Tom Clancy [was Re: Slate...]

[Sean Klein]

Greg Montalbano wrote:

> No, I do NOT find the reading "difficult".  What I find difficult is
> attempting to choke down the Tom Clancys & Jackie Collins' that people keep
> trying to force on me;  and when I spit these indigestible hunks of pap back
> up, I'm confronted with another of this country's endearing characteristics:
> reverse snobbery.  

I'm gonna get myself in trouble here but I gotta defend Tom Clancy --

Tom Clancy may not be a great writer but he is a great storyteller.  More than once I've pulled multi-hour reading sessions, ignoring wife, food, sleep, etc. just to get through the last three-hundred pages of a Clancy book.  He may not be remembered like Dickens or Pynchon, but there's lots of worse stuff out there (like the X-Files books I got for X-mas).

If people keep trying to get you to read stuff like Tom Clancy, at least try "Hunt for Red October."  If you're like me, you'll find yourself wanting to rewrite sentences as you read them but the book itself is great, as are the characters, and the suspense he creates in the submarine maneveurs.  Also, if you read that one book, you'll have something in common with much of the US population - great for cocktail parties - people who don't normally read like we do will probably have either read that book or seen the movie.

I've never read Jackie Collins so I'll have to stay silent on her work and legacy.