Masks, Transformation, and Paradox by A. David Napier (review)

1 12Rocky Mountain Review The final chapter examines and rejects the notion that The Little Drummer Girl marks a significant change in the unifying vision that runs through all of Le Carre's earlier work. Smiley and his Secret Service have been replaced by Israeli agents and Palestinian terrorists, but Le Carre's world view has not changed: the romantic within him who wishes that all could be well with the individual and his society still does battle with the pessimist who sees the pervasiveness of decadence and bureaucracy as making that outcome very unlikely. Readers of Le Carré are likely to find most controversial Monaghan's theses that neither the character of George Smiley nor the Weltanschauung of Le Carré has really changed over Le Carre's career. Nevertheless, Monaghan demonstrates both contentions in quite convincing fashion. His analysis in chapter 4 of The Questfor Karla novels reveals increasing mastery of Conradian narrative techniques. But Le Carré uses these techniques to present to the reader a consistent George Smiley, one who is at once very human yet uncommonly persistent in seeking a reconciliation of his feeling and reflective selves. This persistence gives him mythopoeic stature in the eyes of those around him because unlike them he does not bow to the pressures that change and diminish. By conducting his readers from the earliest novels to a concluding analysis of The Little Drummer Girl, Monaghan also shows us the uniformity of outlook in the Le Carré oeuvre. What does grow over the course of Le Carre's career is not his understanding of the world, but rather the artistry with which that world view is conveyed to the reader. However, while Monaghan's study does much to validate John Le Carre's artistry and the consistency of his world view, I wish that somewhere the narrowness of that vision were scrutinized. I suspect there is more to man than is dreamed of in Le Carre's dichotomies. After all, Schiller's categorizing of naive and sentimental had an aesthetic frame of reference: it referred to types of poets, not to all mankind. On the other hand, that one is moved to ask such questions is a sign of how well Monaghan succeeds in getting Le Carre's work serious consideration. The third and fourth chapters of The Novels ofJohn Le Carré would by themselves repay the price of admission, and all the chapters are consistently readable. The book's sturdy binding and large print format are additional virtues. Finally, let me warn the already overburdened that David Monaghan has a talent for evocative analysis. By the time I had finished the chapter 3 review of Le Carre's relationship to the tradition of the British spy novel, Monaghan had incited me to read or reread at least a half dozen of the pre-Le Carré spy novels that he discussed. DARYL GRIDER Northern Montana College A. DAVID NAPIER. Masks, Transformation, and Paradox. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 282 p. A. David Napier, Dana Faculty Fellow in Art and Anthropology at Middlebury College where he specializes in South and Southeast Asian art, offers the following summary of this difficult yet intriguing book at its very end: "my study has centered on three major concerns: first, the role of visual appearances and the incarnation of deities lacking omniscience; second, the phenomenon of impersonation and the problems posed by the stage for defining notions of the person; and third, the consequences of ambivalence for the actual iconography of masks that embody forces Book Reviews113 both natural and supernatural. It has been my intention, in light of these considerations , to study the nature and meaning of masks and to suggest through specific examples how a simple metaphysical supposition, such as that of divine ambivalence, may result in attitudes that greatly affect our interpretation of the visible world, our perceptions of ourselves and others, our ability to accept Aristotle's remarkable thesis that what makes the world one will also be what makes a man" (223). This summary at once fails to do justice to the scope of data and argument in his work and exaggerates what he has actually accomplished. Napier, though by...