[I can’t lie, I haven’t had time to read for pleasure during this academic year, so I don’t have a ton of new recs for this year’s Beach Reads series. So I wanted to revisit authors and books I’ve read on the beach over my life—and to ask for your own recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post we can all throw in the beach bag!]
On learning from
authors and books that (eventually) make us cringe.
He wasn’t the
first author I truly loved—that honor would go, if I have to settle on one, to Edward
Ormondroyd (whose book I shared
with my boys in a pivotal period in our lives). Nor was he the first in
whose library I read multiple works—Tolkien takes that crown, as I ploughed
through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the summer
before 6th grade (and have been very excitedly sharing them with my
boys this winter). But Tolkien’s books are all connected, and in fact he even
considered Lord of the Rings one long
novel (it was his
publisher who insisted that it be divided into a trilogy). And so I would
have to admit that the first non-children’s book or young adult author for whom
I read multiple unconnected books—who, that is, inspired me to check out
different offerings not because a series compelled me, but just because I
needed more—was none other than the dean of American military, espionage, and
political porn (I mean, thrillers), Tom
Clancy.
It’s easy, and
not entirely inaccurate, to claim that the Clancy beloved to the 11 year old
AmericanStudier was substantially different than the author he would become in
subsequent decades (and remain until his October 2013 death). I would certainly
argue that around the time of Debt
of Honor and Executive
Orders Clancy decided to make his right-wing politics much more central
to his books, and it’s no coincidence that this decidedly not right-wing reader
found those novels much less appealing; I made it through Rainbox
Six and then said “No más.” But honesty compels me to admit
that in looking back at the Clancy books I loved, a list headed by The
Hunt for Red October and Red
Storm Rising, I find them full of similarly objectionable adulation for
the military, contempt for the “bureaucrats” who try to limit it, xenophobia
(other than toward those foreigners who are also true soldiers, who are
wonderful in every culture), and more. They may have been better novels than
the later books, that is, but I still feel pretty guilty about how much
pleasure I got out of them.
Yet if I move
beyond that guilt, I think it’s fair to say that I can learn a good deal from
my youthful infatuation with the Clancy. Partly, of course, I can learn about
how talented, best-selling authors find their niche audiences and deliver the
goods—for Clancy, it’s fair to say that middle school boys (or men who haven’t
quite outgrown that phase) are a core such audience, and he gave us all the submarine
battles, tank warfare, and macho heroics we could handle. (In Red Storm, a meek weatherman finds his
inner macho warrior and wins a blonde Icelandic beauty.) But Clancy’s appeal
isn’t that simple—I’m sure there are lots of authors who write about similar
subjects and themes and yet would not have done it for me nearly as fully. He
also constructs perfect thriller plots, whether on a small scale (as in October) or the broadest (as in Storm); and the truth, even if we lit
snobs don’t like to admit it, is that the same can be said for many of the
great novels. Scarlet Letter? Absalom? Beloved? All thrillers in their own way, perfectly plotted to lead
us to their climactic revelations. I’m not saying Clancy is on par with those
folks—but they’re all writers, all novels, and all worth our analytical time.
Next Beach Read
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. You know
what to do—share Beach Read recs for the weekend post, please!
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