Monday, June 14, 2021
Foreign Language Immersion
Michael J. Lewis, "The cooling of John le Carré," The New Criterion 39.10 (June, 2021):
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Some time ago I chanced upon a German-language interview with le Carré from 1989, and I was impressed at how flawless and accent-free his German was. But I should not have been surprised. Only those who have grown up in an erratic and oppressive household know how liberating it is to immerse yourself completely in a foreign language and emerge out of it another person, an alternative version of yourself. That alternative version will exist along with the original, two halves of a divided self, each watching the other with wary amusement.
