When did John le Carré become a comic writer? Or has he always been and I'm just finally getting attuned to the joke?
The wig, the immortal wig: Herr Kaspar’s one-hundred-and-forty-thousand-franc crown, the pride of every classic concierge in Switzerland. Herr Kaspar’s William Tell of a wig, Frau Loring called it: the wig that dared to raise itself in revolt against the millionaire despot Madame Archetti…
Madame Archetti had inherited the Archetti supermarket fortune [and] lived off the interest on the interest. And what she liked at age fifty-something was tour the great hotels of Europe in her open English sports car, followed by her staff and wardrobe in a van. She knew the names of every concierge and headwaiter from the Four Seasons in Hamburg to Cipriani in Venice to the Villa d’Este on Lake Como. She prescribed them diets and herbal remedies and acquainted them with their horoscopes. And she tipped them on a scale scarcely to be imagined, provided they found favor.
And favor was what Herr Kaspar found in bucketloads...He found it to the tune of twenty thousand Swiss francs each annual visit, not to mention quack hair remedies, magic stones to put beneath his pillow to cure his sciatica, and half kilos of Beluga caviar on Christmas and saints’ days, which Herr Kaspar discreetly converted to cash by means of an understanding with a famous food hall in the the town. All this for obtaining a few theater tickets and booking a few dinner tables, on which of course he exacted his customary commission. And for bestowing those pious signals of devotion that Madame Archetti required for her role as chatelaine of the servant kingdom.
Until the day Herr Kaspar bought his wig.
He did not buy it rashly...He bought land in Texas first, thanks to a [client of the hotel] in the oil business. The investment flourished, and he took his profit. Only then did he decide that like his patroness he had reached a stage in life where he was entitled to shed a few of his advancing years. After months of measuring and debate, the thing was ready---a wonder wig, a miracle of artful simulation. To try it out he availed himself of his annual holiday on Mykonos, and one Monday morning in September he reappeared behind his desk, bronzed and fifteen years younger as long as you didn’t look at him from the top.
And no one did...Or if they did they didn’t mention the wig at all...The whole hotel had tacitly decided to share in the glow of Herr Kaspar’s rejuvenation…And things continued happily in this way until the evening Madame Archetti arrived for her customary month’s stay, and as usual her hotel family lined up to greet her in the lobby…
And [there] at his desk [was] Herr Kaspar in his wig.
“What are we wearing on our head, Kaspar?”
“Hair, Madame.”
“Whose hair, Kaspar?”
“It is mine,” Herr Kaspar replied with bearing.
“Take it off,” Madame Archetti ordered. “Or you will never have another penny from me.”
“I cannot take it off, Madame. My hair is part of my personality. It is integrated.”
“Then dis-integrate it, Kaspar. Not now---it is too complicated---but for tomorrow morning. Otherwise nothing. What have you got at the theatre for me?”
“Othello, Madame.”
“I shall look at you again in the morning. Who’s playing him?”
“Leiser, Madame. The greatest Moor we have.”
“We shall see.”
Next morning at eight o’clock to the minute Herr Kaspar reappeared for duty, his crossed keys of office glinting like campaign medals from his lapels. And on his head, triumphantly, the emblem of his insurrection. All morning a precarious hush prevailed in the lobby. The hotel guests...were aware of the imminent explosion, even if they did not know its cause. At midday, which was her hour, Madame Archetti emerged from the Tower Suite and descended the staircase on the arm of her prevailing swain, a promising young barber from Graz.
“But where is Herr Kaspar this morning,” she asked in Herr Kaspar’s vague direction.
“He is behind his desk and at your service as ever, Madame,” he replied in a voice that, to those who heard it, echoed for all time in the halls of freedom. “He has tickets for the Moor.”
“I see no Herr Kaspar,” Madame Archetti informed her escort. “I see hair. Tell him, please, we shall miss him in his obscurity.”
I especially like that promising young barber from Graz.
Ok, it’s not P.G. Wodehouse. But there are distinct echoes of Austen and Wilde---Madame Archetti is directly descended from the Ladies de Bourgh and Bracknell---and a touch of Waugh. Might be better, rather than calling le Carré a comic writer. to call him an ironist, a quality I’ve always noticed in his work. But in "The Night Manager" he’s verging into satire.
Come to think of it, though, "The Tailor of Panama" is a satire of Graham Greene’s and le Carré's own spy novels. And, come to think of that, Greene was a self-satirist himself. So why am I surprised to find myself laughing at a le Carré novel.
Well, smiling.
Ironically.
I started reading "The Night Manager" this evening because I’d just learned that there’s a television mini-series in the offing, starring Tom Hiddleston as the protagonist, Jonathan Pine, the night manager of the hotel where Herr Kaspar is the concierge, and---dark shades of P.G. Wodehouse!---Hugh Laurie as the villain, an illegal arms dealer named Richard Onslow Roper.
I also started "Our Kind of Traitor" because that’s getting a movie adaptation starring Ewan McGregor.
"Our Kind of Traitor" begins on its own comic note or at least an ironic one, although it sounds to me like he's riffing on a tune by Kingsley Amis there..
But I decided to put it aside for now and stick with "The Night Manager" because of Herr Kaspar, his wig, Madame Archetti, and that promising young barber.
Now I’m second-guessing my choice.
The hero of "The Night Manager" has just met a femme fatale.
I expect no good will come of it.
I’m not a fan of femme fatales in novels and movies and TV shows. They require too much suspension of disbelief.
I didn't live a monk-like existence before I got married, but I can't say I dated all sorts and conditions.
Most of my girlfriends were one type or another of artist, intellectual, or bohemian.
That's another way of saying neurotic.
But not one of them was a femme fatale.
I dated a few who were trouble. There were a couple who could have drawn me into real-life Elmore Leonard novels. One had a boyfriend in the army she neglected to tell me about until he came home on leave. Another had a husband in prison. She swore he wasn’t up for parole for several years. There was another who seemed to enjoy pitting her would-be boyfriends against each other but I think with her it was more the case that she was like people who can’t help ordering another dessert before they’re finished their first. In matters of love and romance she was an innocent and cheerful glutton. But I wouldn’t call any of them or any other girl I dated a femme fatale.
At least, none of them had a history of enticing tough but sentimental men who should have known better into intrigues and adventures.
Are there any real femme fatales?
If there are, I never fell into one's clutches.
I don't know if I should count myself lucky.
My life could have used a little intrigue and adventure.
Still, it always presents a problem for me as a reader when a plot depends on the hero falling into the clutches of a femme fatale.
Besides the suspension of disbelief required to accept her existence, I always suspect an element of wish-fulfillment on the author’s part and---ironically---a trace of gynophobia. It’s as if the writer is scaring himself with his own fantasy, fearing what he desires and desiring what he fears. I’m not accusing le Carré of this. But too many other writers have fallen into this trap of their own devising and I’ve grown wary.
But she’s arrived, in the company of the villain, off-limits to the hero for that reason and for that reason almost certain to entice him into intrigue and adventure even though he knows better.
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The trailer for "The Night Manager" doesn’t make it look the least bit comic. And the cast list at imdb.com doesn’t include Herr Kaspar or Madame Archetti. But there does appear to be some definite femme fatale-ism at work.
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