Characterizations and Prose in the Popular Thriller: Clive Cussler's Dragon

Recently reviewing Clive Cussler's Dragon I considered the book as a Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt novel from the period I associate with his best. Thus I had much to say of the book's structure and incidents, pacing and action, focus and flow (which had me concluding that even if other entries in the series were stronger in various ways, the book as a whole works, in cases quite impressively).

I did not raise the matter of literary qualities such as characterization and prose--which were pretty much as expected for Cussler novels, and for popular thrillers generally.

That is to say--they were, are, pretty bad in certain specific ways that were outside my concerns as a reviewer at that time, but of which something may be worth saying.

One may as well start with the most conventional of expectations, as laid out by that most conventional of critics, James Wood. Far from the author's "maintain[ing] an unsentimental composure and know[ing] how to withdraw, like a good valet, from superfluous commentary" as Wood says, such that the "author's fingerprints on all this are, paradoxically, traceable but not visible," in the Dirk Pitt novels Cussler's voice erupts into the narrative so often and blatantly and melodramatically (for instance, to hint at some doom the characters did not yet expect) one could be forgiven for thinking that they were reading a Victorian-era book for a not particularly sophisticated audience. Thus it is not enough that almost everyone is a superhuman Gary Stu, but we are beaten over the head with the fact by the chunky character sketch he presents at each introduction of one of his principal dramatis personae. The artlessness of the presentation annoys me less than the triteness and falsity of what was being presented, affirming innumerable, quite stupid social prejudices. Still, the artlessness reflects a broader and very frequent tendency to overdescribe that constantly undercuts what Cussler is actually achieving by pouring out more words past the point at which he ought to have stopped. (Pursuing villains Pitt believes have kidnapped his longtime girlfriend Cussler tells us that "if they harmed her, they would die, [Pitt] vowed ruthlessly." Was there an un-ruthless way to vow that?) Quite naturally, this is the kind of novel where characters "shake their heads" every time they utter a negative (perhaps not so much as in Larry Bond's books, but not much less either, this quirk popping up scores of times in Dragon). The narration is also replete with comparisons that use up a good many words in distracting and confusing rather than enlightening. (We are told that the villain's dining hall recalled those of "the most palatial castles of Europe" and then almost immediately told that almost everything in the chamber was "distinctly Japanese," from the paper lantern lighting, to the bamboo carpet, to the paintings by Japanese masters on the walls. So, basically, it bore no resemblance whatsoever to its counterparts in European castles.)

I find myself more sensitive to such failings all the time, which do not improve the reading experience. Nevertheless, grating as they could be the story did more than survive them--much more. It is a reminder that those aspects of literary craftsmanship that middlebrow critics tend to emphasize are only part of writing, not the whole of it, and that like all writers and works which excel according to one measure or another they do so not because they get everything right, but because what they got right mattered more than what they got wrong.