Yeah, I butchered the inscription on Karla’s stolen lighter to make a To Sir, With Love reference for no discernible reason. I’m in mourning. You can’t expect any better from me.

I started trying to emotionally prepare myself for John le Carré’s death a few moments after I finished the devastating last line of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This is a morbid compliment, even by my standards. But in that moment, all I could think was that this writer was something to special to me, and that losing him — losing not just the promise of future novels, but his righteous and deeply empathetic commentary on current events — was going to hurt. 

I believe my eight-plus years of effort paid off, because I’m only destroyed about the passing of a person I never met and not destroyed and curled up in the foetal position for days on end over the passing of a person I never met. Which arguably makes me more emotionally mature than 95% of le Carré characters. (I say this with love! Their complete brokenness and the compassionate but clear-eyed way le Carré treats them was one of his greatest charms. I wrote about this for Electric Lit a few years ago.)

Much as I was with my spy girlfriend Diana Rigg, I am too gutted about my surrogate spy dad John le Carré to write a proper tribute. Even if I had the motivation and executive function, it would take more than a newsletter to cover everything that I loved about his work. 

So I’ll leave you with this imperfect but impassioned tribute to his gay subtext instead. 

Movie of the Week: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

I never went so far as to become a full-fledged Cumberbitch, but I did go through a significant Benedict Cumberbatch phase in early 10s. Pobody’s nerfect. I regret most of it, but two good things came out of that suboptimal period in my life: 

1. I was introduced to Cabin Pressure, a BBC Radio sitcom that features Roger Allam saying things snidely, which is one of life’s purest joys. (See also: The Thick of It.)

2. I was inspired to watch the 2011 film adaptation of TTSS because he played Peter Guillam in it. And I liked it enough to pick up the book. 

I really needed that nudge. Like far too many people, I’d been under the impression that le Carré was some kind of Ludlum-esque mass fiction writer and that his books were fun but empty potboilers. After watching the film, I was left with the still incorrect but not quite as egregious impression that he wrote decent mass market books that made for decent award season films. Which wasn’t entirely my thing, but at least appealed to me enough to make me grab a copy of TTSS at the library when I was looking for last minute cottage reads. 

The book, it turned out, was thoroughly my shit. Tragically sad and damaged human beings clinging to symbols and institutions that can only fail them, like spy organizations and fatherhood. An elegantly structure narrative with an exsanguinating heart that explored overlapping cycles of institutional and personal neglect. Also? Gay spies.

Albeit not the gay spy I was expecting after seeing the film.

*Spoiler alert for a 46 year old novel and 9 year old film*

In TTSS: The Movie, Peter Guillam is a quietly tragic closeted gay man who is forced to bail on what appears to be, in the split second of screen time it is given, a healthy relationship for the job.

In the book, the mole, Bill Haydon, and the most obvious collateral damage of his betrayal,  Jim Prideaux, are former lovers. This is not explicitly stated, but it is very, very heavily implied. It doesn’t even seem right to call it subtext! At one point, someone refers to them as “a bit pink,” for fuck’s sake. 

I loved this development. In part because I just love gay shit. But also because I thought it was incredible that a blockbuster novel in 1974 hinged on a gay love story that, while tragic, was not tragic because they were queer. And that no one seemed to be offended or turned off by it. I also loved the extra layer of callousness it gave to Haydon’s flippant decision to switch sides, and the gut-wrenching depth it added to Prideaux’s story. 

I also far preferred book Guillam, who is a sloppily tragic heterosexual. Whose problems are partially because he’s such an embarrassing horndog straight. The most tragic heterosexual in a book that stars a resigned cuckold whose wife never particularly cared for him and whose spy nemesis has stolen the only meaningful gift said wife ever gave him and taunts him with it. 

Curious to know why the creative power behind the film had made these baffling changes, I started looking for interviews with them. And what I discovered was that they didn’t think they’d transferred gayness in their film. They thought they’d introduced it. The screenwriters and directors discussed what a bold new element to the plot was in these interviews. Cumberbatch agreed. “Sexuality was a very powerful tool then,” he mused in one profile. “I keep my character's homosexuality secret because you are so open to blackmail. It necessitates a certain amount of secretiveness, which goes hand in hand with spying.”

Blackmail was, indeed, an issue for gay spies of that period. Which was also implied in the book’s Haydon/Prideaux situation. But apparently implied too subtly for anyone involved to pick up on it.

Incensed, I complained to Aaron and a couple of other le Carré readers/viewers I knew. But it turned out that they hadn’t picked up on the relationship, either. Knowing that I have a habit of seeing queerness in everything, a few suggested that maybe I was reading too much into it.

After a while, I started questioning myself. Maybe I was just so desperate to see queerness everywhere that I’d imagined it into the book. Maybe “a bit pink” was an allusion to communist sympathies? 

But in 2017, le Carré released a coda of sorts to TTSS and its followups, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People. In it, Guillam was older and more tragically heterosexual than ever, and reflecting upon his life and his relationship with his beloved mentor, George Smiley. And in the middle of that reflection, he dropped the following line: “But Jim had never cared much for women and there was no answer I could offer him that didn’t include the name of his nemesis and former lover Bill Haydon, who had recruited him to the Circus, betrayed him to his masters, and slept with Smiley’s wife along the way.” 

I was so excited when I first read this that I knocked a nearby glass of water all over the floor. Not even the annoying cleanup process could dampen my spirits. I was right! And le Carré had made damned sure that no one was going to miss that point again. 

For good measure, he also dedicated a part of John Le Carré: An Evening with George Smiley, a reading and talk at London’s Royal Festival Hall that was screened in movie theatres around the world, to restating that while film Guillam was gay, his Guillam was very, very sad and straight. Oh, and also he was partly sad because he couldn’t please women in bed. 

Rest in peace, only straight man I will ever trust with queer subtext ever again. 

Match of the Week: Go Shiozaki vs. Kazuyuki Fujita, NOAH Pro Wrestling Noah 20th Anniversary NOAH The Chronicle Vol. 2, March 29, 2020

I reserve the right to discuss this at further length in the future, but it’s streaming for free for the next few days, so I wanted to get the word out.

Here’s the pitch I posted on my personal Facebook in an effort to get my family and friends, most of whom don’t care about wrestling, to try it:

Do you like art films? Do you like weird shit that toys with the very structure of the medium in which its produced in bizarre and delightful ways? Do you like art that deliberately challenges its audience's expectations and patience? 

Once of the most intriguing things I saw this year - which I haven't stopped thinking about since March - is streaming for free this week.

If any of the above sounds interesting to you, just click on this link and go to the two hour mark. Even if you don't care about wrestling at all! Don't ask questions. Don't read anything about it beforehand. Go in cold. And enjoy.

Match of the Week, Part Two: Tetsuya Endo vs Masato Tanaka, Wrestle Peter Pan 2020 Day 2, June 6, 2020

This is also streaming for free for the next few days, and I can’t resist an opportunity to try to press the greatness of one Tetsuya Endo on all of you. This match (which starts at the 2:53:25 mark here) is a great showcase for his unique and incredible talents. You can see his immaculate high flying form and his completely unselfconscious and dramatic portrayals of suffering!

Check out the tiny little wobble on his “injured” knee here. A master!

And, you know, the legendary Masato Tanaka is no slouch, either.