Len Deighton (aged 96 as of this post) is a retired British author. He wrote 28 spy fiction novels, and 11 nonfiction books mostly about cooking and military history.
I've been an espionage fiction buff since the mid 1980s when I first discovered Frederick Forsyth. This month I've been reading through Deighton's spy novels and enjoying them. He has a knack for conceiving multi-layered spy games which ultimately surprise both the characters and the reader.
One consistent theme I've noticed – and is starting to bother me – is so many characters are unfaithful to their spouse. I'm reading a 9-book series right now centered around a spy named Bernard Sampson. Sampson is faithful. But so many of the people around him are regularly sleeping around behind their spouse's backs.
I was prompted to write this post when one of the heroes of the book starts an affair, and the author writes [redacted to avoid major spoilers]:
“This illicit relationship had transformed FEMALE-CHARACTER. It had thrown a bombshell into the routine of her married life. Being with MALE-NAME was exciting, and he made her feel glamorous and desirable in a way that HUSBAND had never been able to do. Sex had come to play an important part in it but it was something even more fundamental than that. She couldn't explain it. All she knew was that the pressure upon her in her working life would have been unendurable without the prospect of seeing him if only for a brief moment. Just to hear his voice on the telephone was both disturbing and invigorating. She was now understanding something she'd never known, the kind of teenage love she'd only heard other girls talk about, the kind they sang about in pop tunes she couldn't stand. Of course she felt guilty about deceiving HUSBAND, but she needed MALE-NAME. Sometimes she thought she might be able to eliminate some of the guilt that plagued her if they could continue their friendship on a different, platonic, basis. But as soon as she was with him any such resolve quickly faded.”
For me this affair was morally a bridge too far.
When I was 7, my father left our family. It turns out he had been cheating on my mother (and our family, really) for years, sticking his dick anywhere he could put it. He left to go start a new life with the woman who would become his second wife. (She should have understood better. Later he cheated on her with her best friend, divorced her, and married the best friend.)
I remember being a young boy and comforting my mom as she cried at random times. She had married him when she was young, had thrown her whole self into the marriage, and had no idea what was happening. So when he left, she was in shock and grief.
And I remember quite strongly promising myself that I would wait to marry until I found the right wife, and then forever would I be faithful to her and our family.
I'm 51 now, and that is how my life really happened. I work hard to be a good person; a good husband, father, employee, son. And there is nothing more important to me than loving and supporting and being completely committed to my wife and daughter.
And now I'm wondering: why has Deighton written in all this infidelity? This infidelity that his characters wear quite proudly (or quite necessarily, as described for the female character above).
His spy books were primarily written in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Is it a function of the time? The Woodstock generation?
Is this him? Wikipedia tells us Deighton was married in 1960, but divorced in 1976 "having not lived together for over five years".
Am I just naive about how common marital infidelity is, colored by my asshole father and how his cheating shaped who I am as a man?
I like Deighton's storytelling. I've read thousands of spy novels and I rank him quite high in skill and the enjoyment I get from reading his stories. But the cheating is bothering me a lot; so much so I'm posting here.
Len Deighton on Wikipedia
Len Deighton's Books in Order
by Garp74
9 Comments
>Being with MALE-NAME was exciting, and he made her feel glamorous and desirable in a way that HUSBAND had never been able to do.
Marital infidelity is rampant in all fiction, especially this particular form. A great bulk of the canon of secular western literature has been devoted to exalting and excusing it: the Canterbury Tales, the Decameron, Moliere, Stendhal, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina. In the eyes of many of the West’s great authors, a husband is always a pathetic failure and a “lover” is always superior. Just don’t think too much about the dehumanization of deeming some people deserving of all manner of deception and humiliation because they’re “boring” or whatever!
You’re reading books about spies, and your major moral issue is marital infidelity?
He wrote the Ipcreas files, etc. I don’t like his style. I Much prefer Adam Hall’s quiller series.
I read those books and Bernie is the only character I ever had something close to hero worship for. When I read about Fiona cheating on him I threw the book across my living room, might have kicked it a few times and defo left it a week before resuming. A truly fantastic series of books.
i don’t know about how common the act itself is, but i think it’s so common in media because it’s a strong fantasy (escapism, power, the forbidden) and a great source of conflict in a narrative, not because it’s inherent to the human experience or anything.
A quick Google search suggests extramarital sex rates are as high or higher now. Source: a survey done in the last decade by the Institute for Family Studies.
My guess would be that it was more common back then, since getting a divorce came with a lot of stigma. But somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of the population[have at least one affair during their lifetime.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery) In other words, there are lots of people who sleep around.
I’m not familiar with this author or their work but some industries seem to have a culture that encourages cheating. It wouldn’t surprise me if espionage were one of those fields, in fact it’d surprise me if it weren’t. Spies have always used sex to help them gain access to social groups or information.
It could be that, or it could be that Deighton is a cheater, a victim of cheating, or has witnessed cheating though that isn’t necessarily true. Spies and powerful people being prone to cheating seems true to character to me but it could also simply be a plot device or characterization method he finds useful. All authors have some patterns of thought revealed in their work
It’s because Hollywood and corporations dislike the stable nuclear family and would rather both parents focus on work instead of home