Ah yes, sorry about that, enthusiasm, see. Mind you, the chapter where 'Palmer' learns this term is another episode that drags the narrative out, a day / night trip to a specialist's cottage in North Wales. The whole scene could have been done in London.
Unlike my readings of Len Deighton’s previous two ‘Harry Palmer’ novels, I declined to refer to the appendices while reading the narrative, although I did glance quickly at the page notes when given. This, I felt, might prevent me from being annoyed by them. It did. Instead I was annoyed by other things. My Harper’s copy from 2009 features a long introduction from Deighton explaining how Berlin became [in his words] ‘a second home’ after meeting the director Kurt Jung Alsen at the National Film Theatre in London following a showing of his film The Story of Private Pooley. Deighton subsequently went to visit Alsen in East Berlin. I mention this because Private Pooley was made in 1961, and Deighton does mention the Wall being put up, but given Funeral in Berlin was published in 1964, its events take place in late 1963 and Deighton had written and published two novels in this period, I query this ‘a second home’ reference. I can understand being obsessed with a city, especially if one is researching, but that description seems far too endearing. It doesn’t help matters that the action of the book only resides in Berlin for half its time. The rest of the book is spent in France, Prague and a dreary London, mostly in offices and on telephones and with hardly an ounce of interest from page-to-page.
Dreary describes it well. Funeral in Berlin is about as cold a yarn as a Cold War yard gets. It is frozen. Inexplicably dull, the novel isn’t helped by a plot so maze like you need a map to unravel it. Characters appear from the hedgerows as you turn corners, or pages, and incidents that cry out for some sort of excitement fizzle away to nothing. The climax takes place on derelict ground in London on Bonfire Night with ‘Palmer’ chucking fireworks about while his homosexual agitator tries to gun him down. The stuff in Berlin finished chapters before. The whole exercise is a tawdry experience. Ex-Nazi’s hide in plain sight in Germany and Spain, corrupt British officials pull invisible strings across the continent, Israeli secret service agents seek a super-dooper agricultural fertilizer [yes, really] and the Russians pull better strings than the British. The Americans dip their oar in the mustard in the form of Harvey Newbegin [not Leo as in the film Billion Dollar Brain, his role in this book is so insignificant despite pages and pages devoted to him, that the screen writers edited him out for the cinema version]. The best sections involved the old Bolshevik Colonel Stok, who at least felt real, read real and talked real. Everyone else seems to be acting like someone else and sounding like it, from Johnnie Vulkan’s crooked German to Samantha Steel’s deceptive Jew, to Hallum’s fortune seeker to ‘Harry Palmer’ himself, pulling the metaphorical wool over everyone’s eyes.
Deighton gives us all that detail we have already come to recognise as his forte: the rain rolling off Vulkan’s face onto his shoes, Hallum’s cats, Stok’s toes picking up coal-pokers, Alice chain-smoking, Dawlish’s weeds, Jean and her irrepressible haircuts. Deighton takes us away from his lead character occasionally to offer goblets of insight into the other main players, reverting to a third person narrative each time, but the brief respite from ‘Harry’s know-it-all dialogue and description doesn’t lighten the mood enough. Dawlish’s procrastinations and pontifications don’t help. A modicum of explanation might assist, but there isn’t any. Sometimes I felt as if ‘Harry Palmer’ was being deliberately obscure simply so he [by which I mean Len Deighton] could prove how obtuse the rest of the cast [by which I mean us] truly are; in his mind at any rate. The whole thing is as dense as a rock cake and quite as indigestible. Maybe I am missing the charm of a truly Cold War, but the novel felt curiously irrelevant, as if the plan and its execution and the people around it had no bearing on history or even on ‘Harry Palmer’ who remains as untouched by events as the rain soaked newspaper he spies on the street at the novel’s end.
Berlin – a new crisis? screams the headline. ‘Palmer’ barely registers the fact, he’s too busy catching up on dreary old pre-swinging London. I consider the film adaptation of Funeral in Berlin to be the least interesting of the Harry Palmer movies, certainly the 1960s trilogy, but goodness this book was hard work.
In a second introduction, illustrator Arnold Schwartzmann explains the creative process behind his montage cover. This was more interesting than the novel which follows. Still, at least the very excellent cover goes some way to generating the landscape of Deighton’s cloaked and crooked spy world.
The plot of the movie is vastly altered and the locations effectively condensed. The film IMO does what the book should be doing, creating a tense and believable Cold War environment. FIB '66 has its good moments, just not enough of them for me. I understand why people like it. Compared to the book, it is streets ahead.
Comments
Ah yes, sorry about that, enthusiasm, see. Mind you, the chapter where 'Palmer' learns this term is another episode that drags the narrative out, a day / night trip to a specialist's cottage in North Wales. The whole scene could have been done in London.
FUNERAL IN BERLIN (1964)
Unlike my readings of Len Deighton’s previous two ‘Harry Palmer’ novels, I declined to refer to the appendices while reading the narrative, although I did glance quickly at the page notes when given. This, I felt, might prevent me from being annoyed by them. It did. Instead I was annoyed by other things. My Harper’s copy from 2009 features a long introduction from Deighton explaining how Berlin became [in his words] ‘a second home’ after meeting the director Kurt Jung Alsen at the National Film Theatre in London following a showing of his film The Story of Private Pooley. Deighton subsequently went to visit Alsen in East Berlin. I mention this because Private Pooley was made in 1961, and Deighton does mention the Wall being put up, but given Funeral in Berlin was published in 1964, its events take place in late 1963 and Deighton had written and published two novels in this period, I query this ‘a second home’ reference. I can understand being obsessed with a city, especially if one is researching, but that description seems far too endearing. It doesn’t help matters that the action of the book only resides in Berlin for half its time. The rest of the book is spent in France, Prague and a dreary London, mostly in offices and on telephones and with hardly an ounce of interest from page-to-page.
Dreary describes it well. Funeral in Berlin is about as cold a yarn as a Cold War yard gets. It is frozen. Inexplicably dull, the novel isn’t helped by a plot so maze like you need a map to unravel it. Characters appear from the hedgerows as you turn corners, or pages, and incidents that cry out for some sort of excitement fizzle away to nothing. The climax takes place on derelict ground in London on Bonfire Night with ‘Palmer’ chucking fireworks about while his homosexual agitator tries to gun him down. The stuff in Berlin finished chapters before. The whole exercise is a tawdry experience. Ex-Nazi’s hide in plain sight in Germany and Spain, corrupt British officials pull invisible strings across the continent, Israeli secret service agents seek a super-dooper agricultural fertilizer [yes, really] and the Russians pull better strings than the British. The Americans dip their oar in the mustard in the form of Harvey Newbegin [not Leo as in the film Billion Dollar Brain, his role in this book is so insignificant despite pages and pages devoted to him, that the screen writers edited him out for the cinema version]. The best sections involved the old Bolshevik Colonel Stok, who at least felt real, read real and talked real. Everyone else seems to be acting like someone else and sounding like it, from Johnnie Vulkan’s crooked German to Samantha Steel’s deceptive Jew, to Hallum’s fortune seeker to ‘Harry Palmer’ himself, pulling the metaphorical wool over everyone’s eyes.
Deighton gives us all that detail we have already come to recognise as his forte: the rain rolling off Vulkan’s face onto his shoes, Hallum’s cats, Stok’s toes picking up coal-pokers, Alice chain-smoking, Dawlish’s weeds, Jean and her irrepressible haircuts. Deighton takes us away from his lead character occasionally to offer goblets of insight into the other main players, reverting to a third person narrative each time, but the brief respite from ‘Harry’s know-it-all dialogue and description doesn’t lighten the mood enough. Dawlish’s procrastinations and pontifications don’t help. A modicum of explanation might assist, but there isn’t any. Sometimes I felt as if ‘Harry Palmer’ was being deliberately obscure simply so he [by which I mean Len Deighton] could prove how obtuse the rest of the cast [by which I mean us] truly are; in his mind at any rate. The whole thing is as dense as a rock cake and quite as indigestible. Maybe I am missing the charm of a truly Cold War, but the novel felt curiously irrelevant, as if the plan and its execution and the people around it had no bearing on history or even on ‘Harry Palmer’ who remains as untouched by events as the rain soaked newspaper he spies on the street at the novel’s end.
Berlin – a new crisis? screams the headline. ‘Palmer’ barely registers the fact, he’s too busy catching up on dreary old pre-swinging London. I consider the film adaptation of Funeral in Berlin to be the least interesting of the Harry Palmer movies, certainly the 1960s trilogy, but goodness this book was hard work.
In a second introduction, illustrator Arnold Schwartzmann explains the creative process behind his montage cover. This was more interesting than the novel which follows. Still, at least the very excellent cover goes some way to generating the landscape of Deighton’s cloaked and crooked spy world.
Excellent review, well thought out.
The film is probably my favourite of the three. That version has a really satisfying plot I think.
The plot of the movie is vastly altered and the locations effectively condensed. The film IMO does what the book should be doing, creating a tense and believable Cold War environment. FIB '66 has its good moments, just not enough of them for me. I understand why people like it. Compared to the book, it is streets ahead.