In the context of the contemporary novel and within the multiple variables that it has had over time, without a doubt, the so-called spy novel turns out to be one of the forms that has enjoyed reading preferences.
Probably, this is close to the detective novel – also in its different scriptural formulations – the common point is that there is always an agent involved in the resolution of a conflict or an enigma. The difference is that in the spy novel there is usually an undercover individual who immerses himself in a foreign space where he must investigate and deliver key data to those who are in charge of him.
The spy novel turns out to be, therefore, a story that tells of the adventures of a subject who, beneath an apparent simplicity in his way of being as a character, hides a personality at the service of a country or power, whose purpose is to gather information about different aspects of the other space where it is involved. The spy is a person who works secretly. Silently, the spy seeks to obtain information. All of the above, without a doubt, is based on real experience. Espionage has always been present in real reality – excuse the redundancy – only in literature it is transformed into a literary typology. It is feasible to trace this character in the universal narrative, but in contemporary times the prototype of the spy – whether male or female – becomes a fictional model. However, there is a counterpart.
Just as the antagonist has existed since the classical Greeks, in this discursive modality there are counterspies, in such a way that the story becomes a kind of Manichaeism where ethical or moral boundaries tend to blur. The same thing happens in detective novels. Ian Fleming’s novels that had a publishing success with the agent in Her Majesty’s service called James Bond – who would later become an icon when he was transferred to the cinema with Sean Connery – turn out to be a hybrid story where different ingredients or codes are mixed narratives to result in novels where the intrigue places emphasis on an agent with superiority who manages to overwhelm his opponents through incipient technology; The hero, Bond, navigates eroticism, violence and British humor in his actions.
The development of the spy novel proliferated in the first decades of the last century when the world was transformed into a dichotomous form based on what was called the Cold War. The two powers that emerged after the Second World War divided the world into two irreconcilable spaces. The presence of spies and counterspies became common. The image of the Berlin Wall was metaphorically the indelible example of said partition that was ideological between “good guys” and “bad guys.” The dichotomous became the construct of a way of being. The spy novel, consequently, will be the result of this context. It was the structured structure of a worldview of the contemporary era.
It is within this imaginary that we can place the novel titled “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” by the British writer John le Carré, born in 1931 and who served in the British intelligence service during the Cold War. Most likely, this experience was the pivot – or the structuring structure – that spurred him to write this novel, which at its moment of emergence had extraordinary success. The story is from 1963. In other words, the novel is sixty-one years old since it was first published.
A 21st century reading of this text can be a rewarding or frustrating reading experience. The first option has to do with the reader’s horizon of expectations coinciding with John le Carré’s discursive proposal, which is almost impossible. To do this, we must update the codes of the story behind it, that is, the context of the Cold War and all its consequences in the history of humanity. The second alternative is that the novel is simply worn out by the passage of time where as a symbolic image the Berlin Wall no longer exists.
The argument is quite simple. Spy Alex Leamas witnesses the murder of his last agent, shot dead by GDR guards – missing -. Leamas has been responsible for English espionage in East Germany. As a form of vendetta, an unnamed character named Control offers him the opportunity to catch Mundt, the main character in the intelligence services of the German Democratic Republic. Among the characters appears George Smiley who becomes a regular actant in le Carré’s narrative.
The story unfolds slowly where the codes of the time are present and take away the narrative agility of the text. On the back cover of the novel, Graham Greene – also a British writer, author of an unavoidable novel called “The Power and the Glory” – maintains that it is “the best spy story I have ever read.” It was probably like this at the moment the novel became present.
A reading in this postmodern time of John le Carré’s fictional text shows the passing of the years. He looks a bit worn out and the reading of him fails to catch on. The outcome is predictable and for those who read it it is not necessary to indicate what it is. The novel is in the collective imagination because in 1965 a version or adaptation was made for the cinema starring the British actor Richard Burton. My first approach to Alex Leamas’ spy adventure was, precisely, the film; Then came the reading and this rereading of the novel by John le Carré, who died in 2020.
Datasheet:
John le Carré. The spy that emerged from the cold. Planet. 2024. 291 pages).
