any way you could, and, if you were lonely, wouldn't you yield to his blandishments?" Yet even after Rick has seduced her, she still hates him, never sees a penny of the money he owes her, and wants to destroy him by revealing his past as he is running for Parliament. Rick, as usual, manages to acknowledge the truth and then persuade his audience of his own version of it. It is this mixture of love and fascination, coupled with pain and disillusionment, that Rick instills in everyone, above all his son.

Axel is Magnus' "other father," and, as Mary observes (not without a bit of jealousy), influenced Magnus in many ways that a woman would; Axel "taught him his style." She sees in Axel characteristics that Magnus has acquired from him, or, such is the force of Axel's personality, that she assumes the influence is from Axel to Magnus and not vice versa. There are hints, too, of what one of their first agents, Sabina, calls "hommsexual" between them, though it is never acknowledged. Magnus' first code name for Axel is "Poppy," which sounds like a girl's name. When the Firm, objecting to the association with the symbol of war veterans, changes it, Magnus still thinks of him as Poppy, and it is their private symbol. When Magnus marries his first wife, Axel sends, anonymously, a large bunch of poppies. The emotional tone of their relationship is that of clandestine lovers—secret meetings, secret communications, special foods they share, a code book with sentimental overtones, Axel's first gift to Magnus. The book, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen's The Adventurous Simplicissimus (1669), is a picaresque tale of the Thirty Years' War, a time of confused loyalties and endless changing of sides and boundaries. Grimmelshausen himself used a number of pseudonyms, all anagrams of what may not even be his real name, and of places where he lived. Magnus also likes to use place-names as cover names. John le Carré is a pseudonym for David John Moore Cornwell, which he adopted when he began writing novels before he left government service.

Axel's charm is similar to Rick's but much more sympathetic, for Axel is the one person in Magnus' life (with the possible exception of Lippsie) who seems genuinely capable of loving him. Miss Dubber, the very proper landlady of Magnus' rooming-house retreat, is very fond of him, but their relationship is that of spinster aunt and bachelor nephew. They fuss over each other, sympathetic to each other's little ways; Magnus brings gifts from exotic places and helps with repairs around the house. She grows cool to him, however, when she suspects that Mr. Canterbury may not be all he seems to be.

Miss Dubber is one of a number of well-drawn minor characters. Herr Ollinger, with his chow dog Herr Bastl, his unlimited sympathy for odd waifs and strays, whom he brings home to a resigned Frau Ollinger, and whom somehow they feed, house, and find jobs for, appears briefly but memorably. Grant Lederer, a neurotically ambitious member of the American team, is almost a caricature but is effective nevertheless. In the sketches of Sir Kenneth Sefton Boyd as an aging aristocratic homosexual; of Syd Lemon, the only one who remains of Rick's coterie, aging, widowed, surviving in cramped lower-middle-class suburban housing; and of Rick's death in a seedy rooming house, his last moments tended by middle-aged prostitutes, le Carré both gives a top-to-bottom cross section of British society and shows how far Rick rose and how low he sank.

Almost entirely, characterization is achieved by dialogue and by the characters' recollections of one another, with the reader, so to speak, in the position of intelligence gatherer, and therefore drawn into a kind of participation in le Carré's world and its assumptions and demands. The mixed-narrative structure, in which Magnus, within his own account of his life refers to himself in both the third and first person, adds to the effect. Sometimes the shift in identity is within the same sentence: "And though I do not remember a single lesson, she [Lippsie] must have taught Pym German. . . ." Magnus himself is the most completely and complexly observed of all. Early encouraged by both Lippsie and Axel to have "a world inside his head," a knowledge of art, music, literature, culture—the only safe baggage for a refugee—Magnus ends by creating for himself an interlocking world of crisscrossed identities and double lives. "He doesn't have affairs. He has lives," observes one woman about him.

From the beginning, he has had to give, or hide, or both, too much of himself. Axel manages to remain outside the game and counsels escape when they are close to discovery. Magnus cannot escape, perhaps because he cannot escape from himself or from Rick, and what is possibly Rick's most damaging legacy of all: "the importance of a respectable appearance." When Magnus finally tries to write the truth about his life, with "fear and relief," it is too late for the truth to save him. In a letter to Tom, Magnus tells him that Rick "gobbled up the natural humanity in him" and that he does not want to do the same thing to Tom.

Jack Brotherhood and Mary Pym, possibly because they are both quintessentially British and reserved, more probably because they, too, lose something of themselves through their claims on Magnus, are less vivid but solidly drawn. They are most effective in the revelations of their relationship before Magnus became attracted to Mary. Jack is in his own way an artist: Both Belinda, Magnus' first wife, and Kate, another member of the Firm with whom Magnus has had an affair, tell Brotherhood that he cannot complain about the difficulties Magnus has created for him. "You invented him, Jack," says Belinda.

Themes and Meanings
Around these characters, and innumerable others, is developed an elaborate fugue on the major themes of love and betrayal and their interrelationships, both with each other and with the question of personal identity, the nature of the artist, and the commonality of politicians, clergymen, artists, con men, and spies.

Le Carré's own comments on his writing are of particular interest in this respect. He warns one of the unreliability of the novelist as narrator. Speaking about the context of his novels, however, he observes that they all deal in one way or another with questioning the right of an individual to put aside questions of conscience for the achievement of a national or religious goal. Magnus' dilemma and his downfall is his attempt to do both at once, without letting either side—or indeed, either side of himself—be aware of what the other side is doing.

Le Carré also compares the novelist's profession with that of the spy. The novelist is in a constant "state of watchfulness," must "prey upon his neighbors," is "dependent on those whom he deceives," must "somehow contrive to keep a distance from his own feelings," in order to "conjure up a package that will meet with the approval of his masters," and always is "not merely an outsider, but implicitly a subversive." By subversion, he refers to the novelist's constant chipping away at humanity's illusions and pretensions.

Critical Context
Le Carré is clearly one of the front-ranking novelists of espionage; his rank among novelists in general is less clear-cut. Most of le Carré's critics have pointed out that the question is linked to the genre. The authors of genre fiction—detective, espionage, horror, science fiction, Western, historical—all need to establish their competence in spite of the medium in which they work. All of these genres are associated with "escapism," and, more to the point, with formulaic, second-rate (and worse) works. Authors and critics alike must usually apologize for, or defend, the form before dealing with the individual literary work under consideration.

Espionage novels, after World War II and the onset of the Cold War, became increasingly popular and also developed from the novel of sheer adventure and patriotism to complex analyses of the murky motives and sordid realities of the spy's world. Le Carré, especially, has not only dealt with the major moral issues in this realm, but he has also done so consistently. In his view, the theme running through all of his novels is that of questioning the right of the individual to suspend his own moral conscience in order to accomplish a national or religious goal, of the means justifying the end or the organization's priority over the individuals of which it is composed. Only one of le Carré's previous novels, The Naive and Sentimental Lover (1971), does not deal with espionage at all; it is generally conceded, even by his admirers, to be an inferior work. In A Perfect Spy, le Carré has combined the moral questions and suspenseful plot of the spy novel with broader issues of the moral responsibility of the parent, the artist, the businessman, relating these loyalties and betrayals to their counterparts in the ethical and political dilemmas of foreign policy and espionage. With this novel, le Carré more closely approaches the work of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, to whom he has been compared.

Katharine M. Morsberger

Bibliography
Atkins, John. "Le Carré's People," in The British Spy Novel: Styles in Treachery, 1984.

Atkins, John. "The World of John le Carré," in The British Spy Novel: Styles in Treachery, 1984.

Conroy, Frank. "Sins of the Father," in The New York Times Book Review. XCII (April 13, 1986), p. 1.

le Carré, John. "The Clandestine Muse," in Johns Hopkins Magazine. August, 1986, pp. 11-16.

Lelyveld, Joseph. "Le Carré's Toughest Case," in The New York Times Magazine. March 16, 1986, p. 40.

Lewis, Peter. John le Carré, 1985.

Monaghan, David. The Novels of John le Carré, 1985.

Rutherford, Andrew. "The Spy as Hero: Le Carré and the Cold War," in The Literature of War: Five Studies in Heroic Virtue, 1978.