Here’s what I sent him:
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22 January 2012
David Cornwell, aka John le Carré
℅ {his UK publisher}
Dear Mr. Cornwell:
I have received your kind reply of 4 Feb 2011, for which I thank you. “That mysterious Jerusalem above-the-ground,” indeed. I am sorry for the delay in responding — I had an injury last year which made me tardy on many fronts.
Unlike the speculation of my previous letter, I’d like this time to convey my unabashed appreciation of an aspect of your work I don’t feel gets enough recognition — the recordings you make reading your stories.
The first time I heard you was in Los Angeles, sometime in the early 1990s. A local radio station was playing what was obviously a dramatization, and it took a while for me to realize all the characters and the narrator were being read by solely one person — despite gender, class, nationality, or accent. I became intensely curious as to who was doing this extraordinary performance. I thought it likely it was some West End stage actor of whom I’d never heard, but was more than willing to look up other performances, and get them. Imagine my astonishment when the local radio announcer came on to say, “That was The Russia House by John le Carré, read to you by the author…”
I’ve been lucky enough to know a few writers. Not one comes close to your skill. Which seems a missed opportunity, to me. Here I will speculate: I imagine your characters’ voices are so clear to you that I would think you inhabit their world in a way few writers do.
Since that day, I always hunt down your recordings as each book comes out. I know I’ll hear something of a stock cast, but then, I see it much like a radio company. The Major; the working-class fellow who tends to sound like Sid James to my ear; the more threatening than they might seem senior analyst (I’m thinking of Walter in The Russia House). I would joke to my friends that, since you knew you were going to be doing the recording, you deliberately put a character early in a novel to be a challenge: Madame Sophie, the francophone Egyptian woman in The Night Manager is the example I would cite to them. And damned if you didn’t get the voice right, challenge or not. I tell people to get the DVD set for the 1979 Tinker, Tailor if only to see you drop down into your uncanny rendition of Alec Guinness.
At which point it all comes down to A Perfect Spy, doesn’t it? “Magnus and his voices,” and entertaining Rick’s — or should I say Ronnie’s? — court.
I have no idea why you didn’t become an actor, Mr. Cornwell. But I’m glad to have been able to see these flashes of performance from you. Thank you.
Hoping this finds you well,
Hal O’Brien
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His reply reads:
Dear Hal O’Brien,
Thanks so much for that. I’m glad you enjoy my readings, + I enjoy doing them. I’ve always loved ‘voicing’ my characters, as the film people say: actually, voices are characters, + vice versa. And we Brits are branded on the tongue, as we say. I have no music, so far as I know, but since infancy, I’ve had the ear for voices, + continue to thrill to them. Thanks again for writing –
Best
David Cornwell
