thinking about how much i would love to personally make an adaptation of smiley's people that engages with that book's relationship to violence

the absolute horror of scenes of violence and the constant awareness of the possibility of violence and the inability of the protagonists to enact (immediate) violence themselves.............

the most violent scene in the book is a bit of comedy where peter guillam thinks his wife is being held hostage by terrorists and bursts in his own door and takes down the man waiting inside, only for that man to turn out to be george

in smiley's people violence isn't far away and theoretical like it is in, say, tinker tailor, where the only physical experience of violence is jim's, and jim is very much narratively othered - looked at, not looked through

but in smiley's people george spends the first half of the goddamn book convinced that he's about to be murdered, with pretty good reason, and his response to this is first to try to resign himself to death and then to rebel against that impulse

but it's never to try to defend himself or something, which i mean is kind of obvious because he's a civil servant and he's about seventy maybe or sixty five? but it's really interesting and weird for a violent *genre*

and like, the sword never falls on george's head exactly but (in of course my favorite scene, the two kids who fuck up george's car) he is kind of physically attacked. there's a sense that george is..... physically violable. he is vulnerable, he is not protected by society

honestly i might pull call for the dead into this analysis too as like..... a point of comparison. both are weird but they're weird in different ways. in call for the dead the engagement with violence is more..... moderated

like in cftd violence is modulated by norms and bureaucracy. mundt fails to kill george the first time because of social norms. george has a gun but doesn't bring it to the confrontation with dieter because "there'd be such a row if i used it"

the joke it of course that both of these averted acts of violence happen later anyway. mundt nearly kills george in an alley, george successfully kills dieter by pushing him off a bridge. i don't know what this means yet but it seems worth pointing out

but the thing going on in smiley's people is that protection of norms and moderation is breaking down. the people who are victimized - otto, vladimir - are literally on the margins, left behind by norms and bureaucracy

and there is a feeling that norms and bureaucracy won't protect smiley either, that society itself is falling apart

in the end the thing i'm interested in about smiley's people is that it is absolutely crawling up the wall batshit wild levels of weird and this sense of impending violence is a big part of that because that's what the crumbling of normativity brings

like it's low key a reactionary theme? but it's interesting despite that

"Is Smiley's People Unusually Reactionary For A le Carre Novel?" the greatest thread in the history of okay you know what you get the gist i'm quoting the dril tweet to imply that this is both a question worth asking and not one with an obvious answer

the gender stuff, george sort of...... more successfully performing masculinity than usual is part of that question, but not an uncomplicated one

like, george may be a lot, sort of, *harder* in this one but this is also the book where we get the line "after a lifetime of inventing a cover stroy for every occasion, he still found it impossible to talk his way out of a dinner invitation"

the first thing he does in the book is cry, but complicating that further, it's very much framed as like a masculine thing to do

and to bring it back to violence, george may be hard but he is still absolutely vulnerable to violence at all times in like a super palpable way and all he can do is keep an eye out and try to spot it before it hits him so he can avoid it

weird book...... it has a relationship to violence that's worth exploring i guess is what i'm saying

also a relationship to the interplay of violence and society which is why it's worth pulling on call for the dead as a foil

i should really try and find some meaning in the fact that cftd TWICE includes violence that is averted by the mechanisms of society but then happens later anyway. that's what i call themes. does it happen anywhere else in the book? hm

as you can tell from the direction this thread went, i have completely untreated clinically diagnosed adhd