Reading Dreck - Cussler & Clancy 5-2010

 I got to say my new home has an interesting collection of books. Lots of Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler.

I have read Cussler off and on for years. Like Jimmy Buffett, his real big hit was a long time ago and repeated endlessly ever since. For Cussler, that hit would be Raise the Titanic.

Cussler has paper thin characters, villains that would make Sax Rohmer or Ian Fleming blanch. He starts with a prologue - usually some secret history - and I read to see how he will connect the prologue with the main story. I admit once he makes the connection, the book is over for me.

However much Cussler loves his word processor and information drops, he loves other machines even more. His antique planes and cars, and the ships that might not all be antiques, receive a respectful adoration - if not more. His Dirk Pitt is not an ocean-going James Bond, but he does belong to the boy's own adventure club. I thought of Richard Hannay just now, even though it has been a long time since I read those books; not sure exactly why this character came to mind. Go figure out that one for yourself.

And I got to think that Cussler has a sense of humor when I find him injecting Clive Cussler into Valhalla Rising. He makes himself a deus aux machina. I recall him doing this in another novel without also recalling the novel's title.

Another touch of humor - I hope - was in an offhand comment about the Titanic having broke in half as it sunk. Hello? How then was there a Raise the Titanic? (And here I first felt the impingement of imprisonment. I know Wikipedia has the answer. I dearly, dearly miss Wikipedia.)

[Wikipedia does note this problem! Go here. sch 11/3/22.]

I am not sure what humor Tom Clancy has after reading The Bear and the Dragon. If there is any, it was in the Chapter tittles. At 1,137 pages in paperback, this is not a spy novel or a political thriller, but both and more. It came off as an alternate history (certainly not our world of 2000) working as a wish fulfillment for Clancy. As maybe three books instead of one, a mass of words needing an editor. Yet, I finished this instead of The Brothers Karamazov.

The heroes present no flaws, make no errors, and have all the humanity of cardboard. Out of all the characters in this huge novel, I can recall only two of interest, and both were Russians. Cussler's Pitt sweats like a human being, unlike anyone in Clancy's book. I cannot even say that Clancy caught my attention in any of his technology the way Cussler did with a Ford Trimotor airplane. I write this even though I think Clancy writes better a better narrative, has a better prose, than Cussler.

Harry Turtledove gets more credit from me for handling the multiple character/multiple plot style of novel. Clancy announced one major plot with the equivalent of the U.S.C. band on Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk." This Clancy was certainly a book in need of an editor. 

[And it was, of course, a bestseller. sch 11/3/22.]

So why did I read the whole thing? For the lights shone on our history! Here are the reasons for me saying this:

1. The attitude towards the Chinese in 2000 was fear and hostility. Bears to remember the Chinese shot down one of our planes in Bush's first term.
2. How we viewed the last Communist country - China - as plodding into economic failure instead of a bright future as the mortgagee of the United States.
3. That Russian had a future as a democracy and as an economic power. Instead, Russian democracy seems challenged, its economy gangster-ridden, and not very happy with the United States.
4. That Russia might have joined NATO. I remember thinking of this as a good idea during Bush's first term. Not looking so good now.
5. A competent CIA and NSA. I think all that got blown away on 9/11/2001. (Even though Ian Fleming in From Russia With Love poked at the CIA as not competent.)
6. That stockbrokers should be praised as industrious capitalists. How a stockbroker does this, becomes industrious by creating nothing of value, is not clear to me. Besides after the Wall Street bailout, it is hard to see the Wall Streeters as anything other than irresponsible frauds dependent on Uncle Sam to bail them out.

I can see reading more Cussler, but I have had enough Clancy.

sch