Greg’s Comments (group member since Oct 02, 2015)

Greg’s comments from the Espionage Aficionados group.

Feliks, The Confidential Agent gave me the slip also. This looks like a must-read.

cheers, thanks Feliks.

Interesting, thanks Feliks.
The Greene reference, could he be Fowler?, Fowler being English and Hughes was Australian.

Feliks asks "who names their son Blackford?"
Clothes maketh the man. Methinks the author has dressed the protagonist in black oxfords. Might 'Blackford Oakes' be a subliminal adaptation of Oxford? Buckley's first novel has an English focus a la Bond.
Graham Greene was an Oxford man. Greene's American CIA man is Alden Pyle, young and idealistic, whereas Fowler is English, an older, worldly journalist.

From the Goodreads Buckley's Blackford Oakes series synopsis:
"Buckley wrote the novels as an explicit corrective to the "rogue CIA" stereotype, epitomized in his opinion, by the Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor.
"The CIA", he argued in his introduction to the Blackford Oakes Reader, "Whatever its failures, sought, during those long years in the struggle for the world, to advance the honorable alternative."

Yes, The man from uncle himself. The debate was in July 1967.
The debate was on the Vietnam War.

I'm reading Robert Vaughn's autobiography 'A Fortunate Life'.

https://youtu.be/RNKkcAOYCVY

This is a good debate between William F. Buckley and Robert Vaughn.

Yes well, Feliks, you've turned on a light, the reason that these works might be 'just wrong', and leaden could well be that the conservative-right view is invariably objective. No self-reflection.
A conservative attempt at satire is more like flattyre.
I'd also like to read See You Later Alligator.
I have watched quite a few of the Firing Line television debates from the 1960s - 1990s now available on YouTube.
All very interesting.

Jeff,  Alexander C can do no wrong. 'A bit whack' hmmm, maybe. I can't see a whack factor. I think he's very astute. Certainly got the Reagan Thatcher era sorted. I'd like to know more about his father Claud. The whole family sounds pretty talented.
In Corruptions of Empire, the Deep Background section, the essay Heatherdown, about his school days is great.

Feliks, 'suspiciously contrived list', I wish I'd said that. Perfect. In these last few weeks I've seen three 'best of lists'. One was 'the Best Westerns', then this 'Best Spy Novels', and today BBC Culture on FB had 'The 100 best British Novels'. I counted 19 on the list published between 1990 - 2015. You should check it out, but maybe put some breathing space between it and the Best Spy List. It is embarrassing. For 'best of lists' to keep any credibility there has to be, as Feliks said,  a proper criteria for lists as standard.

Now, a bit of Manchurian Candidate paranoia. Last night after reading your comment mentioning The Manchurian Candidate I dug out the BFI Film Classics title by Greil Marcus covering both the film and the book and the influence it has had on the wider culture. The film starred Frank Sinatra. Then this morning I started chapter six of The Ipcress File, Palmer arrives in Beirut, it says 'In Room 624, bars of sunlight lay heavily across the carpet. The hotel intercom hummed with old tapes of Sinatra, but he was losing a battle with the noise of the air-conditioning.'
The Manchurian Candidate was first published 1959
The Ipcress File was first published 1962.
The film of The Manchurian Candidate released Oct. 1962
The film of The Ipcress File was released 1965

Thanks cool breeze, for adding the link. You're brilliant. Although these posts expire after a time, they may be available later in their podcast archives. The Bookclub author interview podcasts are all permanently available.

BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Beginning this week the first of five episodes of John le Carre reading The Pigeon Tunnel.

sorry, I couldn't attach the link.

I've started reading the Ipcress File. Early into the story is says: 'All people under long-term surveillance had bird names.' Raven, Housemartin, etc.
Question: In the TV mini-series, Person of Interest, a main character has given himself the name Harold Finch. He changes it to other bird names when necessary through the series.
Is this coincidence, or could it be the writers tipping their hat to the Ipcress File, or a traditional practice in the espionage world?

Feliks best-of spy novels list which includes
Ashenden
Dr. No
The Ipcress File
The Manchurian Candidate
Marathon Man
The Day of the Jackal
Six Days of the Condor

I have in paperback: Ashenden, Dr No, The Ipcress File, ( none of which I've read yet) & a slim book of a film critic study of The Mancurian Candidate by Greil Marcus.

I also have on DVD the film of The Manchurian Candidate, and Marathon Man, The Day of the Jackal, and Three Days of the Condor, which was based on the novel Six Days of the Condor.
I have the film Funeral In Berlin, the sequel to The Ipcress file. I love both of these. From memory I think there was a third Harry Palmer film with Michael Caine, is that right?

In the unusual book by Graham Greene, A World of My Own: A Dream Diary, (contains a lot of espionage scenarios) he mentions his friend Claud Cockburn in several dream notation scenarios. Some of the dream memories are funny in their strange quirkiness. I mention Claud Cockburn as to lead to the book Corruptions of Empire, collected articles by Claud's son Alexander Cockburn. One of the articles, which I originally read in a magazine, is called The Secret Agent, on Ian Fleming's relationship with the CIA and the British Secret Service. Alexander Cockburn claims Fleming 'has much to answer for. Without Fleming we would have had no OSS, hence no CIA. The cold war would have ended in the early 1960s.' The article goes on to say, in 1958, Fleming wrote Dr No, about Cuba. 'Having proposed a fictional Caribbean missile crisis, Fleming followed up in person. In the spring of 1960 he was taken to dinner at the Washington home of Senator and Democratic presidential candidate-elect Jack Kennedy.'

Some titles on the list are relatively recent in the scheme of things, when compiling a 'best of' list, one published as recently as 2010. Might this be a nifty way of promoting a new book?

Thanks Feliks. On Graham Greene's espionage works, I would recommend No Man's Land, this edition also has another short story 'The Stranger's Hand'. These are two 'draft treatments' for film. The quality of the writing stands on its own as short stories.
If I were a writer I think I'd write as if I were writing visualising for a film.

I agree with Jim. Number 1. Number 3 is good also but not as clear to read in a condensed font.

I always prefer keeping a logo or header in a single typeface. The credibility is much stronger.