Two Days Called #14- They Promised There Would Be No Math

Day 14/20 - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carre 1963

It’s doubtful we ever had duck and cover drills when I was a kid, although the idea of instant obliteration by an atomic bomb was pretty much a given. Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 spy plane in May 1960 (I was 9); the Bay of Pigs Invasion was April 1961; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October 1962. From 1960 to 1962, troop numbers in Vietnam had gone from 900 to 11,000. I imagine I read the paperback of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold in 1965. 

Something bothered me about the nightly news death count from Vietnam, but I didn’t have enough knowledge to be able to understand what it was that bothered me. I knew extraordinarily little about espionage, but it seemed contradictory to think one’s own spies were heroes and one’s enemies were criminals. Again, I was astoundingly naïve. When I chose to read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, it was probably because it had been made into a movie (starring Richard Burton, 1965) and that I’d been a fan of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books. I’d read every one at that time, up to The Spy Who Loved Me, or perhaps even On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

But John le Carre’s spies are nothing like James Bond. They’re broken and human and sometimes they even question if what they’re doing is morally sound. In the process of following Alec Leamas, a British agent who is sent to East Germany, pretending to be a defector so he can spread misinformation and sow discord, I was horrified. At the time, I didn’t know this was the third in the George Smiley series and that Leamas was sent to (he thinks) compromise ex-Nazi and now head of the East German Secret Police, Hans-Dieter Mundt, someone Smiley and his partner had failed to capture in an earlier book.

It really doesn’t matter. And if you haven’t read the book, I won’t give away the end, or the twists. But this is the spy novel’s mother, like Day of the Jackal (Forsyth) or Our Man in Havana (Greene), if you consider The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad to be the genre’s daddy. Wonderfully written, dark and ominous, I recommend it.

Day 14/20 -- Hawaii James, James Michener -- 1965 

This was probably one of my first “big” books (after The Count of Monte Cristo, which I read just to spite a librarian – sorry Nancy!). And, I must confess, I read it after I saw the 1966 movie with Julie Andrews, Max Von Sydow, and Richard Harris.

This is the story of the early people from Bora Bora, who traveled to Hawaii and settled there, bringing a rich culture, and the Christian missionaries who came to impose their religion and culture on that people, ultimately killing many of them with alcohol and diseases they weren’t immune to, then taking their lands to become rich plantation owners. The dovetailed nicely with my growing distrust of the religion that had been imposed on me and Christianity in general. 

One subplot involves the son of the ruling family of Lahaina, Keoki Kanakoa, who asks that Yale Divinity School bring Christianity to Hawaii, understanding that he will soon be ordained as well and able to minister to his people. However, the 19th century missionaries are horrified by the Hawaiians’ seeming nakedness and immoral behavior, particularly that his mother and father are sister and brother, and that Keoki is expected to marry his sister. Ultimately, Keoki is informed by the self-righteous Abner Hale (von Sydow) that he will never be ordained because he is a heathen. Keoki later dies after contracting measles.

This seemed to encapsulate the imposition of Christianity and Western culture on indigenous peoples throughout history for me, with the West wanting the indigenous people to act like them, but never accepting that they are equal to them.

In the end, Hale’s wife, Jerusha (Julie Andrews) works herself to death and is buried in Hawaii. It is then that Hale begins to love the Hawaiians as equals, as his wife did, and ministers to them as would a true Christian.

The book is said to be mostly factual, as Michener researched all his books. The bits about Polynesian/Hawaiian history are based more on folklore, but then there isn’t anything in writing from those times. There’s something in the book (which is more detailed than the movie, of course) for everyone, from unrequited love to bits of history about the Hawaiian monarchy. Two characters, a fellow missionary, Dr, John Whipple, and Jerusha’s lost love, ship captain Rafer Hoxworth (Richard Harris) are central characters in the book and have only bit parts in the movie. A generation after the movie ends, the descendants of Hale, Whipple, Captain Janders (who captained the ship that brought the missionaries from New England to Hawaii), the Rev. Abraham Hewlett (who was kicked out of the church for marrying a Hawaiian woman), and Hoxworth are the commercial, social, and political elite of Hawaii. Abner’s oldest son, Micah Hale, leads the movement to have the United States annex Hawaii and serves as the first governor of the Territory of Hawaii. So, watch the movie to see Richard Harris try to sic sharks on Abner Hale, or to plead with Jerusha to come away with him or let him return her to her home in New England, but read the book for the illustrated (with words) history of Hawaii.


N.B. -- Jocelyne LaGarde, born in Tahiti, played the role of the “queen” of Lahaina, Malama Kanakoa. She was fluent in Tahitian and French, but never learned English. She had no acting experience and never acted again after Hawaii; an acting coach helped her with her dialogue in the movie. She is beautiful and charming and a power to behold as the Malama. She is also the first indigenous person to be nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor, which she didn’t win, but did the Golden Globe. She returned to life in Pateete and died in 1979. She was about 55.