Day 176: My Second DNF

So it's pretty rare that I don't finish a novel. Even if it takes me a long time, I usually find something of worth in any book I pick up. It's either good enough to keep going till the end, noteworthy enough that I want to see why people love it so much, and in the worst case, bad enough that I will push through on spite alone. There's a sweet spot (or I guess, unsweet spot) though where the book is just bland. Not good enough to keep me interested, not bad enough to make me say 'what the hell is this?' I haven't had one of those since 'A Tale of Two Cities,' until today.

I just cannot finish 'The Hunt for Red October.' I have been dreading picking up this book everyday since I started it and I have a few reasons why that I'll go through here, but the big takeaway is that I just thought it was really boring. I'm really sad to say that because the movie is one of my favorites, so I know that the story itself can be presented in an enthralling way, but the book is not doing it for me.

It's not that it's awful. Like I said, a really bad book will keep me interested for all the wrong reasons, but not this one. It's just that I can't bring myself to read another description of a piece of military hardware that is totally disconnected from any human relationship. There are two halves of this book. One half is the story about Captain Ramius defecting on the submarine, with Jack Ryan hot on his tail to make it happen, and the other half is about stuff. Procedures. Hardware. The structure of Soviet political organizations. Even Ramius' backstory doesn't feel very human to me. It feels pretty close to reading a dossier about a man who wants to defect and why, which I guess is exactly what Clancy was going for.

These pieces of stuff could be interesting, if they connected to the characters in more than a superficial way. The submarine is very cool, but the description is rarely if ever impactful outside of what it is. Besides the crewmates being on edge, there really isn't much atmosphere like I was hoping for. The October doesn't really take on a life of its own because the characters don't really feel like they're in it. They take actions, and some of those actions affect the submarine, but it rarely affects them in turn besides the initial explanation about how Ramius much prefers life at sea (because the Soviet Union is so awful). Every description of the thing is dry, and every part of the characters' lives are held separate from those descriptions because of it.

The best part of the novel is also my favorite part of the movie. On the American submarine where Jones and his exceptional ears are used to track the October, things are a little more lively. They are constantly interacting with each other and their boat at the same time, bringing both pieces to life in a way that almost never happens on the October. The main point of contention on the October is the defecting, which boils down to several tense discussions about how things are going. In other words, not much.

Jack plays a role, but he's largely just getting from place to place, espousing information that the reader has already received from Ramius' perspective. Honestly it would have been a lot more interesting if Ramius was not included so heavily, then Ryan would have a chance to shine. Instead I felt like he was constantly playing catch up. That's ok when I'm catching up along with him, but that's not how it goes. The story is largely structured as follows:

1. Ramius does a thing.
2. Someone, somewhere, takes a picture, overhears, or hears about the result of said thing.
3. A page or three describing the function of some military hardware or procedural action.
4. Ryan's analytical genius is proved as he determines the meaning of Ramius' actions.
5. Rinse and repeat.

Granted I didn't get as far as I probably should have before giving my opinion on this novel. I just couldn't get interested. Maybe if you're super into the technical stuff this novel is for you, but I was hoping for suspenseful submarine encounters, Jack Ryan racing against the clock, and maybe a few torpedoes flying. I'm sure it would get there eventually, but sadly I couldn't get through the first 300 pages to see it. It's amazing to me how 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold' was largely just a series of conversations, and yet the flowing characterization, tense interviews, close shaves, and even the highly technical espionage stuff (delivered along with the other juicy stuff, not adjacent to it) was so much more interesting even though it was about the same amount of 'action' so to speak. The real action was getting to know Leamas, but I digress.

Up next is the Bond book, which I hope is a little more interesting. After that, I actually got another le Carre book to round out the spy series, 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,' which should sate my appetite for spy novels for a while. Hopefully.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley