For Fleming his work was a means of escape from a dreary, troubled and at times deeply unhappy life. On the page he went back to the espionage world he knew from the war - and despite his role as assistant to an intelligence chief he really kept that outsider’s look at it that is intrigued and baffled and amazed and excited all at the same time. When Drax reminisces about the adventurous days of the war he really mirrors Fleming’s feelings of having - for the first time - purpose, success and acknowledgment in his life.
For le Carré his writing was a means of escaping from the dreary, troubling and deeply unsatisfactory work of real intelligence. He met numerous spies, both as ‘ordinary joes’ - as he would later incorporate them in his works - and as fellow intelligence officers and masters in MI5, SIS and the FO. But he met no heroes amongst them, just ordinary human beings from all walks of life. And often enough fallible characters, hubris and misguided sense of achievement and entitlement conspiring together to deal the harshest blows to those with the most romantic illusions about this business.
Let’s not forget, le Carré was a member of the Service when Philby caused the deaths and imprisonments of various victims of British blundering - and could only do so because of a deeply ingrained blind spot in the heart of the Service’s DNA, namely that nobody from the ‘right’ class and background could really do what the Cambridge Five have done: traitorous depredation, as le Carré would call it later in his books. Small wonder, Philby is said to have identified Cornwell to the KGB; he might indeed have ended up in a cellar behind the iron curtain as many of the SIS’ real life agents did in those days.
That same Earth-shaking moment of truth that would henceforth overshadow le Carré’s œuvre and inspire a close knit trilogy of novels at the heart of it would hardly be acknowledged with more than a few lines in Fleming’s work - and surely not for lack of awareness on Fleming’s side of what happens to spies who are caught. He had had plenty of evidence of that during the war. So much he was actually miffed about accusations of gratuitous violence. Fleming’s response was that he had toned down considerably what real victims went through.
But Fleming’s view on the entire complex of espionage was that of a ‘great game’ - in spite of what he knew to be the truth. Fleming didn’t want to go where real life would; didn’t want the game’s fun spoilt by Tanner or M or Bond defecting. The treason in his books - by Vesper, by Maria Freudenstadt/Freudenstein - is shameful but entirely inconsequential for the greater picture.
Le Carré by contrast has seen it by himself, perhaps even felt the very real danger for his contacts or himself. From his point of view the ‘great game’ cavalier philosophy was the very thing that must consequently lead to lapse, betrayal and disillusionment. Therefore, he couldn’t write in the romantic tradition about spies and their work and ambition. Le Carré couldn’t un-see what he had experienced.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean the one was necessarily less fantastic than the other. Drax’s scheme to flatten London with a super-V2 is patently bonkers when it all could be achieved just as well by placing the warhead in Ebury Lane. But Control’s scheme to safeguard his agent, the head of Stasi-counterintelligence, by letting another of his agents denounce him is every bit as bonkers. First, his agent could easily have been shot without any form of inquiry or tribunal. Secondly, then using his freshly acquitted agent to free the one who just broke down (as expected) must immediately lead to rekindled suspicions.
But while le Carré didn’t subscribe to notions of Empire and sentimental praises of what he knew to be only all too human players he did acknowledge Fleming for the role he played in shaping a genre and a desire among the reading public for more and deeper exploration of its themes. It’s no coincidence that one of le Carré’s closest works to Fleming, The Night Manager, features an orphan hero who grew up with his aunt after his soldier father died and who becomes a soldier himself later.
Then again, it’s also no coincidence that Pine is no commander but NCO, no intelligence officer but a small scale asset who ever so often sidelines a bit for the British embassy. In a Fleming novel Pine would be the faceless extra in a casino scene. In that huge and ongoing novel real life writes about us all Pine is clearly identifiable as an inverted Bond, at once closer and further from us, aiming to atone for his sins and trying to protect those he deems innocent.
