Riddle 6 - Drama and action

RichardAbbott

There is almost no violence or fighting in the book (contra the 1979 film which introduced a couple of combat scenes, presumably to meet more recent expectations). The conflict is verbal and by way of plans and intentions rather than hand-to-hand. Did you find this credible? Interesting? Appropriate for the characters or the era?

BarnerCobblewood

I think the dramatic conflict in the book is about the narrator's opinion of the society he is / was a member of, and how it selects those in positions of power. So very similar to contemporary times.

NeilNjae

I don't mind that there's no fighting, but the book lacked immediate tension and stakes for most of it. Even the tensest scene, Carruthers eavesdropping on the conference, didn't have much risk of discovery or close scrapes. Similarly, the duel of wits didn't have a great deal of back-and-forth, as the Germans weren't that aware of the English were investigating them.

@BarnerCobblewood said:
I think the dramatic conflict in the book is about the narrator's opinion of the society he is / was a member of, and how it selects those in positions of power. So very similar to contemporary times.

I didn't get that at all from the book. I don't think anyone's position of privilege was at stake. Could you please expand?

BarnerCobblewood

What i remember is that at the beginning Carruthers is very disdainful of Davies, while also being ticked off about missing the social season, and some time with a lady. He is then unprepared for the vacation he actually goes on, having misread what the situation he was entering was - wrong clothes etc. As the book progresses he eventually plays hookey from work, and has doubts about the intelligence and worthiness of the society that he wanted to be a member of. Eventually he saves it but is no longer, and never truly will be, a member of the social set he aspired to maintain.

RichardAbbott

@BarnerCobblewood said:
Eventually [Carruthers] saves [British society] but is no longer, and never truly will be, a member of the social set he aspired to maintain.

Which is not unlike how things panned out for the author over the next decade or so

Apocryphal

I do agree there was verbal conflict, and this also was more intense in the film than the book - maybe because the action was more condensed in the book. But I thought the movie ramped up the tension quite effectively, especially at the beginning when Caruthers gets off the train, confused by Davies reception of him, and lack of forthcoming about what’s going on.

But most of the tension was in the sussing out of information, and the resistance to being sussed in tern by the other side, between the German side and English side. Neither side wanted to tip their hand, so things were cordial on the surface - but the undertones, oh the undertones.

NeilNjae

@BarnerCobblewood said:
Eventually he saves it but is no longer, and never truly will be, a member of the social set he aspired to maintain.

Thanks for explanation. I agree with most of your analysis of Carruthers's change in the book. But I don't see much in the book that supports your final assertion, that he is forever an outsider. The frame story for the novel has an editor carefully anonymising the names and dates in the memoir in order to preserve the dignity of those involved.

Maybe Carruthers is a little less naive than he was before, but that could just be taken as his general coming-of-age across the book.

BarnerCobblewood

@NeilNjae Fair point. Perhaps he had simply misunderstood his social set as he had misunderstood the vacation request, and came to a better understanding of what it was. A kind of YA novel, even though everyone is a bit older than now.

But I still think the story is one of an independent individual who transcends his society to protect it, and somehow becomes better than it, purified of its faults.

Thus for me it is obviously fantasy, because 1) There is no individual who is independent, and 2) We lack the ability to stand outside our society, because that would require us to stand outside our self and, as everybody knows, no one can be bigger than them self, even if they contain multitudes.

clash_bowley

I'm with Apocryphal here. The undertones were so fascinating! I thought the author did an amazing job with the feel of those conversations...

kcaryths

I felt like the biggest tension was whether Carruthers would be fired for missing too much work when he got home.

Apocryphal

😂

RichardAbbott

@kcaryths said:
I felt like the biggest tension was whether Carruthers would be fired for missing too much work when he got home.

Yes, employment was kind of lackadaisical back then regarding leave applications... though to be fair to his employer it didn't sound as though he was terrifically busy when he was there so maybe he wouldn't be missed too much...

BarnerCobblewood

@kcaryths yes when we compare how these issues were dealt with in the book, and how conflicts among states are dealt with now, we can really see how things have changed in the last 100, 150 years.

kcaryths

What would an equivalent book look like today? Someone spends all day tracing cryptocurrency transactions to try and figure out which politician is being paid off by which foreign state?

NeilNjae

@kcaryths said:
What would an equivalent book look like today? Someone spends all day tracing cryptocurrency transactions to try and figure out which politician is being paid off by which foreign state?

I've recently been watching The Avengers, the 1960s "espionage" caper TV series. Some of those plots seem to be updated equivalents of the plot in this book. Small scale, strange weirdness that may have huge implications.

clash_bowley

@NeilNjae said:
I've recently been watching The Avengers, the 1960s "espionage" caper TV series. Some of those plots seem to be updated equivalents of the plot in this book. Small scale, strange weirdness that may have huge implications.

I watched it since I was a child in the sixties. The Avengers was formative for me. Not only was Emma Peel my first crush, the show just changed the way my brain worked. I found it brilliant and fascinating.

RichardAbbott

I used to love it too, and was hugely disappointed with the 1998 film attempt. It's an interesting connection to this book which I hadn't thought of.