S1E26 Did John Le Carre Invent The Modern Spy?

Hi, I'm John Curiosity. Welcome to Dead Drop. What makes us spy tick?

“As always, we thank you for listening and for keeping us part of your regular podcast regimen.”

Whether you listen in big bites or little ones, we thank you for biting. And we especially thank you for liking, rating, reviewing, commenting on, and sharing the podcast via whatever platform you're listening to it. In this episode, we're going to bite into a question. Did John LaKare invent the modern spy?

Graham Greene, another spy turned author, said this. "Being a novelist is similar to spying, both require watching, listening, and analyzing human behavior." "As you've heard in this podcast, it's a good spy needs to be a people person too, especially if the information thereafter sits inside another person's head."

A talented spy is a depth at using a story real or created to compel other people to tell their stories for the spies purpose, whatever it is, good, bad, or indifferent. You've also heard in this podcast how the CIA wanted people with sociopathic tendencies. That's because while sociopaths themselves can't be trusted by their bosses, well, because their sociopaths, people with sociopathic tendencies can be trusted.

People with sociopathic tendencies, me, for instance, well, we see black and white, we see a higher purpose and a greater good, but we also see gray.

“And the truth is, there's a lot of gray out there separating the black from the white.”

People with sociopathic tendencies have no philosophical issues navigating the gray. Understanding how to navigate the gray, but things can get murky fast in a gray world. murky and morally ambiguous. It's the ideal entry point for a compelling story.

John the Carre was hardly the first former spy to put down their sword and pick up a pen.

Other well-known authors who had also been spies include role-dall, Frederick Forsyth, Peter Matheson, Graham Green, and Ian Fleming. Of them all, Ian Fleming probably had the most interesting careers as spy. He was principally responsible for imagining Operation Mincemeat, where British intelligence used a corpse, planted with fake intelligence,

launched from a submarine onto a Spanish beach during World War II, to deceive the Nazis into thinking that the allies were about to invade Greece when, in fact, they were about to invade Sicily. The bond books, by the way, were a lot more grounded in reality than the movies they inspired.

“Take a scene of Royale, Fleming's first bond book.”

The gambling scenes were inspired by something that actually happened to Fleming during World War II. Fleming was headed to America via Lisbon Portugal. While in Lisbon, he went to the casino at Estero, knowing that it was frequented by German spies. Their Fleming started playing a game called Sheminda Fair,

it's a version of Blackjack, against a few of these German spies, with just $60 an expense money in his pocket, Fleming started playing determined to bankrupt the Germans. Alas, what worked later for James Bond didn't actually work so well for Bond's creator. Fleming went bust, but he did get his own back in a way in the book

when James Bond bankrupts the book's villain, this shift, ad Sheminda Fair. Closer to the John La Carré, Mark was Graham Green, a writer thought of as one of the giants of 20th century literature. Green was already a successful author who traveled the world when his sister Lisbon who worked for MI6, the British External Intelligence Service,

recruited him in 1941. There was a World War going on, MI6 posted Green to Sierra Leone of all places, but then Green's supervisor at MI6, and someone he considered a friend, was none other than Kim Filby,

the notoriously successful Soviet agent. Green, whom the Guardian newspaper called, "Perhaps the ultimate moralist thriller writer wrote books like The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, The End of the Affair, and The Power in the Glory."

He also wrote our man in Havana, about a Russian agent, in Havana, who begins to make up intelligence because nothing is happening and he ends up creating an international incident. Just for the record, John La Carré himself happily admitted that his book, The Taylor of Panama, was his version of that Graham Green story,

and that brings us back to John La Carré. La Carré grew up David Cornwell, son of Ronnie Cornwell, a charming, narcissistic con man who drank, gambled, and wasn't above beating his son. La Carré became his father's accomplice on multiple occasions

and not always by choice.

"Spying did not introduce me to secrecy," unquote, La Carré wrote in his memoir The Pigeon Tunnel. "Evation and deception were the necessary weapons of my childhood," unquote. Those are strong words.

and all of their secrets and secrecy."

La Carré studied foreign languages.

“He served in the British Army's intelligence corps,”

vetting refugees who crossed the Soviet border. He attended Oxford University. While there in 1958 he was recruited by MI5, that's the British Internal Intelligence Service, and he began gathering intelligence on left-wing friends

who wrote for a radical journal. In time he found himself running a bunch of informants and settling into a more bureaucratic existence. At that very moment, double agents like Kim Filby were handing information to the Soviets.

Sitting on the train during his long commute through London, La Carré began to write his novels on tiny note pads. The character George Smiley appears in La Carré's very first novel, called for the dead, published in 1961. La Carré would continue adding to Smiley story for another 58 years.

The book that really put John La Carré on the literary map was his third novel, the spy who came in from the cold. While his first two books had gotten great reviews, the Birmingham Post said of call for the dead, that quote, "one really believes in the skillfully drawn atmosphere

of the service," unquote. spy who came in from the cold became a huge, best-selling hit, a feature film starring Richard Burton and the best career launching pad a writer could ever ask for.

“But you have to remember, La Carré did all this”

while still working as a spy. In 1964, after being outed by Kim Filby, La Carré left the secret service.

But of course, as we know, it never really left him.

La Carré must have poured a lot of reality into his writing because after he quit, former colleagues went after him. In person, mostly, for the unflinching depiction of the world they called home. In an article called Don't Be Beastly To Your Secret Service, La Carré told about being button-holded

by a former MI6 colleague at a diplomatic function. "You bastard Cornwell, few of the former colleague, you utter bastard, not very constructive criticism." La Carré always felt that he had painted British intelligence as being more competent than the one he'd experienced in reality.

Kim Filby, in a letter to the wife he left behind in Be Root when he defected to the Soviet Union, confessed to quote, "admiring the sophistication of the spy who came in from the cold, after all that James Bond idiocy." "That's high praise indeed."

La Carré wrote 26 novels. Among them are some of the best books about spies and spying ever written.

“That's because La Carré's other strength”

was his ability to see his spies as people, first and foremost. His heroes often did things they believed for the best of reasons. Only to learn they'd been betrayed somewhere along the way,

undermining the thing they believe. Betrayal, especially where love is concerned, runs rampant in Jean La Carré's world. It's the thing his characters can all still betray or be betrayed by love of a person or a country or an ideal.

Plenty of writers write about spies, including lots of spies. But none of them actually impacted the business of spying. It's vocabulary, it's recruitment, even. The way Jean La Carré did.

He literally introduced vocabulary to spying the way Shakespeare introduced new words into the English language. Before Jean La Carré, I don't know of any intelligence officer who refer

to the agents working for him as his joes. La Carré invented the word "lamp" letters to describe surveillance agents, honey traps, to describe using sex to compromise targets and laundries, to describe locations used as cover

for a base of operations. While he didn't create the term "mull" to describe a deeply embedded enemy agent, he did popularize it so much that the Oxford English dictionary says

quote, "it is generally thought that the world of espionage adopted it from La Carré rather than vice versa." Unquote. But what is the OEDNO, right?

Beyond just the words, Jean La Carré's vision of spies and spying. His perception of this gray world and the people in it. It didn't just captivate people interested in becoming spies. It inspired us to be like it

in both word and deed, at least that's the premise on the table today. Did Jean La Carré invent the modern spy? And if he did, how in the world did he do it? To help us pick through the intel

and try to discern something from these nebulous shadows.

We have friends. First is Barry Eisler.

You met Barry back in episode 11 of this podcast where we asked the question, "Have human spies become obsolete?" Barry spent three covert years with the CIA's director of operations.

He worked as a technology lawyer and started up executive and so far has written three incredibly successful espionage thriller book series, including number one bestsellers,

the detachment, livi alone, the night trade, and the killer collective. You heard Glenn Carl a few episodes back,

to take part in the CIA's torture program.

“Glenn wrote the excellent book The Interrogators,”

so you know he's got the right Bonafides. Also joining us is Alan Katz. Alan Co-Writes and produces dead drop and, along with the rest of us, is a huge John La Carré fan.

Gentlemen, great to have you. Thanks for joining. Absolutely, thank you for being here. This is Alan, by the way. As the only nuns by here,

I'd like to kick this conversation off by asking before we zero in on John La Carré. As you all went into the business, you went into, were there any other writers or influences

that colored? In any way, your view of that world and perhaps inspired you don't want to be part of it? Don't you want to start?

The reverse is sort of true. I think I came to appreciate and discover and read a lot of the spy espionage authors after my career had begun. Before I got into my career,

I read a lot of books about espionage, but they were almost all nonfiction because I was trying to figure out if I wanted to do this for a career. And some of those books were quite influential and then the author of one of them

became the man really who got me into the agency. And I now say that he wrote

the second best member by the officer.

David Atley Phillips wrote The Nightwatch. It came out in '74, I think. No, that's to '76 or thereabouts. I was going through the process in the late '70s or the '80s. I met him while I was at graduate school

“and sort of pitched why I was the best thing ever”

for the agency and told him that if he was still a patron he should get me in. And he agreed. Maybe they were just desperate for personnel who knows. So it wasn't that I was inspired by spy novels.

I have a very clear ranking in feelings and senses of the different textures of the authors, but it wasn't fiction that drew it to the agency. I read this by and came in from the cold after having been in the agency for about a year.

Maybe 14 months. And it was so good and so compelling that I actually, I was overseas when I was reading it. I was in Kuwait just as we were liberating the country. I took it in with me.

It was the only thing that I brought in with me besides my clothes. It was so good and so true to life that I actually was afraid of what someone would think if I got caught with it. He must be a spy.

And so I took it to the embassy and I left it there. And I would only read it on my lunch hour. That's funny. You could have told me. Millions of other people that read this book.

I promised. And you lost all of this. That's right. What about you, Barry? I read Inflaming All the Bond books when I was in high school

and La Carre, I discovered when I was in college and then kept reading him through law school. And I wouldn't say that spy fiction had that much to do with my, at least as far as I'm aware. Didn't know that much to do with my decision

to join the agency. It was more of that. By the time I graduated from college, I got quite interested in the way the world really works. I was reading a lot.

I was a psychology major and that was a default major. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I went to go into law school. Like a lot of people sometimes do. A friend of mine who went to law is one of my college estimates.

Called it YEP Youth Extension Program. I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I thought maybe YEP. While I was in law school, that's when I started taking, well,

well, they're back. I mean, you're really interested in the way the world really works. You're reading all these books and periodicals on that topic.

And I've always been interested in what I later came to call

for bid knowledge, which is anything that John You and I might have talked about this at some point. Anything that the government wants only a select few people to be able to do or to know and everyone else to be prohibited from it.

That kind of stuff is just always interested me.

“I remember reading David Morales book First Blood.”

I think I was in college at the time. And I just thought it was the coolest thing to concept that this guy was a special forces Vietnam veteran who learned all these skills that were only supposed to be known

and practiced by a small group of people in quite select place and circumstances. But then he comes back with this stuff and starts using it at home. And I always thought that stuff was great.

The CIA seemed like a place where I could combine a burgeoning interest in geopolitics with an interest in what I called for bid knowledge, what La Carrella,

I went to this as way before the internet.

“I don't remember how we used to do things, honestly.”

But I know that I was at Cornell, they had a career center. I mean, went up there to see if I could find a brochure because I didn't know how else do you get in touch with the CIA. This is maybe 1988 or something.

They had a brochure and the Cornell career center along with the general electric brochure and all the other places, Berkshire Hathaway, I don't know what. It's called an 800 number and that's out of boredom rolling.

Joe Weisberg, a former colleague of ours in the Counterterrorism Center, wrote a novel, quite a well-regarded novel that didn't really sell very well. And after that one novel, he created The Americans,

which became a blockbuster, dramatic television series, blockbuster.

I couldn't tear myself away from it.

Why did two of you decide to go into literature? Whether fiction or non-fiction, rather than go the Hollywood route? Glad you want to. Sure.

Well, I think a lack of discipline, lack of self-confidence and purity of character are the reasons for me.

“I ended up, I think, relevant as they take a half step back,”

actually, from the question, and address the path that Barry just described, but from myself, I got into the agency because I was true to myself and, and I, and I being both facetious and serious.

And that means after college, like Barry, like a lot of people with liberal arts, Renaissance minds, it didn't know what I really wanted to do. There was only one thing I ever truly was

keen on, really, driven and excited about it in a similar way to how I had felt as a kid or as a college student about playing hockey, where some activity will consume you

and you, you, you lose awareness of the outside world and you are just in a pure concentration and absorption of the universe of that activity. That was the far and service. I grew up in Boston essentially.

I am, I could go on for a long time. How I truly am the quintessential stereotypical, the quintessence of the New England Yank, the grew up in Brooklyn and I went all the way across the Charles River to Harvard. I used the jog home once every six weeks with my laundry,

which shows how many clothes I had or how dirty my clothes were to put it either way. I love Boston, but even before I went to college,

I always had wanted to see something else.

And I realized I always felt that to one's education, half of it was to challenge one's assumptions and what one knew. So I wanted to get out of Boston. Also, I had always wanted to learn a foreign language

for reasons to go skip, just to say it's time. And the one language that I knew anything about was French. I had studied French. And that was because in the Brooklyn school system, at age 12, there was a choice of two languages.

One was French and the other was Spanish. And my mother said, "French is the language of diplomacy. You will speak French." That's what I studied.

“So where do you go if you want to learn a foreign language?”

You know that all is French, well, you go to France. And so I took a year off and I went to France. And I loved it. So that gave me a look for things far. And the other element in knowledge was in my family,

focusing on yourself is a sign that you are at best not a full person and probably to be a good person. And a full person you have to try to get out of yourself and devote yourself to others or to some external ask or child public service was what my father did.

And that's, so I was drawn to that. He was in local politics for much of his life. So how does one combine an interest in learning a foreign language with this sense that unless I was engaged in some activity beyond trying to make money,

or to promote myself, that I was not a full person. And with what had come to be this love of things far, and well, that's the foreign service. So I pursued that, but it's hard to get in. It's a slow process at best.

And there were twists and turns. And I then said, well, I really have to do something that challenges me to my limits intellectually and morally. I don't want life to be easy. And even physically, because I was a big job.

And I thought, well, I know being a spy must be crazy, wild. I'll try that. But at the same time, I'm pursuing the foreign service. Like you said, Barry, you think this is 1979, 80. How do you contact people who were in the dark?

And I figured I knew. So I went to Harvard Career Services Center, and I knew the director of it. She was a good friend. Because she was trying to help me figure out what to do with myself.

And I said, Marco, how do you contact the CIA? And she went like this. [LAUGHTER] I thought you call me an asset. I call you that number, Glenn.

and that started the whole process. And there are many twists and turns. But that's how I got in. And that's what motivated me to go in. And then to close this little tale,

why was I true to myself and sort of foolishly to have had the same time? You may have already sensed. And I think completely serious here. Even when I'm making my witnesses.

I always have equated. It's a psychological trait of my family. That what is hardest is what is best. But that's not true. What is best is what is best.

But I always have equated what is hardest with what is best.

And so it turned out when I was in graduate school, on Monday, the week before Thanksgiving, the Foreign Service called me and offered me a job as a clinical officer. And on Wednesday, the CIA called me and offered me a job as an operations officer. And I had to decide.

And I thought, well, which one is harder? And I decided that being an operations officer was harder. And I'm correct. It is harder. That's why I chose. And I will tell you.

In confidence, I've recorded conversation that I made. You know, I love much of my career. But I made the wrong decision because I made perfect. Not that it would have been, you know, the greatest, the diplomat in all time.

“But I, I think I am perfect for diplomacy.”

I thrilled to my cover work. Then I did it really well. I came to be in some ways in excellent operations officer in some ways, a competent one. And in other ways, one who was pissed off.

And I had to do things that I had to do. That's how I get it. You know, I'll add to that like you, Glenn, I thoroughly enjoyed my cover duties at the State Department. I was an economic officer.

Love every minute of it. I enjoyed the marshes and the white papers and smoking cigars with ambassadors so and so. And chewing the fat. I enjoyed it very, very much.

To the point where I think I was good at it. But then other Americans who worked in the embassy and didn't know I was really a CIA officer would ask behind my back. What's wrong with John?

He never seems to get promoted.

Everybody else is becoming a DCM or an ambassador. John still a first secretary. And always just killed me that I had to say, no, silly. That's just a cover position. And then finally.

Oh, boy, boy. When I got to my final, my final posting,

“I said, look, you have to make me a minister counselor or something”

because these cover positions just are not working anymore. If I believe, sir, sincerely, that I'm the only CIA or intelligence officer ever. That the United States, meaning the Department of State, has allowed to represent the United States alone as the US representative

to the United Nations National Security Council. I loved the State Department gave me several exceptional performance citations or whatever it was, which they would held out of kindness because they didn't prove that it would totally screw me in the CIA that I was doing pushy work.

But that's the career that should have been. I also applied to the Foreign Service. Probably it was around the same time I applied to the agency. The agency was my preference and that job offer came quite a bit sooner, so I accepted it.

And I've been, I don't remember because it's so long ago, but at least six months, I've been at the agency for quite some time. At this point, when I got the acceptance letter from the Foreign Service, and I thought they took so long that I had a great moment

“that I'll never forget, which is I just scrolled in pen on the acceptance letter.”

You guys take too long, fold it up and send it back to them. I was wonderful. I was like, really, you can still wait around on your letter. You can get over yourselves. But that was my experience with Foreign Service.

I'd like to ask both of you, too, about the way literature is treated by senior CIA officers. I've got several friends, more than several, who did their 30 plus years,

almost always in operations, and then took positions as scholars and residents

at either their alma mater or at schools in the cities where they decided to retire. They were all teaching classes like espionage in Soviet literature. I said to this one friend, I said, come on, that's not a real class. And he said, sure, it's a real class. I teach it every Tuesday and Thursday.

Espionage in Soviet literature. And let me guess. Everybody who signs up for that class signs up because they know you're a retiring CIA officer and they all want help getting into the CIA. And he said, well, that's kind of the idea, isn't it?

And we're supposed to be able to think the big thoughts.

And half of us retire in right books. So is that just a novel new cover? I read a book when I was, I think, newly at the agency because, like, you were saying, Glenn, I read a lot of nonfiction. Not that it attracted me to the agency, but once I got the gig,

I remember thinking, geez, I should really learn as much as I can. And one of the books was cloaking out by a guy named Robin Winks. And it was about the Ivy League pipeline to the agency back in the day. So maybe that kind of pipeline still exists. I don't really know where the agency is looking for people with some sort of liberal arts education

that they can assess through former people. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

“You have to be, no, I was very much, as I have been in every social setting in my entire life,”

very much a dinosaur. The hand in the shoulder at the social club or the country club or the reunion or something, talking to the son of a classmate, died really before, and was made illegal. A few years before any of us showed up. It was, you know, the mid-70s that that was stopped because it was viewed correctly as bias towards a certain socio-economic circles.

Yeah, and I could see where it would start to get, you'd get a kind of in-bred understanding of the world.

Regardless of which you start with, it's just never going to adapt, and that's probably not a good thing for any organization.

That makes sense. Well, what I would say about college, if it's being done right, which, in my experience, in my opinion, it ordinarily isn't, is that what it really comes down to is a clear and accurate understanding of human nature. You can't conduct any kind of successful affairs in this world.

I was going to say foreign policy, but that's way too limited, a category. You can't get things that you want in this world through any form of given take with other humans. If you don't have that clear and accurate understanding of human nature, in that sense, I think, probably there's a connection between what novelists do, and what spies have to do, what diplomats do,

“you have to start with that accurate understanding.”

If you don't have that, you just won't be able to do things, and eventually you have to resort to force, which is one of the two, I think universal languages of humanity, the others logic, but it's just not widely spoken. Everybody speaks force, punishment. And if you can't, if you don't understand how the humans work,

and any more sophisticated way, if you're not able to put yourselves in their shoes, if you're not able to understand how culture influences what we all have in common, but ultimately we are all the same species with the same fundamental drives. If you don't have any of that, then force is going to be the only thing you've got, which fast forward to a current, I think, a current regime.

If you're enjoying dead drop and, of course, we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast

“from the cost-art and touchstone family.”

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What it felt like, being in all those dangerous places, like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this. Just the photographer will put you right there on the ground right next to David. Inside his head, in fact, it's a hell of a podcast

and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costartandtouchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, he'll find lots of great story podcasts to cost-artandtouchstone like the donor, a DNA horror story, the hall closet,

sage wellness within, and the how not to make a movie podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to Dead Drop. When I was at Harvard, an article appeared in the Alumni magazine in Harvard Magazine, which maybe was done by the member.

Whoever it was, it was in the magazine. And it had looked at Harvard graduates over the previous decades. I don't know how long. And try to measure their success in correlated with grades and success can be defined in many different ways.

But I suppose it was income status within one's, you know, chosen line of work and so on. And they found that the most successful people,

Because they concluded, they have greater social skills

or more sensitive to those around them. They might have sharp elbows, but they know how to win someone over. Or at least they're more graceful in social settings.

“And I think that is in my life experience that's true, accurate.”

And that speaks to your point very on who makes or what makes a good operations officer. And it's all psychology. The whole job is it's to be a good psychologist and to understand other people. And I have told many, many times, an anecdote.

And this is when I had switched to become an analyst actually. It was in the National Intelligence Council. But the point I think is the same. And I was briefing one of our political pointies on something going on in Lebanon. And I was at this time the terrorism guy.

And so I said, well, if he's below this and Hamas, that is really the other thing. And then, you know, besides is going this way and the Turks go on that way. And of course, the Russians are mucking around. But then you have the droves.

And I'm just going on around like this. And I said, so it's very complicated. And you have to wait. And he said, "Glan, stop. Just find me the fucking terrorists."

And then he walked away. Yes. Get up. So you once was not particularly cold food in certain circles of operational life, which is tragic because that led to us, you know,

waging war, playing whack-and-ball. Let's kill the chief of operations. And maybe we can, by blowing stuff up in a ran, we can change the nature of the society and the regime. You know, another good idea.

Freedom clubs. Yeah.

So you're not that crucial.

Constituent. That's the central element. The equality that one has to have is an operations officer to be successful. And the last thing to the comment you made about literature and the agency, John, I had, and maybe I'm being a snot here and unfair.

“And I think I might be being a little unfair.”

But I had almost the reverse experience. And the first time I was ever mentioned in a book was without my name being mentioned. But it was one of my CT mates who resigned. And then he wrote a book, which was an attack on the agency.

And he described. He said, essentially, the problem is the following. Let's see. How did he tell us? Yeah.

Joe blow, and he gave a name which was not mine, but it was me. He walked in and he said, you know, the problem with this goddamn place is that the only use the case officers has had for books is as a recognition signal for an operation meeting. And I had said that.

I did say that. He accurately quoted me without using,

“you know, attributing my witnesses and to myself.”

And so I found that there was an anti-electroleptial bias. There was this disdain that was obligatory for the State Department, because they were worried about what made sense instead of what we should do to the others. I had a bus who would refer to State Department people as the nerds across the river.

And then when I did my first rotation to the State Department,

sure, many of them were nerds, but I was fascinated by how deeply intellectual they were. One of the desk officers that I was working with made an off-handed comment, I wouldn't want to tilt at that one mill. I chuckled because I thought it was witty. Everybody else, all the CIA people at one meeting turned and looked at me. They didn't get it.

They didn't understand why I thought that was so funny. I had to say, we have had the same lives. Different briefing again on Lebanon to my boss who didn't like me, because he could tell that I thought he was a fool. He was a political appointee, and he thought the new Gengrich was, you know, Alvin Einstein.

So I was describing, once again, the Lebanese situation, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, and I truly don't think that I was being elitist or anything like that. And so essentially the problem in the Levant is the following. And he said, "Clent, what's the Levant?" And he was the fucking national television officer for terrorism.

No. Oh, no. Yeah. That hurts. Yeah. It's interesting because that's a map issue. One of the things I did when I was in college that turned out to be quite good background for some of the standardized tests.

I realized that I knew almost nothing about the world.

I'd barely been out of the country. I just didn't know anything. So I bought a globe about this big in some local store.

“And I would just lie in bed, turn it around, say, "What's close to this?”

What's the capital of that? How would you sell from here to there?" And then I don't know what the test mode had changed over the years. But one of the tests I had to take was a 50 question test for the CIA and some of the questions were, I mean, they didn't make it easy. It was multiple choice, but it wasn't like if they asked what's the capital of Australia. It's not like some of the choices were going to be rain-goon or anything like that.

They'd give you a couple of Australian cities, whatever. I got a 50 out of 50 on that test. I'm still proud of that. Because that was most of that was self-love.

Anyway, the map is extremely important.

But it came across an expression that I'm surprisingly heard recently. It was from Steve Wall, who's a professor of political science at the Kennedy School. Really interesting guy. He's great. Yeah, he's wonderful. He said he was quoted in someone else.

I don't remember whom he said.

“If you want to understand the world, you start with a map and you wind up with Shakespeare.”

And I think there's a lot to be understood that. And maybe some of what else are attempts to engage with the our meeting of America's attempts to engage with the rest of the world. There's both a map, a map deficit. But maybe also a bit of a Shakespeare deficit too.

I will second that and triple down.

Absolutely. I'm an ardent proponent of the liberal arts is what should be required foundation for everyone. Even if they want to become the next plasma researcher. Like the two of you, I was a map nut as a kid. I was a sure way of radio listener too. In fact, I was so proud of myself.

Glenn, you'll like this then. I was so proud of myself when I was 14 years old. 1978, I joined the American shortwave listeners club.

“I think I paid, it was a lot at the time.”

It was like 20 bucks a year. And they would send this photocopied magazine every month. It turned out in October of 1978. I was one of only two people in the country that was able to log and verify radio, Ulan Bator Mongolia. I sent them, it was called a QSL sheet saying this is what I think I heard.

I think you were speaking Chinese. They corrected me. They said we were not speaking Chinese. We were speaking Mongolian. And this was the signal strength and this was the propagation disturbance and this was the overall quality. And they sent me a postcard from Mongolia.

And I happened to send a copy of it to the magazine and they put me on the cover of the magazine. For radio was great. But in my little, I had a walk-in closet in my bedroom that I turned into what I called a radio shack. And I had the map of the world on the wall. And every time I would be able to log a station and get confirmation writing, I would put a pin in the map.

And looking at that map, every single night, for years, was a real foundation for me. Like, bury with his globe. I used to spin my globe around and just put my finger on it and fantasize about going on vacation, wherever my finger happened to stop on the globe. And that was really why I wanted a good at the agency. Sure, public service.

My grandparents instilled this real necessity to go into public service. But then, at the same time, for several reasons, I just wanted to see the world. And I knew that I otherwise didn't have the money to do it. I wasn't in the shortwave club. I forget the name that you gave it.

I was, however, a true member of the DXer society, which is a little different. It's domestic. I wasn't a hand guy. It's in a big way. But this was sort of taken from my father. And it's listening. It's, it's reporting as many, not literally recording,

noting down, keeping a ledger of. All of the AM radio stations that you can, you can, you can receive from a given location. And so Boston said, at a disadvantage, because half of the universe is ocean. But once the sun goes down, AM radio will transmit about a thousand miles, depending on the atmosphere conditions.

And there was the DXer's guide to radio listening. And a book that I had, I bet you I still have it in my home. And this was in the 60s. My father had done it as a boy in the, in the 20s and 30s.

Although I listened to shortwave all the time.

“So in fact, I learned to speak Spanish in part by listening to radio muscule.”

Internet astronaut in form of ecolenta. I listened to rekeam huskow every night in Spanish. So I could practice. And they are superb. So my god, oh my god, the show is really great.

Just like you, I started with AM. My dad and I went to an auction. I was nine years old. And at the end of the auction, all the junk that didn't sell, they just threw into one box.

And my dad got it for 50 cents. It happened to have a Tri-Band radio in it. And FM shortwave. We put two batteries in it. And it worked.

That night, I turned it on. And was just going through the AM dial. And like you say, as soon as the sun sets, a lot of these stations boost up to 50,000 watts. I remember WRVA in Richmond, Virginia,

“the 50,000 watt voice of Virginia days to say.”

At that night, I got KRL. GN and Chicago. WGN flagship station WGN Chicago. Whoa, whoa radio in wherever it was. Whoa.

Fort Wayne Indiana. Fort Wayne Indiana. And I got KRLD in Dallas. And I remember thinking Dallas, Texas. It's so far away.

I had never been that far away from Newcastle, Pennsylvania.

The next night, I thought, well, if I could get Dallas, Texas on AM, what could I get on shortwave? Well, a couple of nights later, I got, I still remember what they said. (speaking in foreign language)

This is Greek radio and television, The Voice of Greece. And my grandmother cried when I played it for. And I thought, wow, this is fun. I'm on to something here.

And then even just recently, I went to Havana two years ago. And a buddy of mine who was also a, he's a little bit older than I am. He was also an avid AM radio listener. He said, "Would you do me a favor?" He said, "I've never been to Cuba,

but would you take a radio with you and tell me what you can hear on AM?" Well, I could hear everything on AM in Havana that I could hear north of Pittsburgh. Any major league baseball game you wanted to hear.

Any radio station pretty much from South Florida is easy, especially because it just has to cross the water. And then once the signal is boosted after sunsets, it's easy. And also there was a radio in Moscou International. All the time I listened to all the time.

All the time. The other regular station every night was radio Toronto, which was just wild to listen to. That is just unbelievable. And for Hoja, everybody, including Mao and Stalin at the,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I miss radio. There were so many times, I only learned what this was after joining the agency.

Well, let me back up. I went to another auction with my dad, and I bought an old World War II communications device, big tubes in the back of it. They would give me an electric shock every time I would touch him.

And I would always forget that I had to turn it off first

before I touched the tube, it would shock me. But anyway, it picked up all the shortwave bands and all the military bands. So every once in a while, I would go on to one of these obscure bands just to hear what I could hear.

And once in a while, I could hear ship to shore transmissions from cruise ships. People had lost other money in the casino and the cruise ship, and they needed to have more money wired. Stuff like that.

But every once in a while, I would hear almost always a man's voice, just say things like eight, five, three. Oh, absolutely. I should listen to it. What is that? And it wasn't until I went to the agency

that I realized it was spies reporting back probably to Moscow using their one-time pads and speaking in one-time code. The Russians still do it, for at least it did recently. I literally heard one not long ago. George Smiley was probably John the Carre's signature creation.

In fact, George Smiley is in the first sentence of the first book

that he ever wrote, called for the dead. Yeah, he George Smiley is right there in the first sentence. He was writing about George Smiley until legacy of spies, 50 some odd years later. And George Smiley appeared regularly,

aside from the core trilogy, Graham Green wrote some great, conflicted characters. But he didn't create a George Smiley from the perspective of both espionage professionals, but also authors, writers.

“What did John the Carre capture in George Smiley that in George?”

That really gave that character that kind of breadth.

so his spy is Superman, a Batman at this point.

Yeah. They keep going back to that character,

“and then character seems to be the repository for an awful lot of,”

if John the Carre invented in any way, the modern spy creating the language, it seemed to flow out of that character and his world at the end of the trilogy when he's beaten Carla. Someone says, "George, you won."

And he says, "Oh, yes, I suppose I have." That too seems to capture something quintessential about the person who walks into this world and does this for a living. With that, I'm going to shut up.

I'm going to jump in. I agree that Smiley is a three-dimensional character. He's a real person in a three-dimensional world. It's a real world, and the Carre describes the superbly the world of intelligence and espionage in the world, the real world in which all of us live.

Those are substantial reasons why he's become sort of the defining or central figure. He's a man of the time and the era. And brilliantly done, he's not a, he's not an Ian Fleming character,

who, you know, is a six-martinis and, and seduces girls

and never has a waffle in his clothes.

That's all through the Carre's credit. I'm not the hugest fan. I like, I find he's brilliant in describing the empty half of the glass of the life of intelligence. I submit a lot of time in that empty half of the glass,

but the glass is half full, too. And there is human war, and there is honor, and there are successes that are sometimes unalloyed.

“More frequently not because life is contradictory and messy,”

but that's not a comment about intelligence. I have found him frankly too dark as good or better than anyone, but not the best, and to me, not the definitive one, except that he really has, you know, he's had a recurring character.

He's had Sherlock Holmes of the Cold War,

and Graham Greene could have had he wished, but he wrote tales that were not part of the series of a single world, really. So I think that is why, smiley and the carry to get the credit,

or the attention, much of which is deserved, but not exclusively so. And I don't think at all that he is the father of the modern novel. And he is, he might have brought parts of it to a pathiosis.

And he's great, but Graham Greene wrote a world historical literature.

“The quiet American is one of the greatest books written by a human.”

And since writing was invented 5,000 years ago, one can trace the evolution of the modern of the spinal, pretty clearly. You know, John Buchan gave us international stakes and intelligence, Tom Rad, who is my,

if I had to choose the one person to read in the desert island of Econrad. Tom Rad gave us international ambiguity, and psychological darkness, and complexity unsurpassable, really.

And mom, summer set mom, in Ashenden, described perfectly what intelligence operations officer work is like. I mean, he just wrote his autobiography. I don't think he even changed the names.

And he shows the banality of the work and the boringness. The same time that the stakes are literally often existential. And that was 40 years before, 50 years or before, before the curry.

And for all of his detachments and skepticism, he's not a nihilistic sinner. And the way that sometimes the curry I find is, which offends me, a little bit, because I find it inaccurate, not holistic.

It is correct, but it is partial. And then contemporary, a little later, of the curry's who was very successful, but not as successful. He's not the defining author of the era of the genre.

His Charles McCarrie. And he's, if anyone, the mayor. Man, the tears of honor. The genre. Yeah, the genre, the curry of America.

I mean, he blurred my book, so he's a man.

It was a fine taste factor. And actually John Locari and I spoke a couple of times. I asked him to blur my book and he agreed. And then shortly before the time would have, you know, fixed the commitment.

He called me up and withdrew his, you know, the blurb. And I think. It's too late for that. Yeah, I should have said that. He wouldn't give me a reason why.

He said, "I've changed my mind." That's unquote.

“I think because he was actually quite hostile”

to American culture and policy. But what tried to define, you know, that's okay. But I tried to argue with him that even more that the case, that would should lead him to want to blur my book because my book was criticizing the things that I think

that he objected to. But he didn't. So to get back to the literature thing, I think he's great. I don't think he's the definitive or the necessarily the apex

or the founder. The curry came up with George Smiley as in some ways a kind of antidote to James Bond. And I think the two kinds of fiction are appealing for a really different, almost opposing reasons.

James Bond is wishful filming. I think it's fair to say, the books are actually more nuanced than the movies. No, no disrespect to the movies. I love the movies as much as anyone else does.

But the Bond is a wishful filming character. For all the reasons you were just saying Glenn and others. Smiley not so much except in so far as there's just an inherent fascination with wood,

La Correa always called the secret world.

Smiley and any other character setting that world is going to have that going for him.

“But I think what, like, so much of this will be projection.”

If you love books, you'll retrofit the logical sounding explanations for why you love the books. And maybe some of that is false. But what has always made me love La Correa's books is the dimensionality of the characters.

Just the way he depicts some aspect of what it means to be human, what it is to be alive, what is life, what is a good life, what are mistakes? How do we live with them? All the things that any human has to grapple with,

or should grapple with. He depicted that in a heightened setting, which is the setting, the realm of espionage. That, to me, is really the reason that La Correa is rightly in my opinion treated as literature

not as genre fiction. It's a whole other question of what genre, La Correa, since I raised the terms quickly to find them as I understand them, as I see them. genre fiction that is driven relatively more by genre elements

could be action, could be espionage, could be cowboys, and it's whatever it is. That's more central to the book. And when you start shading more and more into literature, you're getting you driven by the complexity of being human.

You can still have cowboys and spies and everything else, but what really the heart of the books becomes the heart of the matter becomes humanity, all the triumphs and tragedies just to be human. So I think that enduring appeal of La Correa's books, I think, has much more to do with his depiction of what it's like

to be a fully realized flawed struggling human being. And then the espionage feels real because these people feel so real. And whether you know anything firsthand of that world or not, it's going to feel real to you because the people feel so real. I think in some ways you could say the secret sauce makes it sound easy,

but obviously it isn't. That's what I was exactly going to ask. Is it the development, the rich development of these characters that makes these books so sustainable over the course of decades? Is that what it is?

“That's what I think, and when someone else gives you a different answer.”

But again, like with, I went back to some of the Ian Fleming books. It's already been a while ago. I was asked at some point to write an introduction for, but I think it was Penguin UK was reassuring the books and they asked some spy fiction authors to write intros for each of the books, which was an interesting thing for me to do

because at that point read those books 30 years earlier or something like that. I went back and read a few, and I would say there were still fun. Some of it feels dated, I mean, in terms of the sexism and that kind of thing, like what is the movies. And some things we've now seen, like, bond ordering,

very specific things, brand names, that kind of thing.

You know Fleming was the first guy I think to do that.

Instead of someone ordering a scotch, he's going to order something like

That's bond is very particular about these things and people seem to like that. So some of it, when you go back to it, it's like, yeah, this doesn't seem so new, but at the time it was. It still felt like wishful filming to me, which by the way, I got nothing against. I hope my characters are dimensional and I hope that what I do on the page

will illuminate some aspect of the challenges and difficulties and the rest of being human. But I also think there's an element of wishful filming in a guy like my character, John Reed, who's extremely adept with violence.

“And I think most people, if they're being honest with themselves,”

of course, they would never use it, except in extremists.

But if you really needed to take somebody out to be able to do it like that, would be a pretty cool thing and rank and do that. So that's a wishful filming element, hopefully baked into the rest of the three-dimensional stuff. I think the best literature is something you come away with and you feel like, oh my god, these people are real.

Recently, I took up for reasons that need not to tennis. I went back to Lonesome Dove and Larry Bertrie's book, and also the Empire Falls, which was very Americano. Oh, my god. And what makes Lonesome Dove tick, is it cowboys and a cattle drive?

Not really. I mean, you needed those things, otherwise it wouldn't be Lonesome Dove. But the characters, and I'm not just talking about call and and McCray, I'm talking about deeds. All of them, he just bounces right, they feel they're so unbelievably real.

You almost can't believe that he invented these people.

“And I don't know that much about art, but I think if there's a purpose to art,”

I think it's so that when you see or read or hear or whatever you experience art that someone else has created, it induces a feeling in us of like, oh my god, that's exactly what it feels like. Go to Starry Night. No one's ever seen something that literally looks like that unless he's on LSD or something. But when you see it, it feels like a thing you felt.

And some other human was able to convey that. And you see what, or if it's music, it would be here, but in this case, see it. And you have that feeling of, yes, that's exactly what it feels like. And suddenly you're not alone in this world that brings us together in this profound way. I don't think genre fiction can do that, or at least not very well.

Again, I read genre fiction myself in many ways. I'm not putting it down. But I think it's the characters like smiley who have that dimensionality who make us feel like, I know exactly how you feel I have it. Might not have been the same thing, but I know exactly how that feels and it brings us together.

May I ask you a question about that? Stephen King famously wrote on fiction 25 years ago. On writing, sorry, on writing. It's the only nonfiction book that he's ever read. I have to say, because I'm a fan.

Even though politically he's gone in directions. I wouldn't advise going in. Yeah.

He did have a second on fiction book called "Dance My Cobb."

Which is an examination of horror fiction horror movies, blah, blah, blah, blah. I read way back in the day, but I'm writing is the better known one. I'm glad that you steered me in the right direction there because I'm going to pick it up. I've been a long time fan. And I read, I read on writing when it first came out.

I was surprised at how brutal and unforgiving he is when analyzing other people's fiction. I read it two weeks ago. It's the 25th anniversary reprint that's just come out.

“And it says brutal as I remember it being.”

Now, I recently, I recently got representation. Congratulations. Thank you very much. And my agent says fiction fiction fiction. I told him I'm afraid of fiction.

I've never written fiction.

He said, "Oh, you're going to write fiction." He said, "You're a great storyteller. You just need to get over that initial hump." So I reread on writing it's at least as daunting as it was more than two weeks ago. There's the two of you struggle in that same way,

especially when it comes to character development. Because it seems like La Carre didn't struggle. Even pulp authors like Vince Flynn, God rest his soul didn't struggle. He could really come up with a character.

What about the two of you? Do you struggle with character development? Sure. You know, let me just say this actually. The fact that you don't see someone's struggles in the final product,

I don't know. Everybody has an easier or harder time. Whatever it is they do, anything with different aspects. But, you know, if you see ballet, if they're doing their job right, by the time you see them, they are.

My God, it looks easy. They're just floating above the stage.

And different people will probably have struggled with different parts.

What I would say about, and you know, let's return it to its own topic because I love talking about craft. But I'd just say this for the moment. Different people are going to be organically and inherently instinctively good at different aspects of the craft of writing.

Again, same thing with anything else in this world. Some of the authors we've been talking about in others, I'm sure. Characters maybe just came to them by instinct. They didn't really have to do any kind of conscious analysis of characters. And respect, I mean, if you've got that knack, that's fantastic.

Other people probably approach characters with a little bit more conscious to liberate craft structure.

“And I can say, I think looking back, I've been writing.”

My first book was published in 2002, so I've been in this game for a while.

And I think I have, I think looking back, I have pretty good instincts for characters. But I've gotten better by reading books like I'm writing. And taking various courses, master classes and great classes. There's Robert McKee, I recommend it a whole bunch of others. There is definitely an approach you can use if you're having trouble coming up with

whatever it is you need for great characters. And I'll give you just one example that I learned from through McKee, but ultimately credit goes to a Matthew Winer, the guy who created Madman. What Winer would have is writers do the exercise he would have them do. Again, if you have great instincts, you don't need this exercise.

But it couldn't hurt if you at least to know it. He would have his writers analyze his characters based on four levels. Really briefly, public private secret hidden. Public is the way people know you in public. At the office, at church, whatever, like the public you, it's just what it sounds like.

Private is the way your family knows you, and maybe your close friends. It's a bit of a different self than the way people know you in the office. It doesn't mean they're going to be contradictory, probably they're not. The additional aspects of you that only close people who are close to you will know.

Secret level, the third level, those are the parts of you that not even the people in your private realm know.

But you know those things. And then the final level is the hidden level. It doesn't matter what you call these things, but the final level is the hidden level. And these are the aspects of your being that even you don't can't won't recognize. These days, I really like thinking about even my own characters who start off seeming pretty intriguing.

Thank God otherwise, why would you want to spend a year writing about someone who didn't interest you. But still, I will go through these levels and my wife who's also my literary agent, Laura Renner. We do this all the time and it's fun. And when I do this, I've retrofitted this with my first character, John Renner, who I started writing this book 30 years ago. First one was published in 2002.

I look back and I'm like, wow, you can really do the four level analysis of what this guy works well.

“And so that's what I mean where I feel like in that area, I have pretty good instincts.”

But still being able to do it rigorously, consciously, is helpful. Other areas I've needed to be much more conscious about learning the craft structure, for example, especially when it comes to screen writing. That's just not something that I would say I had an intuitive feel for. If anybody's interested in some of these topics, I've got a sub-stack page.

You can find a couple articles in a video I did where I really talk a lot about craft resources. But for the resources, you can get into a lot of things that I wish I had known when I was starting out. I would have become a better writer faster if I had known these things. Instead of just doing it and doing it and doing it. And then at some point, patterns start to emerge from your own process.

And you're like, oh, I think, and that could have been a shortcut if someone else had shown it to me. But I was too unimaginative at a younger age to really chase these sorts of how-to things down. I've read a ton of how-to books and I've done Robert McKee seminars. I've read all this books and a bunch of other books and videos and webinars, et cetera besides. I would say most of what I've experienced has been good.

Some of it, I don't think it's been so good. But some of it will appeal to you more and some less. It doesn't matter. It's like what Bruce Lee said, absorb what is useful, discard what is not useful. Make it uniquely your own, do that with everything you encounter. If it doesn't really do it for you, some thing that someone's explaining is a process thing, a craft thing.

Maybe that's not the way it's just doesn't resonate with you. Don't worry about it. Find something else that does resonate with you. There's a lot of really good information out there. Okay, I'm going to say one last thing and I wrap this up. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go on so long.

Told you the stuff engages me.

“What's the word that's the opposite of being a fan?”

I have a strong antipathy to him.

And so it's the truth of it. We'll engage people and they're like, oh yeah, that's right. But they don't, the truth obscures just how misleading it is.

And one of those things for me has always been this.

This, this trite expression that what you can't, you can't treat, you can't teach writing.

“You can't teach art. That's what people say.”

It can't teach art. And it's true. You can't teach art. Art is what your soul expresses in its unique way, whatever. But you don't need to teach art. And yes, you can't, you shouldn't even try.

But what you can teach and absolutely you can teach it and learn it is craft. And there is no art without craft. The greatest art that's ever been created is built on craft. I don't care who you're talking about. Like a Langello Shakespeare.

If you know what you're looking for, I don't know much about painting.

“But I can tell you what Shakespeare, I can tell you on a craft level.”

Why this stuff works. It doesn't mean the man was an ingenious. But there's craft behind the art and the expression of the genius. So when it's time to hear someone say like, "Wow, I can't teach art." You might not want to get into an argument.

But don't let that slow you down even for a second.

Craft can be learned of course it can. And anything that can be learned can be taught. So anyway, that's one way to become a better writer. Faster is to go out there and find a lot of this good stuff in the world. You know, I wish I had the guts that our former colleague Larry Devlin had.

Larry passed away several years ago. But what he did is he wrote a book called "Chief of Station Congo." We even have it. I have it. I have it. I do too.

But I have it. Oh, you'll like it. Even the title is a security violation. That's true. That is true.

And what he did. It's he told a story, a captivating story about his entire career in CIA operations. And he told his daughter, "Publish this the day after I die." And that's what she did.

And they never went to the publications review board.

Well played. Boy, I'll bet there's a secrecy agreement that's been tightened up since then. Right? At least if the lawyers are worth anything. Barry Eisler and Glenn Carl.

Thanks again. And thanks for sitting in and talking shop today. This was a lot of fun. And thank you ladies, gentlemen. For listening.

“Please remember to like, rate, review, and share the podcast on whatever platform you listen to us.”

And don't forget to tell your friends. We really appreciate it. Until next time, I'm John Kiryaku. Dead drop is written by John Kiryaku and Alan Katz. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast, and John Kiryaku, Alan Katz, and Nick McCannick are its executive producers.

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