When author John le Carré died in December 2020, I was selfishly sad. He was a favorite and a regular visitor in my life. Every few years, he arrived with a new novel, and I consumed the book immediately. When he passed, there was not a published le Carré work I had not read. I experienced a sense of loss: There would be no more visits from this exquisite writer and elegant storyteller. When you come to the end of an author’s oeuvre, you reach a lonely spot. But a few months ago, Silverview, a previously unpublished le Carré novel, was released, and it’s a fitting farewell from the master, encompassing one of his grandest themes: the role of personal morality within geostrategic gamesmanship. It was a notion he first began probing with his Cold War espionage thrillers that initiated with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and continued through Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and onward. And it is an idea that stares at us today, as we contemplate the war in Ukraine.

Le Carré (né David Cornwell) has been described as the writer of spy novels. But the intelligence world—in which he, as a young man, worked as an officer—was merely his canvas for conveying tales of fundamental human drama involving loyalty, betrayal, community, and sacrifice. Espionage was treachery, but so could be love or friendship. What values should one adhere to as life takes you through various thickets? That’s what engaged him. As he wrote about in assorted articles and the autobiographical novel A Perfect Spy, his father was a con man who inhabited the upper crust of British society, and père Cornwell occasionally recruited his son into his schemes and cover-ups. From a young age, le Carré navigated an environment of false stories and hidden agendas. No surprise, he ended up in a profession that prized the dark arts and then left those ranks to become a professional and acclaimed fabulist.

The Cold War—with evils on each side, though one clearly less villainous—offered him a bottomless vat of grist for stories that forced moral dilemmas upon his characters. Could a person aiming to contribute to the betterment of society do so within corrupt or self-serving institutions that talked a good game but often justified unjustifiable means with iffy ends? And once the titanic East-West battle subsided with the disappearance of the Soviet enemy—or so we thought this battle had subsided—le Carré found other venues in which to examine the never-ending clash between professed idealism and real-world cynicism: Big Pharma, Russian money laundering in England, mercenaries in Africa, and the war on terrorism. Moreover, this guy could write a sentence. His deft handling of voices, points of view, and even shifting verb tenses was thrilling. He delivered cliff-hanging tales with literary grace. He served up few truly happy endings. But if his protagonist played it just right, a scoundrel might wind up with a measure of comeuppance, even if justice remained elusive or an illusion.

Silverview, once more, guides the reader into the perilous world of espionage, a realm that survives on lies. (One theme throughout le Carré’s work is whether professional liars can ever be trusted.) Our hero, if that’s what he might be, is Julian Lawndsley, who owns an independent bookshop in a small English seaside town. Not long ago, he was a successful player in London high finance. But he has renounced his big-city ways to peddle books to the locals and day-trippers. (What could be a more noble profession for le Carré?) He is befriended by a Polish emigré named Teddy Avon, who lives on the edge of town in a mansion with his dying wife and who claims to have known Julian’s father back in the day at boarding school. That father became an Anglican minister who famously disavowed God (after screwing many of the pious ladies of his parish), joined a cult, and had his prolific sexual adventures and other sins detailed by the tabloid press, leaving his family without a penny. (Yes, Julian was scandalized by his father, much as young Cornwell was.) Meanwhile, Stewart Proctor, MI6’s head of domestic security, an intelligence professional heading into the twilight years of his career, is mounting an investigation that will track back to kindly Teddy, who merely wants to join up with Julian to create a great books society in the shop’s basement. Not that there’s any need for the storeowner to know this, but Teddy happens to be married to the British intelligence service’s star Middle Eastern analyst. And by the way, Julian, can Teddy use your computer to order some of the books you most definitely need for this Republic of Literature venture?

As with much of le Carré, the back story is the front story. Without giving it all away—because I hope you do read this book—let me say that the past that is not past arises from the ashes of the savage warfighting of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s. Did the West do enough to prevent the slaughter of civilians in that war? In this tale, vital intelligence is gathered, but for whatever reason—geopolitical expedience, incompetence, or a lack of concern—it is not shared in a timely fashion to forestall tragedy. Heroic action does occur, but it is insufficient in the face of bureaucratic imperatives and flaws. Yet the deaths of a few civilians end up trumping the designs of an expansive bureaucratic system. Reading this book, with the television in the background airing reports from Ukraine, is especially unsettling.

What would you do for love? For love of a person, for love of a cause, or perhaps for both? Would you betray one love for a greater one, one cause for a higher one? Is a double life an act of principle or a despicable action? Le Carré presents such queries, without supplying the answers. Silverview is one of his shorter works. The settings are confined, not epic. Yet it possesses a wide emotional sweep.

This novel was not le Carré’s last. He began writing it in 2013 and at some point placed it to the side and went on to produce a memoir and two other novels. It was unfinished when he passed, but during his dying days he had elicited from his son Nick Cornwell, a novelist as well, the promise to tidy up the manuscript and catapult it into the world. Nick tells us in an afterword that the typescript he encountered required barely more than a tweak here or there. He also has a theory as to why his father had shoved this one in the drawer: “It cut too close to the bone.” With the calamity of the Iraq War still resonating—and it is a slight but important part of this novel—le Carré in this work, Nick observes, suggests “the spies of Britain have, like many of us, lost their certainty about what the country means, and who we are to ourselves. As with [KGB spymaster] Karla in Smiley’s People, so here with our own side: it is the humanity of the service that isn’t up to the task—and that begins to ask whether the task is worth the cost.” After spending all those decades in the real world of Britain’s spy services and then the fictional version that he shared with the rest of us, le Carré had a tough time declaring it was all worth shit.

Toward the end of Silverview, a mess is swept under an old, worn rug. The public will not be informed—unless the Guardian catches wind of this. Mission accomplished. All’s well that ends well, or that, at least, ends quietly. Stewart, wise and weary, ponders an agent who has slipped the service’s hold, and he thinks to himself, “Had [the agent] given away the service’s plans or its paralysis? It’s sources, or the fact that some part of it had thrown off a long tradition of objective advice in favour of a giddy late-life romp through the wild woods of colonial fantasy?” That is, did the secrets matter? Or was the true secret that the search for truth, the supposed mission of an intelligence service (and an element of human existence), had been thoroughly corrupted? Stewart may wonder, as did le Carré. But when he visits an old colleague—under, of course, a false pretense—his now-retired mate, reflecting on their years of service, lays it out: “The things is, old boy—between ourselves, don’t tell the trainees or you’ll lose your pension—we didn’t do much to alter the course of human history, did we? As one old spy to another, I reckon I’d have been more use running a boys’ club. Don’t know what you feel.”

If there are no other manuscripts hidden away in le Carré’s cupboard—Nick, please look!—Silverview can stand as a fine farewell from David Cornwell. He entertained, he guided. He explored moral ambiguity as a driving force in modern life. He may not have altered the course of human history, but he helped us to view it more clearly.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Dumbass Comment of the Week (Emergency Edition)

We have focused so much attention in recent days on Fox’s chief Putin apologist Tucker Carlson that it’s easy to forget about other autocrat-friendly propagandists on the we-distort network. And it’s often tough to fathom just how loathsome the right can be. Fortunately, Sean Hannity has reminded us that Carlson is not flying solo at Fox as a Kremlin stooge and that Rupert Murdoch’s lie factory has no bottom. On Friday, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov hailed Fox as the only media outlet “trying to present some alternative point of view.” Here we have a senior official working for a tyrannical regime slaughtering civilians, annihilating cities, implementing a police state, and mounting a massive disinformation campaign, and he’s praising the work of an American journalistic outfit. That might cause a media organization to review its output and, at the least, refrain from serving as an echo chamber for those evildoers. Not Fox. Not Hannity.

Only a few hours later, Hannity went on the air and promoted Russian propaganda. He favorably quoted an attack on President Joe Biden from Dmitry Peskov, a senior adviser to Putin and a target of Western sanctions. Attempting to belittle the American president who has rallied the West to oppose Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Peskov had said, “Given such irritability from Mr. Biden, his fatigue and sometimes forgetfulness...fatigue that leads to aggressive statements, we will not make harsh assessments, so as not to cause more aggression.” Hannity approvingly cited this sophomoric Kremlin trolling and brayed, “Like I’ve been saying, Biden’s weakness on the world stage, it is emboldening bad actors all across the globe, as Biden and Democrats abandon the peace-through-strength strategy that was successful under President Trump and even President Reagan.”

Hannity was boosting and exploiting a Russian effort to undermine and diminish Biden. He cited a war criminal’s nasty potshot at Biden as evidence that Biden was weak and that this supposed weakness had led to the war criminal’s war crimes. It would be like quoting a Goebbels slam on F.D.R. and saying, “See, the Nazis are right about Roosevelt. He’s the problem!” For decades, Republicans and conservatives have questioned the loyalty and patriotism of Democrats and progressives. They have claimed the left is reflexively anti-America. What the hell do you call this? Hannity was legitimizing a murderous state that is a US adversary and that is massacring thousands and eagerly amplifying its disinformation. It’s hard to imagine Hannity or Fox doing much worse than this. But I am sure they will find a way.

The Former Top Kremlin Official Who Spoke Out

Here’s one story about the Ukraine war that has not received sufficient attention: Arkady Dvorkovich, a former Russian deputy prime minister who has remained part of the Moscow power structure, has spoken out against Putin’s brutal and illegal invasion. In a recent interview with my Mother Jones colleague Daniel King, Dvorkovich, who is president of the International Chess Federation, expressed his opposition and became one of the few past senior Kremlin officials to denounce the military action. “Wars are the worst things one might face in life…including this war...My thoughts are with Ukrainian civilians,” Dvorkovich said, noting at the time that he was in Russia and “safe with my family and friends.”

But he wasn’t safe from repercussion. After the interview appeared, senior party officials called for his ouster from a prominent Russian foundation for innovation and technology that he headed. “Do you think you can hide behind a chessboard?” asked Dmitry Rogozin, a hard-line Putin ally who runs Russia’s space program and is a former deputy prime minister of defense. Russia’s Secretary of the General Council Andrei Turchak called for Dvorkovich’s “immediate dismissal in disgrace” from the Skolkovo Foundation for his “national betrayal.” Dvorkovich did resign.

Putin has been on the warpath domestically, criminalizing opposition to the war and decrying Russian critics inside and outside the country as a treasonous force that must be crushed as Russia purifies itself. In the face of this fascistic assault on Russian society, Dvorkovich’s act of conscience is especially courageous. He deserves to be regarded around the world as a hero.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Suspicion. It’s rather disappointing when popular entertainment takes on an under-addressed issue and whiffs. In Suspicion, Apple TV+’s not-so-thrilling thriller, the bad guy is Big PR, specifically a global public relations firm with awful corporate clients, particularly one large oil company. The action starts when the son of Katherine Newman, the CEO of this public relations firm, is kidnapped in New York City by perps wearing masks of members of the British royal family. The kidnappers don’t ask for money. Hacking into computer and television screens everywhere, they demand that Newman, who has been nominated to be the US ambassador to England (because of her big-money donations to the president), “tell the truth.” Which truth? Well, that’s the grand mystery. British security and the FBI quickly identify five people in England as the suspected kidnappers, who—except for a terrorist-for-hire—don’t seem to be the kidnapping type. One is a university professor, another a financial firm employee. The other two are a college student and a computer whiz looking to nab a cybersecurity job. The suspects are thrown together, and, on the run, they endeavor to figure out why they were drawn into this scheme, as a worldwide “Tell the Truth” movement rises up.

The premise is Hitchcockian—random people pulled into an international crime. Sounds like it should work, right? But it doesn’t. Cast as the big spin chieftain, Uma Thurman is supplied only thin material to work with. Her talents are barely used. And the series repeatedly presents situations in which characters act unnaturally. When the apparently unwitting suspects hook up with the terrorist-for-hire, who they believe is the mastermind behind this caper, they barely press him for answers. When it appears Newman’s son is about to be killed, she takes a few minutes to sit in a chair and talk to the body of a colleague just shot dead. Worst of all, the final resolution is a convoluted mess. The intent of the series’ creators was honorable: to explore the PR rule that stories (including manufactured stories) matter more than facts. Yet they impeded their message by muffing the story.

“Kyiv Calling,” Beton. The first subscribers of this newsletter know that I’ve been a fan of the Clash since the band’s music reached the United States. Naturally, I was taken with a new cover version of “London Calling,” the apocalyptic anthem that was the title track of the group’s magnificent third album. A Ukrainian punk group called Beton (which means “concrete”) received permission from the surviving members of the Clash—band leader Joe Strummer tragically died 20 years ago—to rejigger the lyrics for a song titled “Kyiv Calling.” The number was recorded near the front lines, and its accompanying video features war footage shot by friends and relatives of the group’s members. Andriy Zholob, the guitarist and vocalist for Beton, who also is an orthopedic doctor who’s been treating soldiers and war victims, told the Guardian, “Many Ukrainian musicians are now on battlefields or in territorial defense. They’ve changed guitars to guns. We hope this song shows Ukrainians’ spirit and our defiance to Russian aggression. We are glad it is going to be played around the world as a symbol of solidarity and hope.”

The original song was written in 1979 by Strummer and guitarist Mick Jones to reflect a dystopian vision of England and the world drawn from the headlines of the moment: the Three Mile Island meltdown, the Iranian revolution, political unrest in the UK, and discord elsewhere. With Putin’s attack turning Ukrainian cities into hellish landscapes, the song, unfortunately, is too good a fit. All proceeds from the tune, the band says, will go to the Free Ukraine Resistance Movement, which bills itself as “the national decentralised citizen-led movement dedicated to the reoccupation and restoration of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

March 19, 2022: How Trump and his crew boost Putin’s disinformation; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Candace Owens, Jesse Waters, Lara Logan, Herschel Walker, Elon Musk, and others); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

March 15, 2022: Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin, and me; why you should watch Severance; and more.

March 12, 2002: Putin, Ukraine, nuclear war, and Trump; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Madison Cawthorn, again!); the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

March 8, 2022: The progressive dilemma in Ukraine; rehabbing West Side Story; does Inventing Anna target or celebrate Instagram culture?; and more.

March 5, 2022: Once again, Merrick Garland should tell us if the DOJ is investigating Trump for his attempted coup; Dumbass Comment of the Week (winner: Ben Shapiro); masks and freedoms, the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

March 1, 2022: From CPAC to Ukraine—how the right went from wrong to crazy; rebranding this newsletter; and more.

February 26, 2022: How we let Ukraine—and the world—down; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Useful Idiots Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 23, 2022: Yoko Ono (finally?) gets the credit she deserves; a Trump-Russia fantasy; The Slow Hustle takes on the hard case of a Baltimore cop-killing; and more.

February 19, 2022: A masterclass in both-sidesism from Washington Post columnist Matt Bai; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 15, 2022: Why is John Fogerty serenading Trump crony Steve Wynn?; can Trump be barred from running for president because he flushed documents down the toilet?; The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window doesn’t know if she’s in a parody or not; Elvis Costello tells us to listen to Ian Prowse; and more.

February 12, 2022: Would you want to look at photos of a massacre?; rebranding This Land; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.