Preface

Negative Evidence of Scholarly Production

Man, they just don’t get it.—Johnny Cash (Live at San Quentin)

There is a scene in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) where the harpooner Queequeg nearly has his hand bitten off by a dead shark hauled onto the Pequod. “Queequeg no care what god made him shark … wedder Feejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one damn Injin.”¹ The self-conscious irony of a Southern Pacific cannibal calling a deity a damn Injin underscores Melville’s contention that any god who would create a monster like the shark must be undeniably savage, a point of view scarcely out of place in a story fixated with the mystery of man’s deathbound plight.² When Melville began writing Moby-Dick in early 1850, however, it was nothing more than another unpretentious sea adventure in the same vein as four of his first five novels.³ It was not until September of that year, after reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1846 short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, followed by several days visiting Hawthorne, that Melville changed Moby-Dick from a whaling adventure to a work of literature.

But what if Melville had not changed Moby-Dick? How would he have written the shark scene with Queequeg?

There is no way to know for sure, but in the words of D.H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley’s Lover, “The Rocking-Horse Winner”), Melville was “rather a tiresome New Englander of the ethical mystical-transcendentalist sort … the solemn ass even in humour,”⁴ so it seems probable that the scene would have been more journalistic. In any case, in most adventure stories a shark is not an ironic symbol. It is a test or challenge that a hero must circumvent or conquer to reach a reward, in this case finding and cutting whales. If a hero wants those whales then he will have to come and get them, but in adventure stories rewards never come without some kind of trial. Here be dragons, but if the hero conquers the threat of the sharks and reaches the reward then he and the members of his society will be better off for it.

Sometimes only a thin line separates literature from popular or light fiction. Sometimes the difference only comes down to intent and execution. Literature, such as Moby-Dick, is like a Romanesque cathedral, while popular fiction is like a prairie church. A considerable amount of time, skill and coordination is required to build a cathedral, but the result can be an impressive creation infused with influences from artisans, down through the centuries, to impress a certain reaction in visitors. Prairie churches are simpler by purpose and design, but you had better know which end of a hammer to hold if you want to create something that not only functions as a church but can stand up to sun, wind, rain, snow, hail and the occasional twister. In comparison, literature, such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952) and Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), stir the senses by provoking pleasant or unpleasant reactions and contemplations through characters, plots and settings hardy enough to bear the burden of representing ideas and ideals, whereas popular fiction delights and amuses,⁵ simply and elegantly reinvigorating the spirit by bringing “adventure to drab classrooms, where chalk scraped slowly on blackboards, and to factories untouched by the sun.”⁶

Neither is superior. Both serve important purposes.

That said, popular fiction tends to be what its name implies, popular, but many critics rarely consider sales success when deciding what to review. These critics moon over the most obscure literature if it “shivers with that ecstasy of multi-level interpersonal interactions and awareness shifts from one mode of desperation to the next,”⁷ but shy away from some of the most well-liked fiction with the public.⁸ A good example of this is Alistair MacLean (1922–1987), a bestselling author for over 30 years and one of the most popular suspense-adventure writers of his generation.⁹ MacLean’s books, like The Guns of Navarone (1957), Ice Station Zebra (1963) and Where Eagles Dare (1967), were generally snubbed by critics during his lifetime, and today much the same can be said about Clive Cussler, a best-selling author for nearly 40 years, one of his generation’s most popular suspense-adventure writers¹⁰ and (doing MacLean one better) creator of one of the best-loved series heroes¹¹ of the past 50 years, Dirk Pitt, special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a federal bureau that oversees marine conservation as well as the salvage and preservation of historical maritime vessels.

Pitt updates the globetrotting post-war adventure hero that was popular for most of the 20th century,¹² a reinvention that struck a chord with millions of readers and codified one of the most popular heroic archetypes from the waning years of the Cold War. The Pitt archetype hero is self-reliant, sometimes self-effacing but always self-sacrificing, usually in the military or a veteran employed (or formerly employed) by the government. This hero is educated, intuitive, or both, a realist and sometimes a cynic, genial but dangerous when threatened,¹³ witty or wisecracking, patriotic to his country, as honorable as a Boy Scout by nature yet willing to break a rule if necessary; there is also a dash of Peter Pan in him. Several of these elements can be found in many of the most popular adventure series heroes that came after Pitt, including Jon Sable (1983), Jack Ryan (1984), Angus MacGyver (1985), John McClane (1988), Colonel Jonathan “Jack” O’Neill (1997), Leroy Jethro Gibbs (2003), Benjamin Franklin Gates (2004) and Captain Jack Harkness (2005).

To be fair, Cussler and Pitt have not been completely ignored by critics. For instance, archivist Arlene Schmuland explains in her 1997 article, “The Archival Image in Fiction: An Analysis and Annotated Bibliography,” how Cussler and other best-selling authors “play a role in popularizing and perpetuating images of certain professions.”¹⁴ Along these same lines, an article published in 1999, “Fuzzy Lines: Using the Best-Selling Novel to Illustrate the Blurring Boundaries of ‘Public’” by political science professors Nolan J. Argyle and Gerald A. Merwin, argues that Pitt’s role as an adventure hero who works for the government contributes to an increasingly risky blurring of the general public’s perception about the duties of the public and private sectors.¹⁵ (Argyle and Merwin’s article is examined in Chapter 5.) Yet another 1997 article, “Wildmen, Warriors, and Lovers: Reaching Boys through Archetypal Literature” by Professor William G. Brozo and Ronald V. Schmelzer, champions boys reading “classic stories and current young adult literature” with positive male archetypes such as Pitt to help them “develop a realistic idea of what it means to be a man” and “help boys appreciate honored character traits of males while they learn how authentic adult men and adolescent boys deal with themselves, other males and females, and difficult ethical and physical situations.”¹⁶ Interestingly, reviews like these that focus on the cultural effects of Cussler’s novels tend to be courteous if not always positive in their assessments, but the few literary critical reviews there have been of Cussler’s novels tend to be primarily negative.

Some good examples of this can be found in Mark Gallagher’s Action Figures: Men, Action Films, and Contemporary Adventure Narratives (2006). Gallagher, a lecturer on film and television studies at the University of Nottingham, devotes a chapter to the “Airport Fiction” of Cussler and Tom Clancy (Hunt for Red October, Rainbow Six), which he claims “preserve constructions of heroic, idealized masculinity” and redeem “archaic notions of loyalty and duty.” (Apparently Gallagher did not read Brozo and Schmelzer’s article.) Gallagher also claims the largest audience for Cussler and Clancy’s bestsellers is “white, middle-aged, professional men” for whom the authors created “the recurring figure of the exceptional woman” who “functions as the ideal ‘man’s woman’” by divesting herself “of conventionally feminine traits.” (Cussler claims 50 percent of his readers are women¹⁷ and confesses to taking pride in creating classy heroines who are “never harsh, stupid bimbos. They’ve all made it in the world and carry their own weight.”¹⁸) Gallagher specifically brands Cussler’s adventures as “a playground of protracted adolescence,” a Neverland where, among other things, “male protagonists spend active and leisure time manipulating vehicles,” such as “classic automobiles,” and where Cussler can inject himself as a character, which Gallagher suggests may attest to Cussler’s “own inflated self-regard.”¹⁹ (More about that below.)

Not all critics are as tactful as Gallagher.

When Robert McKee, one of America’s most successful screenwriting instructors, was asked to give his critical assessment of Cussler’s Sahara (1992), during a civil trial involving the 2005 film adaptation of the novel, he testified, “I cannot overstate how terrible the writing is.… It is flawed in every way writing can be flawed.” When told the novel was a huge commercial success McKee was unimpressed. “Bad writing often makes a lot of money.”²⁰

Cussler’s fans do not fret that Gallagher thinks Cussler’s novels are “adolescent fantasies.”²¹ They know Cussler’s adventures are “elementary tales … where the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of possibility,”²² but who are they hurting by enjoying recurring travel-guide thrills, cliffhangers, narrow escapes, and last-second rescues mixed in with nautical settings, evil conspiracies and search for lost treasure? And as for Cussler’s “literal insertion of himself into his own fictional world,”²³ how is it worse than Simon Templar being aware that he is a character in Leslie Charteris’s Saint novels? To Cussler’s fans, it is too bad that Gallagher, McKee and critics like them cannot or refuse to see that Cussler is having fun and inviting us to join him. McKee complains that in Sahara something “unbelievable [is] happening every two minutes,”²⁴ never appreciating that is the point. In the words of film director Alfred Hitchcock, “Logic is dull.”²⁵ The Master of Suspense also understood how much harder it is to create a successful commercial story than it is to make a private statement,²⁶ as did the grandmaster hardboiled writer Mickey Spillane (I, the Jury, Kiss Me Deadly), who tried to tell his critics, “You don’t read a book to get to the middle. You read it to get to the end.”²⁷

That said, anyone who has written as many successful books as Cussler deserves a balanced critical review no matter what Gallagher, McKee and, yes, even Cussler, might think. When I sent Cussler a letter about wanting to write this book he replied, “Why anyone would want to write a critical review of Dirk Pitt’s adventures is a mystery to me, but go ahead if you wish.”²⁸ This response seems to beg the question popular culture critic George N. Dove asks in Suspense in the Formula Story (1989): “How does one criticize (i.e., interpret) a popular story that relies heavily upon the suspense process? One quick answer is to dismiss it as popular and therefore trivial, or label it a potboiler, lacking depth and hence inappropriate to real criticism.” Dove disagrees. “The popular culture critic, however, will insist that the story must be interpreted because it is popular.”²⁹

In spite of Cussler’s reservations, he was kind enough to answer several research questions and even took the time to call me before sending his answers to say he was worried I was going to be disappointed. Cussler felt my questions were cerebral while he insists he is an instinctual writer. In a note attached to his answers, Cussler wrote, “I’m sorry I didn’t answer in more depth. I’m simpleminded at heart.”³⁰ Creative influences and literary techniques rarely, if ever, cross Cussler’s mind when he is writing, which seems to beg another question: “How can you write a critical review if an author never intentionally puts anything in his stories to critically review?” You can do it because, as a fiction writer, I know from experience that authors incorporate genre patterns and literary techniques into stories without being aware of it, an opinion shared by commentator and cultural historian Camille Paglia, professor at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and author of review books Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1998) and Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990). Paglia believes that an “artist is not nearly as aware of what he or she is doing as those who study an artist’s work”³¹ and cites Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” as proof. One of Paglia’s courses takes three days to examine the song’s complexities, yet Paglia is convinced the song “just poured out of [Dylan] … in ways that I think he himself would be amazed at, the structure of it, the themes, the organization.” Paglia argues, and I agree, that an artist’s efforts come from their unconscious mind when it is “working at a very high level of creative ferment,” and since artists “make art via a certain gift which is not necessarily verbal” it is the role of the critic and the commentator and the professor to “verbalize in a subordinate role to major artistic creation.”³² Bestselling author and former English teacher Stephen King (Salem’s Lot, “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” The Shining) says much the same thing in his nonfiction horror treatise Danse Macabre (1981) when he reviews Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (1955). Thesis after thesis continues to explore the popular perception that Finney’s novel is a warning against the loss of individuality, while a plethora of movie reviews continue to impute either anti–McCarthyism or anti–Communist messages in the fairly faithful 1957 film adaptation Invasion of the Body Snatchers. According to King, the film’s director, Don Siegel, claims the movie is about the Red Menace, so apparently Kevin McCarthy really is trying to warn us about more than pod people when he goes around shouting, “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!” As far as the novel is concerned, however, Finney insists in a 1979 letter to King, “The idea of writing a whole book in order to say that it’s not really a good thing for us all to be alike, and that individuality is a good thing, makes me laugh.” Sounding a little like Cussler in his note to me, Finney adds that The Body Snatchers “was just a story meant to entertain, with no more meaning than that,” however King believes that “Finney’s contention that The Body Snatchers is just a story is both right and wrong.” King explains:

My own belief about fiction, long and deeply held, is that story must be paramount over all other considerations in fiction; that story defines fiction, and that all other considerations—theme, mood, tone, symbol, style, even characterization—are expendable.… And yet I don’t think Finney would argue with the idea that story values are determined by the mind through which they are filtered, and that the mind of any writer is a product of his outer world and inner temper.³³

So even if a message or allegory in a story is unintentional, that does not negate exploring it and its relation to other elements in the story or the author’s body of work.

The aim of The Clive Cussler Adventures: A Critical Review is to take what I believe is an overdue, balanced, critical look at Cussler’s novels, particularly those featuring his best and most influential hero, Dirk Pitt. A review that is merited, in my opinion, and I believe Dove would agree, based upon their current success and popularity. In that regard, this review is concerned only about the present, not about the future, since only Time will tell if Cussler will join the elite pantheon of adventure writers like Alexandre Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rafael Sabatini, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ian Fleming, whose tales are still being read long after the writers have ceased writing and the world in which they lived has changed forever. Some might think Cussler’s success guarantees he will,³⁴ but in reality success impresses future generations of readers even less than it does contemporary literary critics, which is why many of yesterday’s most popular writers are forgotten today.³⁵ The fact is, classic adventure writers must prove their merits to every new generation or they, too, will be forgotten.

This review also takes the approach of French entomologist and author Jean-Henri Fabre (1823–1915) that critical as well as scholarly works should be written for general readers, an unpopular approach with some critics who believe this is negative evidence of scholarly production,³⁶ doubly so when the subject is a popular fiction writer who has never sought literary laurels. Cussler claims that all he wanted to do when he created Pitt was “to produce a little paperback series,”³⁷ but over the years his books have shown constant improvement in style and skill along with a willingness on Cussler’s part to attempt new things, hallmarks of talent and a dedication to workmanship that not only provide further merit to this review but stand as evidence that Cussler is a better writer than many of his critics, including himself, may want to admit.

So, with all that said, from this point on critics and general readers who admire cathedrals but refuse to appreciate prairie churches have only themselves to blame if they continue. Readers can decide for themselves whether or not Cussler intentionally put any of the various thematic preoccupations or plot elements explored in this review into his adventures, but one thing is for certain: here be dragons, but there are no naves.