Booklist

Dryden follows up his superb debut, Red to Black (2009), with a riveting sequel. British spy Finn, who uncovered a Russian plan to control Europe’s access to oil and natural gas, is dead, murdered by a KGB-trained Russian criminal. Anna, the beautiful KGB colonel assigned to seduce Finn, but who fell in love with him instead, is in hiding, raising her son, Little Finn. In the post-Bush era, both the U.S. and Britain have realized that Finn was right: Vladimir Putin is an enemy. Now they want Finn’s source, a Kremlin insider known only as Mikhail. MI6 also wants revenge for Finn’s murder. The Russians want Anna for her betrayal. Anna wants to shield Mikhail and keep herself and her son alive. Machinations by all the principals ensue, and Dryden, a longtime student of Russia and the world of intelligence, tosses a new player into the mix: Cougar, a private intelligence company run by Burt Miller, a former CIA spook extraordinaire. The larger-than-life Miller schemes against the CIA, MI6, the Russians, and Cougar’s corporate competitors to hold on to Anna and reel in Mikhail. Red to Black reinvigorated the classic Cold War espionage genre. Moscow Sting—with its clever, devious, conflicted characters; its tension and verisimilitude; and its complex but fully plausible plot—is every bit as good.

But I do have an interest in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and I am a fan of slim books. So when Herta Muller‘s The Passport came in the mail I figured this was my chance to appear cultured and with it! (actually, the story just seemed interesting but still …)

The story, set in a German village in Romania during Ceausescu’s dictatorial reign, centers on the travails of the village miller Windisch as he seeks to emigrate to West Germany.

For this he needs “papers” and the assistance of local officials who require any number of bribes or favors to speed the process along. In a totalitarian regime this means they have the power to extract whatever they can get. And they seem intent on squeezing the humanity right out of Windisch.

Someone has described this novella as a “fragmented prose-poem” and that has a lot to recommend it as the story is far from straightforward. It has the feel of stream of consciousness mixed with poetry.  The often short sentences are full of imagery and allusions; , mixing traditional narrative with descriptions internal and external. It certainly has a surrealist element.

At first I was put off by this and struggled to get a rhythm reading. But as I became accustomed to Muller’s style, and began to appreciate the style, I saw how the writing came together to achieve its effect.  You have the sparse prose and harsh conditions contrasted with the poetic descriptions and vivid imagination.

And in this way it seems to perfectly capture the time and place both physically and emotionally. You have these captive peoples trapped in their own heads – the only part of their lives that were their own.  The fear and bitterness infiltrating and undermining relationships and confidences; seeping into the fabric of their lives and their society.

In order to try and make a better life for his family Windisch is forced to agree to things no man should have to endure.  And it – and the alcohol he uses to keep the demons at bay – makes him physically ill at times. He tries stoicism but anger often erupts and he takes it out on his wife and daughter; who else is there?

When he does escape and later returns the village seems both familiar and alien. The people going through the same motions but trapped in the past (the night watchman is married to a barefooted goat herder). Ceausescu has locked these people into poverty and misery and they are simply doing the best they can to get by; holding on to their faith, stuperstitions, and traditions as the only way they know.

The Passport is not an “easy” read in the traditional sense nor is it likely to be a taste for everyone.  But I am glad I read it to gain a little insight into the style and work of this now famous – at least mildly – author.  If you are curious about the most recent Noble winner this is clearly a book where the risk reward is in your favor (even if you don’t like it it’s less than 100 pages).

As a bonus you can brag about how with it and cultured you are …

It also has the feel of an indictment of Vladimir Putin‘s Russia, and a castigation of the West’s response, in fiction form. Put it all together and it makes for an interesting read; some of it works very well other aspects less well.

Here is a video trailer for the book:

For the more textual among us here is the blurb:

Finn is a veteran MI6 operative stationed in Moscow. In the guise of an amiable trade secretary, he has penetrated deep into the dangerous labyrinth that is Russia under Vladimir Putin to discover some of its darkest secrets, thanks to a high-level source deep within the Kremlin.

The youngest female colonel in the KGB, Anna is the ambitious daughter of one of the former Soviet Union’s elite espionage families. Charged with helping to make Russia strong again under Putin, she is ordered to spy on Finn and discover the identity of his mole.

At the dawn of the new millennium, these adversaries find themselves brought together by an unexpected love that becomes the only truth they can trust. When Finn uncovers a shocking and ingenious plan—hatched in the depths of the Cold War—to control the European continent and shift the balance of world power, he and Anna are thrust into a deadly plot in which friend and foe wear the same face. With time running out, they will race across Europe and risk every-thing—career, reputation, and even their own lives—to expose the terrifying truth.

For my take see below.

I will be honest, this book seemed disjointed to me at times.  But part of that is the fact that I was reading before bed for however long I could last.  This often meant a chapter a night – not really enough to get fully into the flow of the story.

But I also think this is because the book has three threads Dryden is trying to weave together: 1) the espionage thread which is used as a vehicle for 2) the portrait of a Russia that suffocates the stirrings of democracy and heads back toward autocracy and 3) the love story.

When Dryden is focused on Finn’s obsession with “The Plan” – and Russia’s slide back to autocracy/oligarchy -  the book reads like an intelligent thriller with a strong current events focus. As a first time novelist, Dryden’s prose can be a little flat and heavy handed but the premise of a Russia resorting back to its Cold War ways and threatening Europe is plausible and full of tension.

That Dryden has an “axe to grind” – to use a phrase – just adds some oomph to the story.  And the fact that he knows a great deal about the history and circumstances involved only makes the story better and the real life component more disturbing.

But by using the love story as the structure on which to hang the story Dryden too often highlights the weakest part of the story. In fact, Anna and Finn are not that strong as characters and their love story drags the plot down – or at least it did for me.

Finn is easy to understand as someone obsessed with proving his theory right and showing his superiors that they were wrong to doubt him.  And Anna is a familiar character: talented daughter who follows in her father’s footsteps but to find distance not closeness; and who begins to feel trapped in the world she has chosen.  But you don’t feel the connection or romance between Finn and Anna – it is just presented as fact.

And Anna makes for an odd narrator. As noted above, the sections that deal with Finn’s trade craft and the larger plot surrounding The Plan work very well.  There is a complex history and a convoluted money trail to follow; and the larger meaning behind it all. This is just the Cold War updated.

Anna narrates the story from a safe house of sorts in Germany where she is desperately trying to unravel the mystery because Finn has disappeared.  But her trips to the coffee house or into the secret basement to read through Finn’s journals again just slow the story down.

I also found the subplot surrounding the mole/double agent Mikhail confusing and distracting.

But despite this set-up that doesn’t always work the book begins to pick up pace and ratchet up the tension as Finn and Anna race to unravel the last few clues before either the Russians or the British get wise to their actual work and shut it down. The second half of the story is well paced and exciting.

Unfortunately, just as the story really heats up it comes to a disappointing conclusion. Dryden didn’t seem to know exactly how to bring the espionage and love story plots to a neat conclusion so things rise to a climax and then just end; with a tacked on epilogue.

As the above has probably made clear, I am of mixed opinion on this one.  Parts of the story were actually quite interesting and well done; and the premise is a good one (and the problem of Russia all too real).

But all the moving parts don’t seem to come together.  The love story just doesn’t have the passion that the underlying mystery does and Dryden doesn’t pull off blending the two in my mind.

So, worth reading?  Depends on your tastes I suppose.  The Kirkus review mirrored my feelings best so I will give it the last word:

The intrigue is wonderfully twisty, and Dryden paints a terrifying portrait of Putin’s ruthless Russia, but the romance plot is labored and clumsy, as is much of Anna’s characterization. Terrific when it sticks to spycraft and the intricacies of geopolitics. Not so much when it attempts the intricacies of the heart.

George F. Kennan‘s is not an easy figure to place on our rather simplified political spectrum.  His positions on the hot button issues of the day placed him on one side or the other, but just as often seemed to contradict each other.

He was opposed to Joseph McCarthy, nuclear weapons, the militarization of the Cold War, and the Vietnam War; he was an agrarian localist that decried industrialization; he preferred engagement to demonization; and he served under, and advised, a number of iconic liberal presidents.

And yet, he was staunchly anti-communist (and anti-Stalinist) and set the course of the early Cold War; opposed the creation of the United Nations; largely preferred the free market system to the centralizing tendencies of socialism; was deeply suspicious of democracy and universalist views of politics; and decried the idealistic vision of liberal foreign policy.

Biographers and academics have tried to make sense of these, and many other, apparent contradictions (as did I in graduate school).  In George Kennan: A Writing Life Lee Congdon takes a different approach.

From the inside cover:

There were two George F. Kennans. The first was the well-known diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia-a tough political realist and man of the world who gained fame as the theorist of America’s Cold War “containment” strategy. This was a “persona” that Kennan adopted in order to carry out his professional responsibilities. The second, largely unknown, but real George Kennan was a writer and aesthete-a shy, lonely man who felt alienated from both his country and his times, and a man who made major contributions to American literature.

Thus argues Lee Congdon in George Kennan: A Writing Life, a groundbreaking study of Kennan’s life and thought. Congdon narrates Kennan’s legendary work in the foreign service, his later career as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, and the schools of thought to which he made significant contributions: political realism, antidemocratic social and political criticism, Spenglerian gloom, and conservative cultural analysis. Congdon concludes that notwithstanding his great accomplishments as a diplomat and geopolitical strategist, Kennan merits consideration above all else as an original and penetrating American writer.

This argument breaks down into two components: 1) Kennan’s aesthetics and personality explain more than his surface political and professional reputation 2) Kennan was a writer who deserves to be in the upper echelons of American letters. Congdon is quite persuasive on the first point, but less so on the second.

Congdon argues that, despite his reputation, Kennan was not a politician or diplomat but a writer at heart; and that he brought this sensibility to his entire life and work. This is particularly important since Kennan’s extremely shy and self-conscious personality meant that his writing was the one place where he could not only thoughtfully explore the most important issues and questions but truly express himself.

Digging beneath just the publically available material, Congdon explores Kennan’s archival papers (notes, journals, letters, etc.) and finds this thread running throughout his life from a very early age.

In my opinion the argument that Kennan assumed a persona in order to succeed as a policy maker and diplomat fits very well with the historic evidence. And Congdon persuasively shows that viewing Kennan as a shy, but extremely gifted, writer and “aesthete” is more clarifying than attempting to see him as a political thinker or strategist. And this, when combined with his career path, contributes to much of the confusion about Kennan’s policy recommendations.

From a conservative perspective what is interesting is that Congdon seems to be claiming Kennan as a sort of pre-paleo-conservative, to use an awkwardly hyphenated term.  He is clearly pushing back against the conservative rejection of Kennan at the time as a liberal of no use in the critical battle against the Soviets.

Anti-communists at the time saw Kennan as naïve about the role of ideology as motivation for Soviet action and as dangerously idealistic about military strategy and the use of force; particularly his anti-nuclear weapons opinions.

Congdon argues, however, that Kennan was deeply pragmatic; saw the pitfalls of idealistic and universalistic doctrines; and at the same time fully aware of the long term weaknesses of the Soviet Union. In their anti-communist fervor too many on the right dismissed the wisdom Kennan offered.

For Kennan the best weapon against the Communists was a strong and vibrant West.  He argued that focusing on living up to our own ideals would, in the long term, do far more good than utopian schemes to make the world more like America.

Kennan reject the leftist view of the perfectibility of man:

That fact ruled out all utopian projects, all hope for a world of permanent peace and harmony, all efforts to remove considerations of power from the diplomatic equation.  A prudent foreign policy was on that accepted the realities of power and interest and strove to to keep the inevitable conflicts between nations within tolerable limits.

This sensibility, however, often put him at odds with the anti-communist conservatives and the internationalist liberals.

For Kennan, realism mandated moderation, a sense of proportion, and a recognition of limits.  He evinced no sympathy for moral crusades, imperial adventures, or interventions in foreign lands.

[...]

But realism meant something else as well: a rejection of any idea of American “exceptionalism” or messianism, any claim that superior virtue placed upon Americans a redemptive burden on a global scale.

In this sense, intellectually and politically Kennan was a man without a home.  In many ways he was a 18^th century European conservative trapped in the 20^th.  As noted above, he was an agrarian localist who despised the leveling aspects of mass commercial culture. He was distrustful of mass democracy as well and long held that such a political structure was incapable of a balanced and wise foreign policy.  He was an elitist politically and culturally in a time of rising egalitarianism on both the left and the right.

These views, Congdon notes, made him a reactionary, in a “strict and nonpejorative sense” rather than a conservative as he “preferred the past to the present and looked to it for wisdom and guidance.”

Clearly being labeled a reactionary in a nonpejorative sense is, and was at the time, nearly impossible.  And Kennan’s views are easily caricatured. But Congdon carefully puts them in to context and helps the reader understand Kennan in light of his upbringing, personality, and intellectual influences.

The portrait that emerges is of an intelligent, sensitive, and skilled writer who despite an active public career never quite felt at home in his own time and place.  Not surprisingly then, some of the most important work Kennan leaves behind is as a historian (having won the National Book Award as well as the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes).

Whether Kennan deserves to be seen as one of the greatest writers of his era, or as Congdon claims the “greatest American of the century now ended, is a question I am not prepared to answer.  But I can say without hesitation that he is a figure that deserves to be more widely known and for more than just the term containment.

Luckily, Congdon has provided the perfect introduction for anyone seeking to know more about this important, and yet poorly understood, man.  But really, anyone who is interested in the art of writing or the intellectual history of the 20^th century would enjoy this slim elegant portrait.

I will be honest.  I am an Olen Steinhauer fan. Have been since I picked up his first book, The Bridge of Sighs, some time ago (and started reading his blog as well).  His crime series set in an unnamed Eastern European country during the Cold War was in my sweet spot as a former grad student with a focus on the Cold War: great writing, interesting characters, an espionage/crime thriller with the Iron Curtain as a backdrop, what’s not to like?

But Steinhauer has put that series to bed and has started a new direction or at least a new series with The Tourist.

Here is the plot as outlined by the publisher:

Milo Weaver used to be a “tourist” for the CIA – an undercover agent with no home, no identity – but he’s since retired from the field to become a middle-level manager at the CIA’s New York headquarters. He’s acquired a wife, a daughter, and a brownstone in Brooklyn, and he’s tried to leave his old life of secrets and lies behind. However, when the arrest of a long-sought-after assassin sets off an investigation into one of Milo’s oldest colleagues and exposes new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who’s holding the strings once and for all.

This book carried risk and reward. New is exciting but what happens when the author leaves a much loved series behind and starts a new project? Sure, it is still what I like to call a literary thriller, but what if Steinhauer stumbled on his first stand alone?  Made me a little nervous, I will admit.

Another element of pressure, and an opportunity to stumble, was provided by the pre-publication publicity – which has been known to trip me up in the past.  The publicity  put Steinhauer in the pantheon of great spy thriller writers like Le Carre, Deighton, Graham Green, etc. Not an easy label to live up to.

Well, as I noted earlier, I am happy to report that Steinhauer didn’t stumble but merely brought his talents to a different task. I am in no position to label him the next Le Carre etc. but he certainly has tapped into the same vein and talents that kept me reading these type of authors.

The Tourist is a great and thought provoking read for anyone who enjoys the thriller aspects of the espionage genre but prefers better – and more philosophical – writing than your average airport pick up.

More below.

What makes Steinhauer different from so many writers of international thrillers is his ability to write a suspenseful espionage plot and yet still have elements of the more literary aspect of novels.  The writing is tight and even graceful at times.  The characters are not cardboard cutouts and Steinhauer delves into their psychological make up and personality for more than just plot plausibility.

Steinhauer also has that ability to create a wider lens; make you see the world through his – and his character’s – eyes.  This was obviously the case in his creation of the fictional Eastern European country in his previous series, but it is also the case here.  He creates this concept of the Tourist’s and builds a whole department around them.  As is always the case with thrillers, the details are not always completly plausible but the world of Milo Weaver feels all to real.

The style and structure of the story match the philosophical questions and themes that lay below the surface.  The reader both enjoys the story and is made uncomfortable by it.

The result is a depth and a richness that, as I said, is just not there in so many other examples of this genre.  Not to pick on Alex Berenseon, but he writes like a reporter not a writer; and there is a difference.

So what is The Tourist about?  Well, nothing less than the nature of truth and how we come to it.  OK, maybe that is an exageration, but it is certainly about lies and (self) deception.

Janet Maslin’s NYT review points out one of the ideas the novel turns on:

Mr. Steinhauer’s book also operates on the principle that this story’s secrets can be coaxed forth only indirectly “because it’s a known fact that no decent intelligence operative believes anything he’s told.

In exploring spy tradecraft and the role of intelligence in the modern world Steinhauer ponders what this means.  How do spies – and spy agencies – get caught up in their own paradigms and how can this lead to self-deception and treachery?

And that is one of the reasons Milo is such a great character.  In many ways he is the iconic world weary but almost supernatural spy.  He kills before he is killed and always seems one step ahead of his enemies.  Milo is a excellent Tourist; one of the best.

But despite his heroic acts he is contemplating suicide.  He manages to survive and find love, but treachery pulls him in again (or is it his inability to let things go or say no?) and just when he thinks he is using all of these skills to get the truth he finds he isn’t quite so clever. His friend Angela was a better spy and his actions lead – at least indirectly – to her death.  His boss and mentor Grainger also dies because Milo thinks he understands when he clearly doesn’t; when he acts on instinct with out evidence.  Weaver only survives when he hands over control to someone else; when he puts his faith in something other than his own knowledge and actions.  And this leads not to happily ever after but being a Tourist again in some fashion.

Trust is inexplicably mixed up in our search for truth.  In the absence of clear facts we need trust and authority to help us makes sense of the world.  But what happens when you can’t trust anyone?  When trust and loyalty are seen as luxuries you can’t afford; as something that can get you killed.

This is where Milo finds himself in his work and in his personal life.  Milo’s marriage begins to unravel because the life he has led is based on deception and this eats away at the trust in all his relationships.

I think Steinhauer is also saying something about the power of storytelling.  The ability to weave a convincing story is a powerful thing, but it is also the power to deceive.  What we might think of as reasoning can easily be rationalizing.  But no matter if used for evil or for good – or somewhere in between – storytelling is central to our lives.

Lastly, Steinhauer seems to be saying something about empire.  The Tourist is a cynical and stoic work.  (In fact, Milo seems to me like the quintessential stoic in the mold of Marcus Aurelius. He comes to see balance as the key to mental health, etc.)  The book depicts a world where greed and the need for power result in violence and manipulation on a grand scale and this has a corrosive effect on the people touched by it.

Steinhauer seems to hint that the desire to form an empire, or defend one, both causes American to act in the same way and in ways counter to her founding ideals.  In essence, we are Milo the husband and father and his Tourism is the part we hope doesn’t exists or don’t want to know about.  Or perhaps I am reading too much into things on this one.

Well, enough of my musings.  I hope the above makes clear why I am a fan of Steinhauer’s work and encourages you to pick up The Tourist.  It is a perfect example of why the blending of genre elements with a more literary style can be so rewarding.  You get the entertainment value of a thriller without sacrificing the writing quality or the wrestling with ideas.  There are always trade-offs in any attempt to blend genres and styles, but Steinhauer pulls it off more often than not in my opinion.

Here’s hoping readers of The Tourist will finally bring him the wider audience he deserves.