The Hunt
for Red October author, gone at 66.
by Stephen Green
Say what you will about Tom Clancy,
but the man knew how to tell a story. Of his self-written novels — leaving
aside the Clancy “branded” books and his current crop of co-authored works —
there was only one real misfire. Reading 2002′s Red Rabbit, you might
find yourself thinking, “I liked this better when it was called Day of the
Jackal.” Not bad for a former insurance salesman who had hoped to sell his
first novel, The Hunt for Red October, to a few hundred Navy officers —
until it got blurbed by President Reagan.
People talk about how Clancy made
high-tech weaponry understandable to the layman, but that wasn’t his ace — it
was his ability to keep countless story threads going, all over the globe,
without the reader ever getting lost or tangled up in them. Most people can’t
just drive to the corner store without swerving out of their lane a few times.
And when Clancy dug deep, as he did with 1993′s Without Remorse, he
could really affect you. He wrote that one after losing a childhood friend to
cancer, and I think Clancy used that experience to show he could do more than
simply quicken the reader’s pulse.
Clancy quit writing for years after
2003′s mostly-OK-but-not-great The Teeth of the Tiger. I don’t know
if he stopped because his last two books hadn’t been all that great, or — as
I’m starting to suspect — for health reasons. He did come back three years ago,
with a series of books co-written with different co-authors. Against All
Enemies (with Peter Telep) remains the only Clancy book I couldn’t get
through — and quickly. There was just something missing from that one, but the
others since 2010 have all read like “classic” Clancy of the ’80s and ’90s.
Just a few days ago I pre-ordered Command Authority, due out in December. I suppose it will be his last.
Clancy was never afraid, in print or
in person, to call out lefties. Appearing on Larry King to promote some novel
or other, King asked one stupidly ignorant question after another, and an
exasperated Clancy finally barked something like, “Read the damn book, Larry.”
I hope I’ve remembered the quote exactly. It was for sure my favorite moment of
the old Larry King show.
Is it really possible that Larry
King, who’s looked like day-old scrambled eggs for thirty years, outlived Tom
Clancy? Stranger things have happened, but this one I’m taking a little
personally.
Clancy will never be remembered as a
great writer — by the people officially in charge of determining such things.
But he had a way of twisting their tails, and for that he’ll never be forgiven.
But he certainly knew the secret to
good storytelling: Give the reader characters they can care about, put those
characters through hell — and then have them overcome. For that simple talent
for telling a good story, we gladly plunked down our hard-earned money for each
new and exciting novel.
By that measure, one Tom Clancy is
worth an entire Ivy League of English lit professors.
****
Stephen Green began blogging at VodkaPundit.com in early 2002, and has served as PJMedia's Denver editor
since 2008. He's one of the hosts on PJTV, and one-third of PJTV's Trifecta
team with Scott Ott and Bill Whittle. Steve lives with his wife and sons in the
hills and woods of Monument, Colorado, where he enjoys the occasional lovely
adult beverage.
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