I’VE BEEN READING A BIT of old Len Deighton recently. For the uninitiated, Harry Palmer is a very modern spy, a working-class London version of Bond, who alternates work for WOOC(P), a super-secret British spying outfit, with cooking and fine dining. They’re great novels, and they exist at this moment just at the point where datedness caramelises seamlessly into fascinating curio (well, except for Deighton’s/Palmer’s sexual politics, which deserve a nameless shallow grave somewhere off an unsealed road in the back country of the early 1960s).

The appeal of the novels was in the liberal use of bureaucrat-ese, acronyms and procedural detail to suggest insider knowledge of a sophisticated gourmet Cold War. Apparently, however, Deighton wrote forty years too early. MI6 are crawling the web for bombs and cupcakes:

…the choice of “The Best Cupcakes in America” as the text debris source is just too perfect: a simultaneous comment on the terrifying vapidity of online culture (the only thing missing is a cat or some Rick Astley lyrics) and the infantilising, self-indulgent, and individualistic overtones of the cupcake trend. Even if it isn’t a joke, it’s a pretty good joke.

« Quick Post: Rapture / Live Animal Exports »