Beschreibung:

John Le Carré
The Looking Glass War, revised typescript
professional typescript ("printed by Scripts Limited") produced for le Carré's literary agent ("c/o A.P. Watt and Son, Hastings House, 10, Norfolk Street, London, W.C.2"), 348 pages, WITH EXTENSIVE AUTOGRAPH REVISIONS AND CORRECTIONS to c.205 pages in red, green, and blue ink, including additional passages (ranging from a few words to full paragraphs), revisions, and corrections, also with at least one editorial correction for internal consistency (p.65, dated 26 January 1965), early 1965, bound with two split pins, original blue paper wrappers, one pin lacking head, fraying to wrappers
AN EXCEPTIONAL WORKING TYPESCRIPT FOR LE CARRE'S FOURTH NOVEL. This copy almost certainly contains the author's final revisions before the text was sent to the printer. The revisions mostly function to augment characterisation and emphasise the novel's dark ironic tone. Le Carré had been disturbed by the tendency of British readers to romanticise The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and wrote The Looking Glass War as a satire revealing the pointlessness and futility that had, by and large, been his own experience of MI6. These late revisions show le Carré evidently concerned to make this point even more strongly. When describing the death of a character at the end of chapter one, for example, which is a key moment in setting the plot in motion, Le Carré adds that it was "quite possible that the driver was unaware of what he had done" (p.20). Additional dialogue between a bickering married couple adds to the sense of callousness and futility of Secret Service work (p.87). Even Control, head of the Circus, has his personal flaws brought further into view with the addition of a brief exchange with Smiley in which he admits that he is loath to go home at the end of the evening ("...Its the people...they seem to get worse every day...", p.248). Some of Le Carré's revisions will themselves have required the further services of a copyeditor; for example he on several occasions he misnames his character Woodford as Woodruffe.
The current version of the text appears to post-date both of the working typescripts of the novel that are found in the Le Carré archive at the Bodleian.