Lots of spies and crypto and crime in my reading life right now – I’m reading The Code Book, by Simon Singh, which is a page-turner.  Meanwhile, my wife and I are catching up on Leverage, she’s watching Burn Notice in five-minute increments on her study breaks, and I’m about 60% of the way through Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  (I don’t tend to read more than one book at a time, but I’m paused on Tinker Tailor, not because it’s a slow book, but because if I don’t start finishing books and returning them to the library, the ninja doom librarians will come after me again).  All these different visions of spies, secrets, and crime are crashing in my head to odd effect.  I try to imagine what George Smiley, the competent, dangerous, but also sixty-something, overweight, cuckolded, and cautious spymaster from LeCarre’s novels, would say to Michael Westin, a super-operative who’s several shades more realistic than the graduates of the Bond & Bourne school of agentry, but still pretty fantastical.  I wonder what an actual operative would say to either.  Spies, doctors, writers, lawyers, cops, boxers, thieves, ‘hackers’ – stories provide interlocking images and models for people who participate in certain professions, that map onto the real world in odd ways.  It’s one thing to read Hagakure, another to watch The Seven Samurai, and yet another to watch Samurai Champloo.

The original quote, from the estimable Kate Beaton,about monastics and fan fiction: “You are not a very good monk.”  (A little far down, but everything on that page is golden – Ismbard Kingdom Brunel especially.)