In-between post. Still settling.
…and that’s why I was in Atlanta last Friday.
While waiting for a plane out of my accidental tour of the South I bought a book - John le Carré’s Absolute Friends. Yesterday I finished it, and today I’m going to quote it to you at length because it is just that awesome.
The back cover testimonials say ridiculous things about this being a spy novel. And it is, it’s got all the hallmarks: frequent changes of scenery; current and not-so-current events used as window dressing; political conspiracies; spies. But it’s not a glamorous spy novel. It’s about a guy who kind of falls into the trade because he’s failed at everything else, and his crazed idealist anarchist activist best friend.
If you read the book the way it was probably meant to be read, you’re reading one man’s journey from ideological black hole (he’s an activist, but more by accident than inclination) to politically motivated global citizen. “Born in India, which became Pakistan before the end of the day, to a disreputable British Army officer and an Irish nursemaid, Edward “Ted” Mundy attended public school in England, where he was the German-language protégé of former socialist Professor Mendanbaum. As a an Oxford graduate and a member of the London Anarchist’s club…eventually making his way to West Berlin…” etc etc etc. It goes all the way up to the present day, which I hate (the Iraq War is Srius Bizness, people!) but other people might like. It’s got a strong “aren’t idealists ridiculous but also poignant” vibe, which I loved but other people might hate.
Or you could read it as slash. XD The author totally supports you in this. Every other character mistakes Ted and Sasha for lovers! It’s the easiest explanation considering the absolutely insane stuff Ted does, just for Sasha. The author also tends to use words like “tryst” and “affair” to describe their relationship. I earmarked the pages I thought were especially slashy, and ended up with half the book.
Other than saying OMG ACTIVIST SLASH, I can’t really explain why I liked this book. Maybe I’ll just quote passages, okay, and you’ll get the message.
Ted’s first impression:
“He emerges in an attic lit by a builder’s inspection flashlight. A passage like the entrance to a mineshaft leads from it. At its end, two men and two women are bowled over a candlelit table strewn with maps and beer bottles. One girl is black-haired and grim-faced, the other fair and large-boned. The nearer man is as tall as Mundy: a Viking with a golden beard and a mop of yellow hair bound in a pirate’s headscarf. The other man is short, vivid and dark-eyed, with uneven, spindly shoulders that are too narrow for his head. He wears a black Basque beret drawn level across his pale brow, and he is Sasha.”
Ted’s joining a West Berlin anarchist’s commune, by the way, because he has nowhere else to live. From their first conversation:
““Wait, stop, put your stupid bag down.”
Compelled by the insistence in Sasha’s voice, Mundy pauses, but doesn’t quite put down the bag. Sasha tosses the letter [of introduction] aside and stares at him for a while.
“Tell me something truthful, no bullshit, okay? We get a little paranoid here. Who sent you?”
“Ilse.”
“No one else? No pigs, spies, newspapers, clever people? This town is full of clever
people.”
“I’m not one of them.”
“You’re who she says you are. Is that what you’re telling me? A political tyro, reading Germanistic, a good soldier with a socialist heart, or whatever the hell? That’s the whole story?”
“Yes.”
“And you always tell the truth.”
“Mostly.”
“But you’re queer.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Me neither. So what do we do?”
Looking down on Sasha, puzzling how to reply, Mundy is again struck by his host’s fragility. It’s as if every bone in his body has been broken and stuck back in the wrong way.
Sasha takes a pull from his whiskey and, without looking at Mundy, hands him the glass to drink from. “Okay,” he says.
Okay what? Mundy wonders.
“There’s a girl I like, okay? She’s young. Bourgeois like you are. Shy, like you. If she shows up, you sleep on the roof. If it’s raining, I’ll lend you a taupelin. That’s how shy she is. Okay? If necessary I do the same for you.”
…Which is how Mundy learns that he is to become Sasha’s roommate.”
Last one, although there are about a million that are much more suggestive:
“To his amazement, she has produced a family-sized baseball bat from underneath her Mao jacket and, ignoring Sasha’s exhortations to passive resistance, whacks a young policeman so hard on the side of his new helmut that it falls into his hands like a gift from God while he sinks smiling stupidly to his knees. Then she vanishes under a snake-heap of brown-and-blue uniforms and there is no way on earth he can reach her. The last he sees of her she has swapped her fireman’s hat for a cap of blood, but her last wish is burning in his ears: Teddy, you will kindly take care of Sasha., and he remembers that Ilse had made the same request of him, and that he has made the same request of himself.”
So he slings a protesting Sasha over one shoulder and caries him away. Afterwards he’s kicked out of Germany and wanders without purpose for ten years. Sasha writes him letters, really confessional ones, but Mundy doesn’t know how to answer so he never writes back. The meet again on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, with Sasha acting as East Germany infiltrator and Mundy as his British liason. Neither will work for anyone else: “two one-man dogs,” Mundy says. Mundy is married, but I swear he never thinks of his wife without also thinking of Sasha. He blushes when questioned about their time together.
And then there’s the ending. I won’t give it away, but absenceofmind, for instance, wouldn’t like it.
I’m happily installed in the new house, and better yet so is the cable! Mmm, cable internet. Classes look fun, although I didn’t expect there to be quite so many German majors in 19th Century European Intellectual History or D&D freaks in Early Middle Ages.
I’ve heard my cell phone so often that I’ve memorized the ring, and now I hear it in my head. And when I say “hear” I mean that literally, to the point where I can’t tell when it really is ringing and when I’m just imagining things, and this is SO ANNOYING because I keep checking for calls and there are no calls. The other day I missed two I thought weren’t real, honestly I don’t know what I'll do if - ah.
*TRIUMPHANTLY CHANGES CELL PHONE RING TONE*
PS Silver Diamond: translations by akujunkan (who I know as lebateleur) here. The sci-fi bishonen tell you to PLEASE READ THIS MANGA.
While waiting for a plane out of my accidental tour of the South I bought a book - John le Carré’s Absolute Friends. Yesterday I finished it, and today I’m going to quote it to you at length because it is just that awesome.
The back cover testimonials say ridiculous things about this being a spy novel. And it is, it’s got all the hallmarks: frequent changes of scenery; current and not-so-current events used as window dressing; political conspiracies; spies. But it’s not a glamorous spy novel. It’s about a guy who kind of falls into the trade because he’s failed at everything else, and his crazed idealist anarchist activist best friend.
If you read the book the way it was probably meant to be read, you’re reading one man’s journey from ideological black hole (he’s an activist, but more by accident than inclination) to politically motivated global citizen. “Born in India, which became Pakistan before the end of the day, to a disreputable British Army officer and an Irish nursemaid, Edward “Ted” Mundy attended public school in England, where he was the German-language protégé of former socialist Professor Mendanbaum. As a an Oxford graduate and a member of the London Anarchist’s club…eventually making his way to West Berlin…” etc etc etc. It goes all the way up to the present day, which I hate (the Iraq War is Srius Bizness, people!) but other people might like. It’s got a strong “aren’t idealists ridiculous but also poignant” vibe, which I loved but other people might hate.
Or you could read it as slash. XD The author totally supports you in this. Every other character mistakes Ted and Sasha for lovers! It’s the easiest explanation considering the absolutely insane stuff Ted does, just for Sasha. The author also tends to use words like “tryst” and “affair” to describe their relationship. I earmarked the pages I thought were especially slashy, and ended up with half the book.
Other than saying OMG ACTIVIST SLASH, I can’t really explain why I liked this book. Maybe I’ll just quote passages, okay, and you’ll get the message.
Ted’s first impression:
“He emerges in an attic lit by a builder’s inspection flashlight. A passage like the entrance to a mineshaft leads from it. At its end, two men and two women are bowled over a candlelit table strewn with maps and beer bottles. One girl is black-haired and grim-faced, the other fair and large-boned. The nearer man is as tall as Mundy: a Viking with a golden beard and a mop of yellow hair bound in a pirate’s headscarf. The other man is short, vivid and dark-eyed, with uneven, spindly shoulders that are too narrow for his head. He wears a black Basque beret drawn level across his pale brow, and he is Sasha.”
Ted’s joining a West Berlin anarchist’s commune, by the way, because he has nowhere else to live. From their first conversation:
““Wait, stop, put your stupid bag down.”
Compelled by the insistence in Sasha’s voice, Mundy pauses, but doesn’t quite put down the bag. Sasha tosses the letter [of introduction] aside and stares at him for a while.
“Tell me something truthful, no bullshit, okay? We get a little paranoid here. Who sent you?”
“Ilse.”
“No one else? No pigs, spies, newspapers, clever people? This town is full of clever
people.”
“I’m not one of them.”
“You’re who she says you are. Is that what you’re telling me? A political tyro, reading Germanistic, a good soldier with a socialist heart, or whatever the hell? That’s the whole story?”
“Yes.”
“And you always tell the truth.”
“Mostly.”
“But you’re queer.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Me neither. So what do we do?”
Looking down on Sasha, puzzling how to reply, Mundy is again struck by his host’s fragility. It’s as if every bone in his body has been broken and stuck back in the wrong way.
Sasha takes a pull from his whiskey and, without looking at Mundy, hands him the glass to drink from. “Okay,” he says.
Okay what? Mundy wonders.
“There’s a girl I like, okay? She’s young. Bourgeois like you are. Shy, like you. If she shows up, you sleep on the roof. If it’s raining, I’ll lend you a taupelin. That’s how shy she is. Okay? If necessary I do the same for you.”
…Which is how Mundy learns that he is to become Sasha’s roommate.”
Last one, although there are about a million that are much more suggestive:
“To his amazement, she has produced a family-sized baseball bat from underneath her Mao jacket and, ignoring Sasha’s exhortations to passive resistance, whacks a young policeman so hard on the side of his new helmut that it falls into his hands like a gift from God while he sinks smiling stupidly to his knees. Then she vanishes under a snake-heap of brown-and-blue uniforms and there is no way on earth he can reach her. The last he sees of her she has swapped her fireman’s hat for a cap of blood, but her last wish is burning in his ears: Teddy, you will kindly take care of Sasha., and he remembers that Ilse had made the same request of him, and that he has made the same request of himself.”
So he slings a protesting Sasha over one shoulder and caries him away. Afterwards he’s kicked out of Germany and wanders without purpose for ten years. Sasha writes him letters, really confessional ones, but Mundy doesn’t know how to answer so he never writes back. The meet again on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, with Sasha acting as East Germany infiltrator and Mundy as his British liason. Neither will work for anyone else: “two one-man dogs,” Mundy says. Mundy is married, but I swear he never thinks of his wife without also thinking of Sasha. He blushes when questioned about their time together.
And then there’s the ending. I won’t give it away, but absenceofmind, for instance, wouldn’t like it.
I’m happily installed in the new house, and better yet so is the cable! Mmm, cable internet. Classes look fun, although I didn’t expect there to be quite so many German majors in 19th Century European Intellectual History or D&D freaks in Early Middle Ages.
I’ve heard my cell phone so often that I’ve memorized the ring, and now I hear it in my head. And when I say “hear” I mean that literally, to the point where I can’t tell when it really is ringing and when I’m just imagining things, and this is SO ANNOYING because I keep checking for calls and there are no calls. The other day I missed two I thought weren’t real, honestly I don’t know what I'll do if - ah.
*TRIUMPHANTLY CHANGES CELL PHONE RING TONE*
PS Silver Diamond: translations by akujunkan (who I know as lebateleur) here. The sci-fi bishonen tell you to PLEASE READ THIS MANGA.