I got home this morning after my tenth day on night shift (have I said I really hate night shift!) and made it in just before my beautiful wife (and got the best parking spot! ;<) ). As I was heading to the bedroom she gave me this bad news. RIP Tom.
Tom Clancy, Best-Selling Novelist of Military Thrillers, Dies at 66Tom Clancy, whose complex, adrenaline-fueled military novels spawned a new genre of thrillers and made him one of the world’s best-selling and best-known authors, died on Tuesday in a hospital in Baltimore. He was 66...
...Mr. Clancy’s books were successfully transformed into blockbuster Hollywood films, including “Patriot Games,” “The Hunt for Red October“ and “Clear and Present Danger.”
His next book, “Command Authority,” is planned for publication on Dec. 3.
Seventeen of his novels were No. 1 New York Times best sellers, including his most recent, “Threat Vector,” which was released in December 2012. More than 100 million copies of his books are in print...
...Mr. Clancy was an insurance salesman when he sold his first novel, “The Hunt for Red October,” to the Naval Institute Press for only $5,000.That publisher had never released a novel before, but the editors were taken with Mr. Clancy’s manuscript. They were concerned, however, that there were too many technical descriptions, so they asked him to make cuts. Mr. Clancy made revisions and cut at least 100 pages.
The book took off when President Ronald Reagan, who had received a copy, called it “my kind of yarn” and said that he couldn’t put it down.
After the book’s publication in 1985, Mr. Clancy was praised for his mastery of technical details about Soviet submarines and weaponry. Even high-ranking members of the military took notice of the book’s apparent inside knowledge.
In an interview in 1986, Mr. Clancy said, “When I met Navy Secretary John Lehman last year, the first thing he asked me about the book was, ‘Who the hell cleared it?’ “
David Shanks, a Penguin executive who worked with Mr. Clancy for decades, called him “a consummate author, creating the modern-day thriller, and one of the most visionary storytellers of our time.”
Born to a middle-class family in Baltimore on April 12, 1947, Mr. Clancy skipped over the usual children’s literature and became obsessed by naval history from a young age, reading journals and books whose intended audience was career military officers and engineering experts.
He absorbed details of submarine warfare, espionage, missile systems and covert plots between superpowers.
He attended Loyola College in Baltimore, where he majored in English, and graduated in 1969. While Mr. Clancy harbored ambitions to join the military, even joining the Army R.O.T.C., he was told that he was too nearsighted to qualify.
Mr. Clancy began working at a small insurance agency in rural Maryland that was founded by his wife’s grandfather.
After “The Hunt for Red October” was published, Mr. Clancy’s fame was fairly instant. Frequently posing for photographs in darkened aviator sunglasses, jeans and holding a cigarette, Mr. Clancy spoke of the laserlike focus required to succeed.
“I tell them you learn to write the same way you learn to play golf,” he said.
“You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired — it’s hard work.”
He followed “The Hunt for Red October” with “Red Storm Rising“ in 1986, “Patriot Games” in 1987, “The Cardinal of the Kremlin“ in 1988 and “Clear and Present Danger” in 1989.War Story: No s$%^, there I was. In the summer of 1988 I was a 23 year old Army Lieutenant about the leave for my first assignment in Korea. And like many a young man with a credit card I had charged too much and promised myself I would not use it again. Well I was walking in Lakeside Mall in Metairie LA when I just happened to look at Barnes and Noble and there it was, “The Cardinal of the Kremlin“ calling out "Buy me Mike!" Oh well, that was another promise out the window.
Well, I few to Korea the next day, I was in my new unit (1st Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (The Iron Brigade!) and I happened to have the book at my new desk. Within ten minutes I had the brigade master gunner asked to borrow it and five minutes later the brigade engineer and fire support officer asked. I got popular quick.
I handed the book SFC Peters at the close of business the next day and he killed it in one evening. That's how great it was.
...The critical reception to his novels was gushing from the start. Reviewing “Red Storm Rising” in The New York Times in 1986, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote that the book “far surpassed” Mr. Clancy’s debut novel.
“Red Storm Rising” is a “superpower thriller,” he wrote, “the verbal equivalent of a high-tech video game.” (Mr. Clancy would eventually venture into video games, which were easily adapted from his novels.)...I've often said this was his finest work and my favorite. In "Red Storm Rising” Mr Clancy went out of his grove. There was no Tom Clancy and he brought in dozens of new characters to life. I remember killing off that 700 page plus book in three days. Reading until the eyes were worn out, screaming "No More!" and still reading. This man knew how to write.
...Mr. Clancy is survived by his wife, Alexandra; their daughter, Alexis; and four children from a previous marriage to Wanda King: Michelle Bandy, Christine Blocksidge, Kathleen Clancy and Thomas Clancy III.
Deborah Grosvenor, the editor who acquired Mr. Clancy’s first novel, said she initially had a hard time persuading her boss at the Naval Institute Press, to read it, since Mr. Clancy was an unknown and the publisher had no experience with fiction.
“I said, ‘I think we have a potential best seller here, and if we don’t grab this thing, somebody else would,’ ” Ms. Grosvenor, who is now a literary agent, said in an interview. “But he had this innate storytelling ability, and his characters had this very witty dialogue. The gift of the Irish or whatever it was, the man could tell a story.”
Mr. Clancy was frequently accused of using classified information in his novels, a claim that amused him. While he spent time on military bases, visited the Pentagon and dined with high-level military officials, he insisted that he didn’t want to know any classified information.
“I hang my hat on getting as many things right as I can,” Mr. Clancy once said in an interview. “I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real — that’s the spooky part.”
When looking today on the news of Mr. Clancy's death I found this and it shows how much his novels entered the American mindset.
‘Like a Tom Clancy Novel’
Tom Clancy, who died on Tuesday, was so popular — 17 of his novels were No. 1 New York Times best sellers—that his name meant something even to people who had never read a word of his work, a rare achievement for a contemporary writer. His name was a byword signifying spies, military equipment and covert plots against the American government.
Which is probably why so many Times writers invoked Mr. Clancy over the years, without introduction, to give their stories a little color. He was handy in a simile.
A few examples:
Anna Quindlen, “Informed Opinion,” Jan. 10, 1991: “We’ve played out military scenarios, analyzed polls and plumbed history, more like folks researching a Tom Clancy novel than plunging headlong into war.”
Maureen Dowd, “West Wing Chaperone,” Oct. 8, 2000: “If Dick Cheney were in a Tom Clancy-style thriller, he’d be the White House official who blends into the woodwork in the first act, only to quietly usurp the president in the second — the bespectacled puppetmaster who blackmails uncooperative congressmen, fakes authorizations for C.I.A. covert operations and makes deals with cartels.”
Joe Goldiamond, “Meanwhile: A powerless pawn in Colombia’s war,” Nov. 26, 2002: “Your name is Juan Carlos Lecompte. And this is not the movie adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel; it is your life.”
David Ignatius, “America’s Blessed Isolation Has Gone Up in Flames,” Sept. 12, 2001: “New Yorkers were reported to be moving up the streets of Manhattan in fear of further attacks; Washingtonians were said to be gazing into the skies, watching for airplanes that might next attack the Capitol or the White House. It was like one of those improbable Tom Clancy novels come horribly to life.”
Nicholas D. Kristof, “Why Didn’t We Stop 9/11?” April 17, 2004: “Bush: What about the Tom Clancy novel where the pilot crashes a plane into the Capitol during a joint session of Congress? Could Big Beard be planning something like that?”
Maureen Dowd, “We Need Chloe!” June 24, 2006: “Lulled by our spy thrillers and Tom Clancy novels, we used to take for granted that our intelligence agencies were just as capable as heroes on the screen. Jack Ryan, either the Harrison Ford, the Alec Baldwin or even the Ben Affleck version, could have gotten Osama single-handedly in the two hours allotted.”
Tobin Harshaw, “About Those Assassination Squads…” July 17, 2009: “Hmmm, that last name alone is enough to set off a blogswarm, and combined with all the elements of a bad Tom Clancy book (Congress out of the loop, swooping global hit teams, shaky foreign allies) and everything everybody hates about Washington (bureaucratic inertia, legal hurdles, the triumph of vagueness) it garnered a lot of heated and relatively intelligent debate among the twittering classes.”
I remember talking to friends about Clancy's latest novel and one said "Mike, I woke up at three in the morning because I had to take a leak. After that I saw the book by my bed stand and it was just calling to me." That is a complement to an author!
RIP Tom Clancy. A life well lived and too damned short. I think I hear “The Hunt for Red October“ calling me!
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