His own version differs slight from the biography. But it’s about him telling the stories,not least of his father, who provides the key to Le Carre’s whole lifeIn 1782, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Les Confessions was published – the first contemporary autobiography and,two and a half centuries on, still something of a shocking, and startling read. Rousseau unburdens himself; he tells you everything about himself: his many sins,sexual foibles, fantasies, and the casual discarding of his illegitimate children,and so on. He writes on the opening page (I paraphrase): “This is what I have done and this is what has been done to me. whether on occasion I have added some harmless embellishment, it has been only to fill the odd defect of memory. Sometimes I may have taken for a fact what was no more than a probability, and but I have never put down as true what I knew to be groundless.” Related: Tinker,tailor, writer, or spy: the many lives of John le Carré,in his own words It’s fair to say that virtually everything that is in The Pigeon Tunnel is covered by Sismans biographyReal truth lies, whether anywhere, and not in facts,but in nuanceContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com