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A review by paul_cornelius
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
5.0
I see some reviews claim that The IPCRESS File is a "classic" of its genre, the spy thriller. I'm not so sure that I agree, simply because it is one of the best examples I have yet seen of a work that captures the essential flavor and atmosphere of its times, the very few years of the late 50s and very early 60s. Unlike a "classic," it seems only identifiable with its era. For if ever there was a "beatnik" spy novel, this is it. And it's a masterpiece of its form, with a subversive comic rhythm and challenge to authority hitherto unimaginable in polite establishment precincts of power. At least this is all true from the Americanization part of the equation adopted by Deighton, the jazz themes, the detached and humorous and sudden shifting of the narrative, and the "beat" of the wordplay. Oh, and, yes, the continual allusions to popular culture of the time (try asking a millennial about Steve Reeves). The fact is, it's so very easy to imagine someone in a coffee shop, wearing sandals and a turtleneck, along with a goatee, and a set of bongo drums in their lap, reading along about British spies on a South Pacific atoll watching for the test of an American neutron bomb.
Comedy on one end, then. But then there is the flip side to the cultural imprint, the far more thoroughly British one. A great deal of the humor and sadness of the novel goes hand in hand with exposing the inefficient, often doltish ways of the British elite, and the suspicion naturally directed towards someone of The IPCRESS Files' unnamed protagonist's background, from the ranks who came from a market town in Lancashire. There is more than an echo of the Angry Young Man in this novel. In fact, it sometimes seems as if Alan Sillitoe's Arthur Seaton had somehow graduated from the bicycle factory to Military Intelligence, bringing his mocking, individualistic attitude with him, always avowing, "Don't let the bastards grind you down."
So I guess that these two sides, the two cultural contexts, give the novel its final form, a work of tragicomedy. And there is nothing more difficult to pull off than tragicomedy. Deighton does it. The sort of funky anti-establishment humor of the American beat generation, especially with the word choices and the (almost) elliptical storytelling. And the drab sadness of some hidebound British traditions, which are their own worst enemy. The IPCRESS File is a snapshot of a brief moment in history, Bikini Atoll, Steve Reeves--Herculeeze, Burgess and Maclean, the Rosenbergs, and right when we were all about to be brainwashed.
Comedy on one end, then. But then there is the flip side to the cultural imprint, the far more thoroughly British one. A great deal of the humor and sadness of the novel goes hand in hand with exposing the inefficient, often doltish ways of the British elite, and the suspicion naturally directed towards someone of The IPCRESS Files' unnamed protagonist's background, from the ranks who came from a market town in Lancashire. There is more than an echo of the Angry Young Man in this novel. In fact, it sometimes seems as if Alan Sillitoe's Arthur Seaton had somehow graduated from the bicycle factory to Military Intelligence, bringing his mocking, individualistic attitude with him, always avowing, "Don't let the bastards grind you down."
So I guess that these two sides, the two cultural contexts, give the novel its final form, a work of tragicomedy. And there is nothing more difficult to pull off than tragicomedy. Deighton does it. The sort of funky anti-establishment humor of the American beat generation, especially with the word choices and the (almost) elliptical storytelling. And the drab sadness of some hidebound British traditions, which are their own worst enemy. The IPCRESS File is a snapshot of a brief moment in history, Bikini Atoll, Steve Reeves--Herculeeze, Burgess and Maclean, the Rosenbergs, and right when we were all about to be brainwashed.