As does, of course, the fact that unlike the other two authors in this triumvirate, he didn't attend public school and was assuredly working class in his upbringing. None of this is really new, but this essay I think encapsulates well how these social and career differences manifest themselves in Deighton's writing, particularly in his two most famous creations, the unnamed spy who became Harry Palmer, and Bernard Samson. Both, for example, are recognised as unreliable narrators for the reader, which creates tension and ambiguity when reading the books, given that everything being said my turn out not to be one hundred per cent accurate.
"Deighton’s hero is an unreliable narrator whose commentaries should be sifted, not readily accepted. It isn’t that he deliberately sets out to hoodwink or misdirect us, rather that his outlook is hampered by blind spots. His entirely subjective account prevents him from presenting the whole picture or conveying the exact truth. Anomalies and distortions arise. As Deighton once explained: ‘What happens in The IPCRESS File (and in all my other first-person stories) is found somewhere in the uncertainty of contradiction.’ This makes for stimulating reading."Not a new insight, but this essay explores well how the author makes the most of this.
With Len Deighton rather having fallen out of public consciousness since the turn of the century - not surprising, perhaps, given his advanced age and non-release of any new fiction during this period - essays and evaluations of his writing are now seen sparingly in the UK media and online generally, so when something like this essay does crop up, it's interesting to see if the author has any new perspectives to offer on often familiar traits.
Hmm, I'm not sure I'd say the "Harry Palmer" character is exactly an unreliable narrator. There are moments when this is true, such as when he describes Harvey Newbegin as stepping in front of a bus rather than being shoved (what really happened becomes clear during the narrator's subsequent conversation with Col. Stok), but by and large he is telling us the story as he sees it. That his view is subjective (as any first-person narrator's would be) is not quite the same as saying that he's an unreliable narrator, which is usually considered to be one who actively misleads the reader or is so delusional that he's incapable of telling us what's really happening.
ReplyDelete" the fact that of the three Deighton was the only one who was not a spy makes its presence felt in his storytelling, and so marks him out as something different"
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read his first novel: the IpcressFile, published in 1962, after having read a few JamesBond novels and watched the film, Dr No, I felt as many did at that time that Deighton was refreshingly different, and that was the reason for the success of the novel . It also cemented him as a superb narrator. No one, I knew at that time felt that Harry Palmer was an unreliable narrator.
The ColdWar -related narratives were often subjective, the whole picture was not clear and plenty of blind spots. As Deighton says, they made the reading of the Ipcress File and Bernard Samson novels very interesting. After visting East Berlin and East Germany, albeit to attend academic conferences in 1980, I realised how superior Deighton's knowledge of the Coldwar was-something, I never felt while reading Le Carre. His observation capability emanating from his working class background allowed him to see things very differently from rather the formal framework thinking of an ex-spy.
He wrote well, and wanted his novels to be read not watched versions of them on the big screen. That meant, in the post-ColdWar years, he fell out of public consciousness, as the big screen took over.. If I have to saysomething negative, it is that he should have written Bernard Samson's trilogy much earlier, following, Funeral in Berlin.
The above post was from me. Something went wrong when I posted the above and I became 'Anonymous'!!
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