For authors like John Le Carre,
who continue to produce their best work well into their 80s
My first introduction to spy thrillers
came during my teenage years when I stumbled upon John Le Carre in my local
library. It was the title of the book that caught my eye: Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy. I was sufficiently intrigued to take the book home. And that
night, as I lay down to read myself to sleep as I usually did, I cracked it
open and delved into the story. The next thing I knew it was three in the
morning and my mother was knocking on my door to ask why my lights were still
on. George Smiley, I answered, it’s all his fault.
Since that initiation, I have lost count
of the number of nights I have lain awake reading John Le Carre until the wee
hours of the morning. But little did I suspect in those early days that Le
Carre would keep me entertained for quite so long; that he would still be
churning out novels and memoirs well into his 80s. And yet here he is, at the
venerable age of 88, with a new book out this month.
Agent Running In the Field is vintage Le
Carre, with the novelist at the height of his powers, now writing against the
backdrop of Brexit rather than the Cold war, but with the same vim and vigour.
As I galloped through the book, staying up till dawn because I just could not
put the damn thing down, I couldn’t help but marvel at the author’s mastery of
his medium, which has only got better with age.
I guess that is the difference between
great songwriters and great authors. Song writers hit their peak in their 20s
or, at most, their 30s. Rare is the songwriter who continues to produce great
songs after the age of 40. No, seriously, go on, try and think of one great
anthem that Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney have written in their later years.
Yes, that’s right, you can’t even come up with one.
But with great writers, the longer they
live, the more life experiences they accumulate, the better they get at their
craft. It’s not just Le Carre, though he is the most recent example. Think back
to that other master of suspenseful story-telling: Agatha Christie. She too
kept writing well into her old age, and her books just got better and better
with every decade. Sure, they were rooted solidly within a certain genre – a
murder takes place; there is a surfeit of suspects; there are plenty of red
herrings; and the least likely person is found to be guilty – but within those
narrow confines, they sparkled and shone with an effervescence that was Christie’s
alone, no matter how old she got.
Maybe it is something about murder
mysteries as a genre, but they seem to encourage longevity among its
practitioners. Take P.D. James, for instance. She only began writing her crime
thrillers when she was in her 40s. But once she started, it was as if she could
never stop. Her books kept coming till she was well into her 70s, with Adam
Dalgliesh ageing gently along with his creator. James’ last book, Death Comes
to Pemberley, a homage of sorts to Jane Austen, with James revisiting Elizabeth
Bennet and Darcy six years after their wedding, as they are caught up in a
mysterious death on their estate, was published just three years before she
died at the advanced age of 94.
But while it could be said that Death
Comes to Pemberley was far from James’ best work – with the murder mystery
being the weakest link in a book that attempted to recreate the world of Jane
Austen – there are other authors who have produced their best works in what
should be the twilight of their lives.
The first such name that comes to my mind
is Elizabeth Jane Howard. A brilliant writer, her professional work was always
overshadowed by her personal life, given that she was married to Kingsley Amis,
and stepmother to Martin Amis for a while. It was only after her divorce, when
she was freed from the shackles of enforced domesticity, did the writer in
Howard flower completely.
The result was a set of five books, a
family saga set in the aftermath of the Second World War, dubbed The Cazalet
Chronicles. This traced the lives of an extended clan of brothers and sisters,
cousins and siblings, governesses and maids, as they dealt with a
rapidly-changing world, in which the old certainties they swore by did not hold.
Howard allowed the sprawling cast of characters – all of them fully fleshed out
with dreams, desires and motivations of their own – story arcs that extended
over a ten year period, showing how completely family fortunes can change over
a single decade. If you haven’t read these books yet, you’re in for a treat
when you finally do.
All of this makes me wonder how things
would have turned out if Jane Austen hadn’t died at the age of 41. What if she
had grown into her 70s or even 80s; what if she had married and acquired a family,
or even a step-family; what if she had dealt with the indignities of ageing;
what if… How many more masterpieces like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and
Sensibility would she have produced if only she had been allowed the gift of
old age? Sadly, we will never know.
