“The hyena who stalks the capitalist deserts”: imagining the ‘anti-Bond’ in the works of John le Carré

ABSTRACT

John le Carré’s spy fiction has long been hailed as an ‘opposite’ to Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories. This article re-examines this rivalry, first exploring how le Carré’s breakthrough, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) subverts the conventional Bondian narrative. I then examine le Carré’s development of a thesis on Bond as a figure whose consumerist qualities negated any moral core, an idea later developed into a subversion of the Bond persona in The Tailor of Panama (1996). Ultimately I argue that le Carré needed Bond as a rival against which to position his own oeuvre.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Leith and Shakespeare, ‘Remembering John le Carré’..

2. Dodds and Funnell, ‘From Casino Royale to Spectre’, 6.

3. Murray, ‘Containing the Spectre of the Past’, 255.

4. Allsop, ‘Is This the Private Nightmare of a Master Spy?’.

5. Holloway, ‘Recent Fiction’..

6. Sisman, John le Carré, 257.

7. Burton, ‘Jumping on the Bondwagon’, 344.

8. ‘Ian Fleming vs. John Le Carré’..

9. Cawelti and Rosenberg, The Spy Story, 157.

10. Goodman, British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire, 56.

11. Le Carré, A Murder of Quality, 76.

12. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 29.

13. Eco, ‘Narrative Structures in Fleming’, 37.

14. Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 52.

15. Denning, Cover Stories, 94.

16. Goodman, British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire, 32.

17. Manning himself is highly critical of this widespread interpretation, arguing that the novel offers many alibis for the machinations of the British state. Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 53.

18. Fleming, Double the 007, 137.

19. Eco, ‘Narrative Structures in Fleming’: 35.

20. Ibid., 37.

21. Cawelti and Rosenberg, The Spy Story, 136, 179.

22. Amis, What Became of Jane Austen?, 76.

23. Dr. No premiered in the UK shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis, at which time le Carré was finalising the novel in West Germany (where the film was not released until January 1964). Sisman, John le Carré: 237.

24. Bennett and Woollacott, Bond and Beyond, 36–37.

25. Burton, ‘Jumping on the Bondwagon’, 346.

26. Strong, ‘Introduction’, 16.

27. Samson, ‘Burton and Bloom star in spy story’..

28. Coleman, ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’..

29. Miller, ‘Paradoxical Masculinity’, 132.

30. Spicer, ‘Male Stardom in 1960s British Cinema’, 14.

31. The Spy who Came in from the Cold: Medium Pressbook, 4.

32. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 13.

33. ‘Intimations: John le Carré’..

34. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 7.

35. Ibid., 12.

36. Deighton, James Bond.

37. It is unclear whether Fleming ever read le Carré, although his biographer Andrew Lycett indicates that in the months between the publishing phenomenon of The Spy and his death, Bond’s creator had privately cooled towards Deighton’s ‘kitchen sink writing’ and preferred to read non-fiction. Lycett, Ian Fleming: 438, 447–448.

38. Miller, ‘Paradoxical Masculinity’, 127–128.

39. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 7.

40. Le Carré, Introduction”; Sisman, John le Carré, 312–313.

41. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 7.

42. ‘Intimations: John le Carré’..

43. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 12.

44. ‘The Lively Arts: John le Carré’..

45. Lathrop, The Literary Spy, 106.

46. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 7.

47. Lathrop, The Literary Spy, 106.

48. Bennett and Woollacott, Bond and Beyond, 25.

49. Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 55–56.

50. Kunicki, ‘A socialist 007’, 42.

51. Le Carré, ‘To Russia, With Greetings’, 3.

52. Ibid., 6.

53. Ibid., 4.

54. Ibid., 5.

55. Jiménez-Varea & Pineda, ‘The Ideology of “Ladykiller Jimmy”’, 45.

56. Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 32.

57. Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 120–121.

58. Denning, Cover Stories, 34.

59. Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 79.

60. Goodman, British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire, 162.

61. Bolton, The Blunt Affair, 147.

62. Sisman, John le Carré, 484.

63. Snyder, John le Carré’s Post-Cold War Novels, 29.

64. Remnick, ‘Le Carré’s New War’..

65. Loughrey, ‘Bond 25’..

66. Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama, 231.

67. Ibid., 148.

68. Gaydos, ‘“Tailor” Pops Seams of Spy Genre’..

69. Said, ‘The Spy Going Back to the Cold’..

70. Brosnan was not the first Bond star to play a leading role in a le Carré adaptation; a decade earlier Connery had starred in The Russia House (Fred Schepisi, 1990). However, the older Connery’s role as eccentric larger-than-life publisher Barley Blair was not an especially Bond-like figure and, unlike Boorman’s Tailor, the film itself did little to encourage such comparison. See Sisman, John le Carré, 470.

71. ‘The Perfect Fit’..

72. Spicer, Typical Men, 186.

73. Charity, ‘Tailor-made’..

74. Leach, ‘Bond in the 1990s – and Beyond?’, 306.

75. Gaydos, ‘“Tailor” Pops Seams of Spy Genre’..

76. Christopher, ‘Bond’s Seamier Side’..

77. Said, ‘The Spy Going Back to the Cold’..

78. Charity, ‘Tailor-made’..

79. Chapman, Licence to Thrill, 248.

80. Thomas, ‘The New Brutalism’, 37.

81. Jones and Higson, ‘Bond Rebooted’, 108–109.

82. Le Carré, Conversations with John le Carré, 12.

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Joseph Oldham

Joseph Oldham is a lecturer in Communication and Mass Media at the British University in Egypt. His research interests include Cold War history, spy fiction, cultures of conspiracy and British television drama. He has published the monograph Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracies and the Secret State in British Television Drama (Manchester University Press, 2017) and articles in Cold War History, the Journal of Intelligence History, the Journal of British Cinema and Television, Adaptation, the Journal of Popular Television and the collection Spy Chiefs, Volume 1: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom (Georgetown University Press, 2018). He has previously taught in American Studies at the University of Hull, Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, and Media and Communication at the Universities of Westminster and Leicester.