End Game
Near the end of Our Game Le Carre has a character tell the following joke:
Remember that joke Stalin liked? Three people dead in a ditch after a motor accident, that's a national tragedy? But a whole nation deported and half of them exterminated, that's a statistic?
It sounded very American...
Near the end of Our Game Le Carre has his protagonist imprisoned by a group of Ingush separatists in the basement of a Moscow tenement (or something like a tenement though it's a old gymnasium) for a number of weeks, guessing as to what his fate is to become... It brought me back to my previous posting in this here blog regarding how the title was a double entendre... referring both to the spy game and to the writer's game, to wit, what is going to be the fate of this here character...
Ultimately, he leads us up into the Caucasus Mountains and the home of the Ingush, and the pun takes on a third meaning... to wit, our equaling human; the human game, the game of living, the game all of us participate in.
This wasn't the book I wanted to read when I started. I would've been happier with a book about vampires, only that book was too bland. And as I said, Le Carre fed my need for good writing, and in that sense did not disappoint at all. As I turned more and more pages I realised I wasn't disappointed at all.
Remember that joke Stalin liked? Three people dead in a ditch after a motor accident, that's a national tragedy? But a whole nation deported and half of them exterminated, that's a statistic?
It sounded very American...
Near the end of Our Game Le Carre has his protagonist imprisoned by a group of Ingush separatists in the basement of a Moscow tenement (or something like a tenement though it's a old gymnasium) for a number of weeks, guessing as to what his fate is to become... It brought me back to my previous posting in this here blog regarding how the title was a double entendre... referring both to the spy game and to the writer's game, to wit, what is going to be the fate of this here character...
Ultimately, he leads us up into the Caucasus Mountains and the home of the Ingush, and the pun takes on a third meaning... to wit, our equaling human; the human game, the game of living, the game all of us participate in.
This wasn't the book I wanted to read when I started. I would've been happier with a book about vampires, only that book was too bland. And as I said, Le Carre fed my need for good writing, and in that sense did not disappoint at all. As I turned more and more pages I realised I wasn't disappointed at all.
posted by quantom qurkington at 6:21 PM
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