I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: CHVRCHES-“The Mother We Share” (SXSW, March 23, 2013).

This year NPR doesn’t seem to be offering many full shows from SXSW for download.  But they do have a number of streaming songs.  And since I have recently reduced the amount of time I can dedicate to posts, I’m going to talk about a few songs rather than albums for a bit.

I’ve never heard of Chvrches although NPR leads me to believe they have a buzz around them.  They’re from Glasgow (I like the Glasgow scene), but this song is really way too poppy for me.  At least in this live incarnation, it’s so spare and keyboardy.  The lead singer has a great voice but it is firmly placed in the pop realm (especially with the Oh Oh Ohs).

The band is good though, and I enjoyed the synth guy making most of the sounds of the song.    I’d be curious to hear more (especially t hat cover of “Purple Rain.”  Watch it here.

[READ: March 18, 2013] “A Delicate Truth”

I have never read John Le Carré before.  Indeed, I don’t typically read any kind of spy/thriller type books.  I realized recently that I like mysteries but I don’t have a lot of time for hard spy novels (if I may use the language of sci-fi to describe a spy novel–perhaps spy-fi?).

We recently watched some of Skyfall (the Redbox had to go back so we didn’t finish it–I think I’m not down with the Redbox, it’s just as inconvenient as a video store), so this British spy-fi story seemed nicely timed.

This was an excerpt from Le Carré’s forthcoming book.  And regardless of the story itself, I’m delighted that it was a self-contained excerpt.  It is a mission and the mission ends by the end of the chapter   Obviously there is a lot more to the book, but I was pleased that the excerpt didn’t having any kind of cliffhanger.  And now I don’t feel like I have to read anymore of the story.

So this is the story of Paul Anderson or, “Paul Anderson,” a “middle-ranking British civil servant  hauled from his desk in one of the more prosaic departments of Her Majesty’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office to be dispatched on a top-secret mission of acute sensitivity.”  That pretty much sums up the story and you can tell from that sentence whether or not you’ll like the book.  I have no idea if this sort of thing happens in real life at all.  And maybe that’s not the point.  In the Afterword, Le Carré talks about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, his first novel, which everyone assumed was all true (he says you know it’s not true because they printed it).  And he;s always been annoyed that people think of his as a spy who started writing rather than an author who did some spy work.

So I guess that means he knows of what he speaks.

It turns out that the civil servant (I’m sure his real name is given, although I forget it) is asked to go on this secret mission under an assumed identity.  He must forget that he has a wife and child and just go on the mission which is to intercept a Polish criminal known as Aladdin as he goes to sell contraband to Punter.  Paul Anderson is basically the on-the-ground eyes for a division of men who are watching Aladdin with electronic spy equipment.  (Le Carré obviously uses all of the technical terms for this stuff).

It’s all very exciting as they try to decide if things that they see (but can’t see very clearly) are actually signals or if they are just random events.  Was the bag that was dropped off in front of Punter’s location a signal?  If so from which side?  Does it mean something or was it an accident?  Remote intelligence thinks they should move in, but eyes on the ground are reluctant.  Are they scared or sensible?  How can you tell from so far away if it is just a black bag?  This sequence was pretty interesting.

It was also interesting to hear Paul talk to his remote guy while he was in the field with his local team listening to him.  He more or less took the side of the field team over the remote commanders.  Because he was right there or because it was the right choice?

I also really enjoyed the beginning where we learn about “Paul” and his family and how he was selected for this dangerous secret mission.

But as you can probably tell from my recap, I don’t know a thing about any of what they are talking about.  The story presented very strong imagery so I could see everything that was happening  but I don’t know who the people are or what they’re actually looking for.  Or where the cameras that are filming all of the stuff they are looking at a re supposed to be located.  Hell, I didn’t even realize that Aladdin was a person (the name s italicized so I thought it was a ship) for a few paragraphs.  I am definitely not the target audience for this book.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this little peek into a genre that I never read.  I can totally see how this genre is captivating–this whole sequence where they decide if they should go in was very exciting and compelling.  And as I said, I feel satisfied that this mission was wrapped up by the end of the excerpt because even though I know there will be more I don’t have to wonder what happened (even if maybe the ending wasn’t as clean as implied–hmm, maybe I should read the rest).