esco@ssc-vax.UUCP (Michael Esco) (05/16/85)
While laid up with a bad cold, I had a chance to service several entries on
my book queue. I had high hopes for one of the books, `Cool Runnings' by
Richard Hoyt, which had the following blurb on its cover: ``"Does for
espionage and terrorism what Joseph Heller's `Catch-22' did for war." -New
York Times, Notable Books of the Year.'' I had read one of Hoyt's previous
works, `Siskyou,' and found it mediocre--- but on the other hand, everything
of Heller's that I've read since `Catch-22' I thought mediocre as well. So
maybe greatness does only come once to a man. I expected a good book.
I suppose everybody over the age of twelve has read a book about something
they knew about and got to snigger over the author's mistakes. Well in this
case I don't know a whole lot about the subject, but I obviously know a
whole lot more than the author did--- and he wrote a book about it! The
subject is an atom bomb built by a group of European peace protesters. While
I saw plenty of technical errors in this book, I'll only repeat one as an
example:
"It has a strength of one megaton, or about 20,000 tons of TNT."
You don't exactly have to be Oppenheimer to see the mistake in that. But it
is typical of the inaccuracies.
The author's lack of knowledge on a subject can be forgiven if the book has
literary value: Shakespeare depended on that. In this case, the characters
aren't notable, the plot fizzles, and the use of language isn't colorful (If he
could have been more consistent and fluent with the Jamaican accent he used
the book might have been worthwhile). Perhaps the most important failing,
in a book compared to `Catch-22,' is that it isn't very funny.
Pocket review: I'd rather have read `Catch-22' again.
Michael Esco
Boeing Aerospace