Talk:Call for the Dead

Year in which the novel is set

The days of the week mentioned in the text of the novel indicate that it is set in 1961, the same year it was published. For example, in chapter I, Smiley is in a taxi "on the morning of Wednesday, 4 January". I know some might argue this constitutes OR because the year is never explicitly mentioned, but considering you need only look at a calendar [1] I think we are safe. (Combined with the mention in chapter 3 of a pistol manufactured in 1957.[2].) Mathew5000 (talk) 09:25, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Not that safe, I'm afraid. You're right about the calendar, but The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Chapter II, page 14 in my 1964 copy) says that "Until 1959 Mundt had been a minor functionary of the Abteilung, operating in London under the cover of the East German Steel Mission. He returned to Germany in a hurry after murdering two of his own agents to save his skin and was not heard of for more than a year." Which implies that the events of Call for the Dead took place in 1959. Given the contradiction I think it's better to avoid any mention of the year in this article. Opera hat (talk) 21:23, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, fair enough. Curious though; I wonder whether Le Carré later changed his mind on the year, or had always intended it to be 1959 but didn't consult a calendar when writing Call for the Dead. Mathew5000 (talk) 10:14, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Probably the former. I haven't read Call for the Dead in a while but (being that sort of person) I think I remember a lot of references to days of the week and days of the month which made me pretty certain when I was reading it that it was supposed to be set in 1961. Again, I haven't read them in a while, but I think references in the Quest for Karla trilogy compared against the earlier novels suggest that Peter Guillam managed to give George Smiley an Old Master drawing on his (Smiley's) wedding when he (Guillam) was still in school, and also based on these earlier novels Smiley would have to be in his late eighties at least in The Secret Pilgrim... I ramble on. Gist: the author probably "retconned" (in the parlance of our times) his own works as he saw fit. Opera hat (talk) 22:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The Wikipedia article on George Smiley refers to a "revised chronology" of his life, saying that originally (in Call for the Dead I suppose) he was born "around 1906" but in the "revised chronology" he was born in 1915. I think you're right about the days of the week in Call for the Dead, suggesting that Le Carré did retcon it later. I just finished reading Call for the Dead; I read The Secret Pilgrim a few years ago, and a few other of his novels but none of the Karla trilogy. One thing I noticed, I have two editions of Call for the Dead, one of them is the 1983 edition by Victor Gollancz Ltd, which is just rife with all kinds of typos, so I stopped reading that and acquired the 2010 Penguin edition (paperback) that also includes A Murder of Quality. Two things in particular are of interest. The Penguin edition corrected most of the typos I found. One thing I was wondering about is the title of chapter II, “We Never Closed”. This refers to the last paragraph of chapter II, where Maston has said Smiley can count on his support:

My God, thought Smiley; you really do work round the clock. A twenty-four hour cabaret, you are—“We Never Closed”. He walked out into the street.

Surely this ought to be either, “We Never Close” or “We're Never Closed”. It doesn't make sense to me as “We Never Closed”. However, that's the chapter title and surely it would not have a typo. Anyway I searched on Google Books and found that some editions changed it to “We Never Close” [3].

Anyway, all that is just a digression. I was going to mention a difference in these two editions relating to the calendar dates. In the Penguin edition, chapter XVII (Smiley's memo to Maston about the Fennan case), it says "They therefore met at the Sheridan Theatre, Hammersmith, on Tuesday, 14 February."[4] But that is inconsistent with chapter XIV where the performance is said to be "next Thursday" (not Tuesday) [5][6]. So I checked the 1983 Victor Gollancz edition, and in chapter XIV, instead of the (apparently incorrect) mention of "Tuesday, 14 February", it says "Thursday, 15th February" [7]. So notice that now the day of the week Thursday is consistent with earlier in the novel, but the date ought to be the 16th (not the 15th) of February to have consistency with the dates at the beginning of the novel such as "Monday, 2nd January" [8]. Probably none of this is of real significance. I would like to know, however, whether the mistakes in the 1983 Gollancz edition are carried over from the first edition (1961), or was the text freshly set for the 1983 edition. Mathew5000 (talk) 04:00, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

"We Never Closed" is correct. See the Windmill Theatre. Opera hat (talk) 11:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I hadn't been aware of that allusion but it makes sense now. Mathew5000 (talk) 06:39, 26 May 2013 (UTC)