Le Carre Squares His Circle : THE SECRET PILGRIM <i> By John le Carr</i> e <i> (Alfred A. Knopf: $21.95; 352 pp.) </i>

A knowledge of John le Carre’s previous fiction isn’t absolutely essential to the enjoyment of “The Secret Pilgrim,” but as the old lady remarked when it was suggested that a cup of chicken soup wasn’t going to help an already dead actor: “It couldn’t hurt!”

Were this a true novel, a writer as skilled as Le Carre certainly would have provided more detailed background information on the numerous itinerant spies and counterspies swirling through its pages. But this is really a collection of stories, loosely linked by a not altogether successful narrative device--a commencement address given by George Smiley to the graduating class of Sarratt, Britain’s school for spies.

As Smiley speaks about various aspects of the secret world, Ned--formerly of “The Russia House” but now the man whose students these are--links the great legend’s observations to one or another of the experiences that he himself has had, and thereby lies a tale, and another tale, and yet another, and another, and another and another.

We all know George Smiley, of course, if only from television (the book is dedicated to Alec Guinness) and I did remember from previous Le Carre novels most of the characters mentioned fleetingly in the first several pages: Peter Guillam, Bill Haydon, Ann Smiley, Toby Esterhase, and so on. More dimly recalled, however, were a multitude of other characters whom I suspected I was supposed to know if only I’d been paying closer attention. References to previous works abound, many of them obscure, many of them utterly meaningless unless the entire Le Carre oeuvre has been read.

The book’s chief flaw, then, is a presumption of foreknowledge, fine for frequent visitors to Spyland but inadequate for those of us who may frequently lose our place.

That having been said, let’s get to what is wonderful about this book, for wonders abound. The best news is that Le Carre is writing at the top of his form and still able to teach new tricks to old dogs. Examine, for example, the humor of the first but not quite shortest of the entries, a delightful tale about the visit of a Middle Eastern potentate and his wife to London, where Fat Boy and the Panda (as they are code-named) seem in imminent danger of assassination, an expectation that turns out to be quite mistaken, but I will not reveal how under pain of losing the sanctity of my nearest safe house.

Or consider, if you will, the story of Ben Arno Cavendish, Ned’s spy-school mate and very good friend over the years, who has mysteriously disappeared on a visit to Berlin under circumstances that appear highly suspect. Ned meets Smiley for the first time in this story, and we are treated to one spy’s (Ned’s) dissection of the interrogation techniques of another spy (Smiley) while simultaneously learning that Ben’s affection for his chum may have crossed the bounds of British propriety. That Ben’s defection and the loss of an entire network is caused not by disloyalty but instead by--but again, my lips must remain sealed.

I wish these stories had titles. I wish I could say there’s an entry called “Bella,” which is a gentle love story about a 22-year-old girl suspected of betraying the middle-aged sea-captain-spy with whom she lives. The scenes between her and Ned are romantic and sexy and disturbing in that she is a suspect who seems more and more likely to be the true culprit. The story, in fact, is so good that its bittersweet ending comes as a mild disappointment. No talk of “my last love . . . the right turning I never took” can disguise the fact that the story’s resolution hangs upon the activities of a male--from a previous novel we may not have read.

It comes as no surprise that Le Carre’s tone-perfect ear can re-create in English even the cadences and styles of people speaking in foreign tongues. Listen, for example, to the German girl Britta, a prisoner of the Israelis, talking to Ned in her native tongue, transcribed as English:

“ ‘Are you inadequate, Mr. Nobody? I think perhaps you are. In your occupation, that is normal. You should join us, Mr. Nobody. You should take lessons with us, and we shall convert you to our cause. Then you will be adequate.’ ”

Isn’t that German we’re reading?

Or hear two Chinese speaking their own language in yet another of the stories:

“ ‘She is number nineteen,’ said the Mama San, with a shrug. ‘Her house name is Amanda. Would you like her?’ ”

“ ‘But the farang, what is his name? What is his history?’ ”

“ ‘He is called Ham Sin. He speaks Thai with us and Khmer with the girl, but you must not put him in your magazine because he is an illegal.’ ”

“ ‘I can disguise him. I can make it all disguised.’ ”

Le Carre is a master of disguise. In a very short story that could have been called “The Cuff Links” if any of these stories had titles, Smiley is first written to, and next visited by a lower-class Englishman whose speech is faithfully reproduced as he inquires whether his now-deceased son was really a spy instead of the habitual criminal he seemed to be in the overt world. The son has told his father that proof of his loyal service can be obtained after his death by requesting the cuff links he was allowed to wear only at an annual, secret, formal gathering of spies-- patent nonsense to the experienced Smiley. What he learns in his investigation of the boy’s background, and how he later deals with the proud father and distressed mother, is the secret of this spare and beautiful story.

Secrets abound in this decent-sized volume.

It is not the massive tome that “The Honourable Schoolboy” was, and it is only a bit shorter than “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” But it seems shorter yet than either of these novels, and far less labyrinthine as well, perhaps because each story can be swallowed in a single gulp, or perhaps because the Le Carre style seems to be evolving backward toward what it was in “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold”--crisp, lucid, direct and clean. As in:

“A sudden shower of rain fell, with the handclap that London rain showers make in narrow streets.”

Or:

“I forget what month it was but I know it was autumn, both in my private life and in the prim cul-de-sac of steep brick houses. For I see a disc of white sun hanging behind the pollarded chestnut trees that had given the place its name, and I smell to this day the scent of bonfires and autumn air in my nostrils. . . .”

Nice stuff.

If “The Cuff Links” is by far the best of the shorter pieces in the book, then certainly “The Music Lover,” as it might have been called, is the best of the longer entries. The man who loves music is a Foreign Office cipher clerk who comes under suspicion when a letter to the Security Department denounces him as a possible Russian recruit. Our Ned does the necessary homework and then goes to visit him. What follows is a beautifully wrought one-act play in which we are privileged to witness Ned--and Le Carre--at their professional best, wresting from the tormented suspect a story that is compelling and sad and which, like all good stories, informs and illuminates the human condition.

One closes the book with a sense of loss for the good old days of spying, changed forever now that we have witnessed in our lifetimes such astonishing changes all over the world. The future spy will be a different sort, we are told, seeking a different kind of information. Let us sincerely hope that Le Carre will still be writing about him.

The spy is dead. Long live the spy.