padpowell@wateng.UUCP (PAD Powell[Admin]) (09/19/83)
I have just been re-reading my James Clavel collection. I highly
recommend him for a weekend read. Tremendously interesting word pictures,
fantastically accurate details of scenes, and very good plotting.
His forte is the historical adventure novel.
Tai-pan: very good, but take the bias with a kilo of salt.
King Rat: (I think by Clavel, but the cover has fallen off and I am too
lazy to check before I send this) Extremely very good. According
to a survivor of a Japanese Prisoner of War Extermination Camp
is very toned down... The Japanese Army were not as nice as painted
in the book.
Sandpebbles: good afternoon killer. First half excellent, last half drags.
Patrick ("Anybody read Anne of the Thousand Days?") Powellgeo@watarts.UUCP (09/26/83)
While I was reading Patrick (parenthetical comment) Powell's recent article on the work of James Clavel, I was reminded of Richard McKenna's excellent "The Sand Pebbles". I was quite surprised to read Patrick's characterization of this book as "[a] good afternoon killer. First half excellent, last half drags." James Clavel is a fairly good writer, his books are of comparable length, but far superior to a hack like Michener. Taipan and Shogun are wonderful travelogues, and I understand that Shogun at least is fairly accurate as such things go. The Sand Pebbles I feel is in a totally different class from these books. I found the Sand Pebbles a low-key, quite moving indictment of nationalism, patriotism, military honour, and the Christian missionary movement. I imagine that the Sand Pebbles is the distillation of the twenty years McKenna spent as an enlisted man in the Navy. McKenna was forced to join the Navy through circumstances much like Holman's. He seems to have been a sensitive, intelligent, self-educated man. McKenna served on American gunboats on the Yangtze River After he retired from the Navy he went to college on the GI bill. He died a few years after he retired. Another book I read, "American Gunboats on the Yangtze River", by Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley USN (ret.), substantiates McKenna's book. According to Tolley, McKenna's book is accurate right down to the decor of the various bars his characters drink in. Tolley's book is interesting on its own account. It contains some marvellous photos of some the old gunboats, the scenery, and some of the characters associated with the river; a history of the American Yangtze Patrol; and some very colourful anecdotes. For instance: Because of the lack of centralized authority in China during the warlord era, the executive officer routinely had to buy whatever passed for local currency where ever they went. Apparently, it was practically impossible not to make a profit when engaged in these currency transactions. The men routinely split these profits until one young, naive officer, who wasn't aware of the tradition, radioed higher authority to find out what to do with this surplus of funds he found he had made. One old River Rat was asked what he spent his money on. He replied, "Mainly I spends it on women and liquor, the rest I spends foolishly." During the seige of ChungKing, which was the capitol at the time, according to Tolley, one Ensign Bill Lederer, Executive Officer of the Gunboat stationed there, attacked an innocent, elderly Chinese gentleman, merely because he was wearing a western suit. I found this very interesting as this seems to be the same William Lederer who was one of the authors of that horrible piece of subtlely racist propaganda, "The Ugly American". Cordially, Geo Swan, Integrated Studies, University of Waterloo (allegra||ihnp4)!watmath!watarts!geo
padpowell@wateng.UUCP (PAD Powell[Admin]) (09/27/83)
Ah, yes, how could I goof Mckenna and Clavel (Sand Pebbles)? Well, I have it in paperback, and the cover/frontspiece is missing. Would you believe that there is no other place in the paperback which has the authors name, and I was too lazy to look it up? My apologies to various people who have pointed this out. Patrick Powell