So What If Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction?

Monday's Slate features Aleksandr Hemon's take on The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, a survey of spy fiction by former CIA official Frederick P. Hitz. NYTBR recently let Laura Miller take a crack at the same book, but where she focused on how real-life spies draw upon fiction for inspiration in crafting their inner and outer selves, Hemon zeroes in on Hitz's conclusion that "no fictional account adequately captures the remarkable variety of twists and turns that a genuine human spy goes through." Which, Hemon dryly notes, is "completely missing the point of fiction," especially espionage fiction, where the raison d'être is not about exterior plot twists, but interior moral dilemmas.