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Originally Posted by saoir
But last year I read two books by Tom Clancy. HUGE sellers. OMG people, the writing is atrocious ! to get through it I had to go into a kind of suspended belief state.
However .... the story takes over. His story telling is so magnetic, so involving that you forget the writing is so $hite.
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The problem with Clancy is two-fold:
First, he's popular enough that he can require his stuff be published exactly as written, regardless of how much it would benefit from a good editor. (There were whole plot threads in the last one he wrote alone that could have been excised with no loss, as they added nothing to the story development and were dropped part way through. That's exactly the sort of thing a good editor catches, but Clancy is now editor-proof.
)
Second, he's trying to make himself a franchise. Most of what comes out these days from him is by "Tom Clancy and X", where it's likely that Clancy wrote the outline and the collaborator filled in the blanks.
I tried to read the latest Clancy novel and had to stop. I couldn't isolate exactly what didn't work (without more effort than I felt like expending), but I had to actively work at reading it. It did
not suck me in and drag me along. It was a "Clancy + X" book, and that was the problem.
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Now after the second book I drew a line and decided no ... no more. BUT I do accept that he writes great stories and people love them and his books deserve to valued as great books. Just not great writing.
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The early ones he wrote alone hold up. The recent stuff does not.
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Dennis