A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read A Perfect Spy (originally published in 1986) a half-dozen times in my teens and twenties but never considered Pym a traitor until I read it again in my forties.
What changed? Well certainly not the text. More likely, I grew from attempting to be a cosmopolitan to being an ardent patriot.
We are patriots because we are afraid to be cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan because we are afraid to be patriots.No doubt turning forty and having a third-dozen children changes one's focus.
I remember taking A Perfect Spy with me (actually and figuratively) on many border-crossings in the 80's and again on my more domestic travels in the early 90's. Pym, as whoever he presented himself to be to the dozens of people he met and worked with, was in many ways who I emulated each time I got on the plane to another consulting gig. Stopping short of inventing actual fiction about myself, I was still free to present an edited side of me that could change wildly when I met another client at the next gig.
Pym was all things to all people except himself. He played both ends against the middle and lost it all. I'm not even certain he had hoped to keep any of it. Even Mary was chosen for reasons other than married bliss.
"Pym, you bastard, where are you?"
Frankly, Pym's actions are so distasteful (as he betrayed his country, his wife, his son, his firm, his colleagues, his friends, his father and himself), I'm not interested anymore.
