A. > Recent Status Updates

Finished “On the Cannibals.” Still breathtaking in its empathy, even if Montaigne does get a little too into the Noble Savage trope. I did enjoy his preoccupation with social justice this time around. Great last line.

Smiley meets with Prideaux. Smiley breaks Esterhase. The endgame is beginning.

End of Part II. The narrative has now triangulated around Jim Prideaux, and his doomed mission in Prague.

Just covered Smiley’s late-night rendition of his lone meeting with Karla in the 50s (further proof that nothing good ever happens in Delhi) and also the scene where he ~figures it out~, “it” being the connection between Operation Witchcraft and the mole.

Finished “On educating children”, the longest essay for a while. Montaigne prefers authenticity, plainspokenness, and action—in people who avoid wrongdoing because they don’t want to, not because they don’t know how. He also flexes his childhood mastery of Latin, so.

—“The taste of good and evil...”, a long standout rumination on Stoic themes of pain, death, poverty, and inner suffering and peace. Lovely digression on his own budgeting hassles. He’d love YNAB.

List of interesting characters in this book so far: Boris, Andy Barbour.

Finished Part I, more or less. Solid 3.25 so far. A distinct lack of tension.