The Good Shepherd

[Charles Drago]

Le Carre's material works because its characters are largely fictional creations. For me, the achilles heel weakness of The Good Shepherd is that its characters are historically identifiable, as are its key events -such as the Bay of Pigs.

And because Le Carre is simply a masterful novelist.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the most satisfying and deep literary meditation on the nature of betrayal -- of and by country, spouse, lover, youth, ideals, ideology, and self -- of which I am familiar.

It is the Philby story -- or, to be more accurate, the story of David Cornwell's struggle with it and the catharsis it instigated -- more fully probed in terms of motivation and psychology than by any other investigation. And there have been many.

In the late '60s, Le Carre could barely restrain his contempt for Kim and his "whiskey voice."

By the '90s, he was wholly disillusioned with the West -- a process that clearly had begun in 1974 with the writing of TTSS.

When the novel's historically identifiable Philby character, Bill Haydon, is asked by George Smiley why he turned on England, the answer is succinct and delivered with a contemptuous smile that disguises -- but not by any means fully -- smoldering inner conflict of the sort Le Carre was enduring:

"Someone had to."

By the way, the BBC six-part adaptation of TTSS by Arthur Hopcraft and starring Sir Alec Guinness, is, for my bankroll, by far the most successful dramatic adaptation of a serious novel ever presented on the small screen. It is available on DVD, and I urge all who find this forum to be of interest to buy the set immediately.

For those who aren't aware, Le Carre once was asked why he had not written a novel "about" the JFK assassination.

His reply: "It's too difficult."

That being noted, I must take issue with you, Jan. In the hands of a better informed and more gifted writer, The Good Shepherd might have succeeded not in spite of, but because of its direct historical depictions of characters and events.

Yes, the job would have been immensely more "difficult." But to quote Rocco, one of Michael Corleone's two most trusted hitters, when asked by his boss in The Godfather, Part II if Hyman Roth can be killed ...

"Difficult, but not impossible."

One last observation before I go to the mattress: I've not read this anywhere else, but I see the Corleone family in part as a Kennedy family analog: The Don is papa Joe; Sonny is Jack; Michael is Bobby; and poor Fredo is Teddy.