Trump in spyland
I just finished John Le Carre’s latest: “ Agent Running in the Field .” It’s a pretty good book for those who like literate spy stories, but to me it’s noteworthy for at least one other reason: It’s the first time I’ve explicitly encountered the dark and dimwitted presence of Donald J. Trump in popular fiction. Probably won’t be the last. Trump is not a character, thank God. But he does provide the dark milieu in which he, and his totally excellent compadre Vladimir Putin, continue to amplify the disastrous consequences of Brexit and the 2016 American election. This is not any kind of political diatribe (although at least one Trumpist reviewer on Goodreads called it that. Because of course). The stoic and deliberate Le Carre has never been a polemicist. In simpler times he might have been a proud Tory, or a Republican. But he knows quite a bit about the clandestine services. And here he deftly illustrates what happens when chaotic bumblers like Trump (and Boris Johnson) are ...