All right, John Le Carre (David John Moore Cornwell) has gone off the reservation! My goodness, George Smiley would have already sent out a team. Le Carre’s latest effort, Absolute Friends, left me hyperventilating! I mean, how can such a gifted writer commingle such drivel -- his polemical rant of an ending -- with what may be considered a decent storyline?

He was always a master of prose and even in this book continues to entertain with characters, dialogue, and plot that requires the constant reader to flip the page to see what happens to so-and-so, or what’s-his-name. And, to give credit, Sasha and Mundy, the absolute friends referred to in the title, are fair-to-midland characters. Perhaps, his best since those halcyon days when Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy was littering the bookstalls at all those airports frequented by frenetic American businessmen.

The author’s problem is his worldview…he’s succumbed to nihilism, yet another victim of secularism’s depravity. His characters have spent a lifetime trudging through the swamp of moral relativism and found it less than exhilarating; shagging the itinerant commie wench has lost its appeal especially in this age of death via sexual licentiousness, not to mention the dearth of commie wenches! His world is sustained by the hope of multiculturalism and diversity -- the New World Order of Love and Brotherhood once espoused by those esteemed commune dwellers of old. One can almost hear John Lennon singing, “Imagine,” in the background.

The protagonist, Mundy, you see, has taken a starving,
broken-toothed, Turkish prostitute to his bed, and found not only worth, but possibly salvation as well. But, only if he learns the Koran! Kipling would have loved the irony! In the end it is fair and fairness counts, beloved! The remnant of the old empire will be consumed in an orgy of spicy dishes, chicken sacrifices, and whirling dervishes and all will be well in the streets of Soho!

As always there are no absolutes to confront the non-existing conscience. No boorishness or popery here! Poor old Mundy is in search of love and friendship, in its truest form, and that by definition is impossible! There is only betrayal. Even Sasha, who in Freudian acquiescence hates his father, betrays Mundy…even Sasha! But that is forgiven, for Sasha is a true believer, an anarchist writ nearly as large as the Baader-Meinhof crew, though he eschews violence.

When Reagan triumphs Mundy, the mule, is packed off to his appropriately Labourite and adulterous wife. His career as a spy is el finito, the divorce is reduced to mere formality..we’ll do the right thing, of course, for the boy, you know! So Mundy shuffles off to the desert of myriad failures, failures he embraces with a decided panache!

But the reader knows, Sasha is coming, dragging along old Dimitri, the intriguing billionaire, with his hatred for the West, his love of power, and the magical elixir that will bring meaning to Sasha and Mundy’s meaningless lives.

John Le Carre is not a happy camper. Much like Kipling’s devoted battery horse, Snarleyow (he was “Two’s off-lead”), Le Carre has been “give(n) the knock,” and now finds “…’is head between ‘is ‘eels.” It’s all huff-and-puff and bombast now for the Cornwall lefty, God bless him. Save the world from the imperialistic Americans, the snotty buggers! The Bushies have invaded Iraq, dispossessed Sadaam, what’s next…Iran? Its American infantry in desert mufti standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Her Majesty’s own! Five years, sir, in Her Majesty’s Foreign Service, snitched on by the irascible Philby, and this is his deserts, betrayed by the Labour Party!

So, for Le Carre its goodbye to George Smiley and hello to black helicopters!

Bob Cheeks has written for The American Enterprise, Human Events, Southern Partisan, and The Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

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