The Arctic. Imperative!

So now that I've confronted and defeated the monster that is The Arctic Imperative, I am at a loss as to how to approach writing about it.  Some ideas:

1. Consider the vagueness of the argument.  Chris has done a great job on this and there is nothing I can add other than this book is a log line ("The Arctic and its resources present challenges for Canada as the country moves ahead considering how to balance the development and extraction of those resources in relation to the environment, the economy, the Native Peoples and its international obligations") turned into a manifesto/screed/impassioned plea for action whose point is sometimes so elusive it's hard to figure out what he's trying to say.

2. Consider the title.  Brian addresses this well in a comment - it's a great ersatz Ludlum title (or do I mean Don Pendleton?), but he never convinces you it's something even he has a grasp on.  Is it a monster?  Is it urgent?  Is it a call to arms?  On one page he speaks of getting control "of"  and "over"  it.  Maybe I'll let him define it like so:  "...bring the Arctic Imperative under the firm guidance and control of Canada.  It is imperative.".   So it's imperative to bring the imperative under control.  Got it.

3. Consider it in the context of when it was written.  I think it'd be somewhat mean to pull a lot of the projections about the future to show how wrong they were.  I was tempted, for example, when he spoke about how scarce oil would be by the 1990s. But hey - I'm a nice guy.  He was just using data and predictions that everyone else was at the time.

4. Consider the alternatives.  Now I love a good new idea for the use of nuclear subs as much as the next guy (as long as the next guy is Chris),  but beyond that lovely fantasy, it seems rather glaring that never once does the idea arise that maybe, just maybe, we should be looking at alternatives to oil?  When the supply of oil is seen to be dwindling in the early 1970s, all the energy and thought goes into how we can find more.  The solution is never finding an alternative, but rather how to deal with getting more oil out of the Arctic and down to market.  Really - did it not occur to at least include a sentence or two on relieving our dependence on it?

5. Consider his style.  Okay, so I direct you back to Chris's great post about the use of the monster metaphor, and it's nice to see these fictional style flourishes start to appear (pointing towards the fiction he will soon write that will one day lead to the existence of this blog), but by and large, he writes far too much like a lawyer.  Too many words are spent telling us endless details about business dealings, the technical side of the oil industry, the workings of government policy.  Not that it's not necessary, but there should have been a kindly editor telling him to summarize more and cut down on the specifics.  An example: in one sentence we get references to "Imperial Oil Limited", "Panarctic Oil Limited" and "Gulf Petroleum Limited".  Lose the "Limited" - everyone assumes the companies are properly incorporated and the colloquial always reads better.

6. Consider this as an act of self-justification.  In the middle of the book, we get a "told you so" interlude wherein we hear that the Mid-Canada Development report submitted to the Government fell on deaf ears.  Rohmer seems to get himself into a lather about this, and has to drive home the point that if only they'd listened then he wouldn't have to be telling you this now. I could be wrong - perhaps he's in a snit about it.  I do have the hardest time distinguishing between someone in a lather about something and someone in a snit over the same thing.

7. Consider pulling quotes out of context and attributing totally false non-sequitur descriptions to them: "But what is clear is that with a relatively short span of time there can emerge an enormous demand for "big-inch" pipe"- from his review of Boogie Nights.

The Collingwood Enterprise Bulletin now has ten columns by Richard Rohmer on its website. 

http://www.theenterprisebulletin.com/author/richard-rohmer

I don't want to give anything away, but if you check out the one from December 3rd, you may recognize some elements in a little plan Rohmer's come up with for getting "oil product" from Alberta to the Pacific while bypassing the "environmentalists and First Nations people" who don't know a good thing (carbon) when they see it.

Does it involve a pipeline and the Mackenzie River Delta?  That would be telling.

Carthage must be destroyed!

Let Rohmer Be Rohmer

So here it is, almost a year later.  This morning I finished Sir John A’s Crusade and Seward’s Magnificent Folly, a book Richard Rohmer wrote nearly forty years after Ultimatum, where our journey began.

Brian’s right.  This is a dull but competent book.  And the period – Confederation – suits Rohmer.  Maybe I’ve just gotten used to the stilted way Rohmer characters speak – a cross between a training film and a gladiator movie – but I also think we’re all conditioned to accept that historical fiction people (you know, in olden times) talked like pedantic, strangely-formal robots. 

“Come in, Napoleon. I have heard much about your recent

misadventures. Do sit down. You must be exhausted from

your 3088-mile round-trip journey from Paris to the gates

of Moscow.”

For some weird reason, it sounds less clunky by candlelight.

But the thing I loved about Sir John A’s Crusade is that it’s set a century before the average Rohmer, but lays out exactly the same way they all do.

A man gets an idea that he should buy something.  (An oil company, a bank, the North Pole.)  He takes it upstairs to the money guys.  (Another oil company, another bank, the German General Staff.) They like it.  So he takes a business trip and makes the offer.   Will they accept it?  And what will the bureaucrats say?

So of course John A. Macdonald tries to buy Alaska.  He was alive when it happened; what else could he have done?  If Richard Rohmer wrote a book about Lewis Carroll, Lewis Carroll would try to buy Alaska.  He had been born, and it was for sale.

And while he was at it, he would have:

- Been briefed at the White House

- Wandered around in the snow

- Worn a snappy uniform

- Praised England

- Insulted Russia

- Thought about the Arctic, and its many untapped resources

- Eaten bread so as not to get drunk on vodka

- Repeated the general premise of the book every 15 pages.  (“I purpose to buy a thing using money.”)

- Taken a woman to a nice dinner at the restaurant in his hotel, and told her a thing or two about how the problem with the Quebecois is they think they’re all that.

Is it wrong to take every story and make it the same?  Don't ask me.  Ask Claude Levi-Strauss. It wasn’t a problem for the Ramones.

Q: Who was Seward, and how did he feel about Manifest Destiny?

“I’m concerned about what those bloody Americans are up to, I must say.  That wretched fellow Seward and his Manifest Destiny thing.” p. 21

“And thereby put the boots to the conniving bastard Seward and his dreams of Manifest Destiny.” p. 33

Such an assault and conquest would be consistent with the ideas of the powerful William Seward, Lincoln’s and then Johnson’s Secretary of State, who made no secret of his belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States. p.38

The Fenian raids also solidified the intent of Canadians and Maritimers to combine their colonies into one nation loyal to the British Crown, safe from the threat of Seward’s Manifest Destiny. p.39

“And Secretary Seward, the Manifest Destiny man, what news of him?” p. 41

“The lawyer is William H. Seward, President Johnson’s Secretary of State, the Manifest Destiny man.” p. 130

From the moment the President handed Seward that signed and sealed warrant, the ambitious Secretary of State had the authority to turn his dream of Manifest Destiny into exhilarating reality.  p. 182

  

As the pages curled and the words were consumed, forever disappearing in the fire, Seward was well pleased with his own masterful contribution to the Manifest Destiny of the United States of America. – final lines

Q. Tell Me Something I Already Know

“And we both know how he gets… ill with too much drinking.” p.16

“It’s a laborious process, as we all know.” p. 25

“As you know Harry, my Quebec – Canada East, Lower Canada, whatever – is French.” p.25

“Remember my resolution, George? If you’ve forgotten, let me remind you.” p.26

“As you may know, Harry, my dear wife passed away nine years ago.” p. 34

“I must have said this a dozen times today.  I’m really worried about the sale of Russian America to the Yankees.” p. 39

“… as Marine Minister he has special knowledge of the affairs of the Company which, as you know, is in dreadful condition.” p. 51

“As you are aware, Your Majesty, the affairs of the Russian American Company, particularly in regard to control, discipline, and administration at Sitka, became so inadequate that it was necessary to install a naval captain as governor.”  p.54

“You will recall, Your Majesty, that we were able to negotiate a treaty with Britain...” p.55

“I remind you, Your Majesty,” de Stoecki nodded wisely, “that some years ago the Americans proposed the purchase of our colonies to me, as in the past they bought Louisiana from France and Florida from Spain; and lately Texas and California from Mexico.”  p. 59

“All of you are familiar with the terms and obligations of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856 after our defeat by the British in the Crimea.” p. 60

“As you undoubtedly know, that was the rumor from Sir Frederick Bruce.” p.90

“As I explained to you, the bread will absorb the vodka…” p.94

‘I’m sure that you, sir, with your vast knowledge of what is being said and done in foreign capitals, are aware of Secretary Seward’s belief in Manifest Destiny.” p. 107

Q: What do Russians drink?

Vodka, vodka, vodka, vodka, vodka p.86

Vodka p.87

Vodka p.93

Vodka, vodka, vodka p.94

Vodka, vodka p.98

Vodka, vodka, vodka p.99

Vodka, vodka, vodka p.101

Vodka p.102

Vodka, vodka p.104

Vodka p.106

Vodka p.107

Q. What the Hell?

“Who the hell does Macdonald think he is?” p.8

“For God’s sake, Harry, what are you talking about?” p.29

“What in God’s name can we do?” p.72

“So who’s the source of this great goddamn rumor?” p.72

“Where in hell are we going to find ten million?” p. 75

“Captain, what in hell is going on?” p. 202

“Fisher, what in bloody hell are you doing?” p.202

“Lieutenant, what the hell are you doing with a goddamn pink scarf around your neck?” p. 205

The Penistic Advantage

Okay, Brian and Stan.

If neither of you certified insanists, bolstered by non-existent credentials other than an invitation by some descript editor to vulture down

upon those who dare to artistically create,

want to talk about this awful poetry, then it’s gotta be me.

I’ll go first.  Because we’ve got less than two months left, and we seem to be hung up on Poems by Arthur Henry Ward Jr. 

Yes, it’s a shameful piece of work, and the polite thing would be to just move on.  But a deal’s a deal, and Reading Richard Rohmer means blogging them all.  We knew the risks when we stared, and I, for one, haven’t forgotten what inspired us in the first place:

the venom of green

jealousy that which shekels motivates the artistic

eunuchs dedicated to the death of the talented.

Who is Arthur Henry Ward Jr.?

Let’s say you didn’t know “AHW Jr.” was a pseudonym for a paperback writer, a political hack, and the most decorated military man in Canada.  What would you think?  If I sent you a link to these things, and your only clue was: “This person is sort of famous, but not for poetry.”

I know my first guess:

School shooter.

Arthur Henry Ward is seriously pissed off.  Poem #1: Critics.  Poem #2: Smokers.  Poem #8: Women.  Poem #10: Politicians.  He’s also had it up to here with phonies, television, nuclear war and trade unions.  He even gives us a poem (“Patience”) about losing his.  Arthur Henry Ward is a fuming virgin crank.

And he writes like a twelve-year-old.

What’s the difference between a poem and an angry diary entry?  A poem has arbitrary line breaks.  Also, in a poem, whenever you get to something you know two other words for, use all three.

That way people know you won’t be silenced, censored, cowed.

But, thanks to Brian, we know that Arthur Henry Ward (the name even sounds like a spree killer) is really Richard Rohmer.  The then 56-year-old best-selling author of How to Write a Best Seller.

So it’s illuminating to encounter his – no better word for them -- “issues” in verse.

Critics

First of all, Richard Rohmer doesn’t like taking shit from critics.  They’re just jealous, they don’t know anything, and they’re only in it for the money, cash, dollars.  So, in “Critic” these “certified insanists” are blinded by “green-eyed greed” and usually (but not always) not

thinking at all except

about his money and the next review

Brian, you run with insanists: Does literary criticism pay better than I think? Was I wrong to go into oil exploration and contract law?  Critics love the long green.  And that’s why they oughta be locked up… in the bathroom? (I think I’m reading that right.) And

prohibited from stirring either his body or his

witches brew of non-splendid, money-grubbing prose

Critics get theirs again in the poem “Private Person” – shekels-motivated artistic eunuchs, I think you know who you are – and in “Visionary”:

selective editorial synthesis masquerading as valid, shining

truth, cruel, cutting to the bone

Presumably, these are the guys getting between the author and the dream we all dream of.  (No, not "boy vs. girl in the World Series of Love.")

distant beacons of unreachable desires wealth,

recognition, promotion, conquest, emulation,

appointment, honor, employment, independence

You know, like what Richard Rohmer... uh... I mean Arthur Ward deserves.

It’s hard to say who is allowed to comment on Richard Rohmer’s work.  But if you can’t say something nice you should obviously keep it to yourself.

Politics

Months ago, when we were reading Triad, Stanley noticed that Rohmer presents the novel’s big idea -- America, Russia and China should run to the world – as a good thing, without any supporting evidence.  Arthur Henry Ward’s on board, though, in “Visionary,” dreaming of 

…the coming together of the

political leaders of all the nations of the world

to surrender their sovereignty in whole or in

part to a weaponless Universal Government

That sounds kind of “big government” to me, but I’ve lived in America for a long time.  And it’s hard to reconcile with Ward’s other poems, where he complains about

socialism swamped

nations dedicated to redistributing wealth

and

the bloating

blinding-spending public employee masses

and the government Canada already has…

spending far beyond the financial resources

it collects

and

the stench… of trade unions

What do you think now, Stan?  How can Rohmer and Ward hate government and pine for more government?  Would taxes have gone down if the United States had merged with the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China in 1985?  Would trade unions have had more power or less?  Is it possible that Rohmer/Ward hasn’t thought this all through?

Sex

In How to Write a Best Seller, Richard Rohmer advises his students to use sex scenes sparingly.  The reader probably expects at least one, but yeech.  Don’t do any more than you have to.  In his own work, Rohmer tends to keep it down to about one three-line incident per blockbuster, and it’s probably just as well, judging by Arthur Henry Ward.

Because, thanks to Poems, I now know the phrases “penistic advantage,” “countless predecessor copulators,” “the intended inserter,” and “whether willingly or unwillingly… open mindedly but close leggedly.”  Wish I didn’t.

Now THIS is Rohmer.

Only fifty pages in and already I have two nominees for the Single Greatest Rohmer Line of All Time:

The Rohmer Military Man, Very Excited About the Meeting He’s Prepared

His telescopic pointer was extended, at the ready.

The Rohmer President, Tough as Balls

“Okay, Gino, it’s sanction time.”

And beaver bashing. And tankers. And a fantastic international plan to buy something, but Rohmer’s not telling you what.  (But come on, it’s an oil company.)  And the purpose of buying this company? To then own it.  It’s so devilishly simple!

And sexy action power salads in the restaurant at the hotel.

This is The Expendables of Rohmer paperbacks.  It has everything.

And best of all, the glorious Rohmer Repeats.

A QUIZ ON RETALIATION PAGE 1 THROUGH PAGE 50

Q: Where did Paul James go when he left the bank? And where is the center of Canada’s oil patch?

Paul James had gone out to the oil patch in Calgary where he had made a fortune.  p. 1

James had left the bank and gone to Calgary, the center of Canada’s oil patch. p. 20

Q: What did Ross Harris do in the war? And when was D-Day?

Captain Harris of the First Canadian Parachute Battalion had parachuted into the beachhead area in France in the early-morning darkness on D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944. p. 20

“I’m an old army parachute battalion man myself—1^st Canadian Parachute Battalion.  We jumped in at the beachhead on D-Day morning.” -- Ross Harris P. 31

Q: What is the SAS? Are its members highly trained?

… the fabled British SAS, the Special Air Service, probably the most highly trained, efficient, antiterrorist military unit in the world.  p. 1

“They’re retired members of a crack antiterrorist British Army organization called the Special Air Service.” p. 31

“Quite, the Special Air Service, Her Majesty’s absolutely top antiterrorist, anti-everything force.  My dear chap, there’s no more highly trained, highly skilled unit in the world.” p. 43

His people were all former SAS colleagues, highly trained… p. 43

Q: What the hell?

“What the hell do you want Arab money for?” p. 22

“But how the hell are you going to bring off this covert business?” p. 23

But how the hell would the senior senator from Florida come up in short order with a researched, intelligent answer to that question? p. 35

“For chrissake, Gino, what the hell do I care what you’re going to do to those dumb Canadians about their goddamn confiscatory National Energy Program…?” p. 37

"What the hell do you mean my that?” p. 41

Q: Tell me something I already know.

And you know, Jim, all of these big takeovers happened because that goddamn government up there has set up a fortress. p. 10

“But, as you know, my people in State and I are sensitive.” p. 33

I've started Retaliation and am pleased to find many old favourites are back:

1. Chapter two begins with the US President (another President as main character!) and Jim Crane telling each other things they already know.

2. An ultimatum delivered to the Japanese Ambassador.

3. A main character who made his fortune in the oil business.

4. Thinly-veiled Trudeau bashing ("That socialist bastard up there in Ottawa")

5. A deal brewing to take over a major US company (wait a minute - didn't Pierre de Gaspe already do this? Maybe not - by page 40 I still don't know the target of the takeover bid - maybe it's NOT an energy/oil related takeover this time).

Why does Chapter 1 read like a pitch?

My new favourite Rohmer line, deliberately quoted here out of context for effect:  "It'll be a cosmetic carrot for the beaver before I hit it between the eyes with my sanctions!".

I'm heading into the homestretch on Triad.  The president has made his second or third trip on Air Force One.  The girl assassin has been raped and given her orders to kill the unnamed high ranking figure. The news has arrived from out of nowhere that vast new oil fields have proved out, obviating the plot.  Someone has a Big Idea (in this case called "Triad") that won't be explained until a conference on page 250.  Characters have told each other that the president almost went nuclear, but then didn't, at least eight times. Vodka and bread have been consumed.  An entire subplot -- the pilots -- has vanished.

Seems like old times.

I'm somewhere around page 175 -- I don't have the book with me at work -- and I've read twice now that Canada doesn't have nuclear weapons.  I'm betting I get read it twice more by the end of the book.

Also, I was in a used book store on Saturday, looking for Rohmers -- it could happen -- and I found a copy of Mason Hoffenberg's Until She Screams.  I've never seen one before in my life.  Brought it to the counter, where the guy said, "Oh, yeah, that just came in a box.  Do you know what it is?"  "Yes," I replied.  "Pure smut."

And it is, too.

Also, have you guys seen Godzilla?  If you haven't yet, and you do, watch how they deal with the Rohmer Conundrum, of how to tie globe-trotting military/political/cataclysmic elements together with one protagonist. Their solution, continually stop the action for scenes where the authors come up with yet another way to keep the protagonist in the story, is not better than Rohmer's.  Which, like I have to tell you, is "what's a protagonist?"

Apparently, this was also the reason it it cost millions of dollars in writers to "crack" World War Z.

The old solution: "Make your hero a reporter" worked for a century. I wonder why we don't do that anymore.  There must be some testing or something that people hate reporters.

Now, where was I...

Well, I am finally starting Triad this week and can now spend May catching up with everyone.  But I can't start without offering a few thoughts about Periscope Red:

1. What struck me at the end of the book if you've never read anything without a real protagonist before, you don't really know what "episodic"  means until you jump from Washington to the Mecca to Moscow to the Indian Ocean with NOTHING holding things together. 

2. Brian is right in calling this his most accomplished/controlled book - he refrains from digressions about technical issues, doesn't talk overly-much about energy, even with oil tankers sailing through every second page.  That said, it's also his dullest book.  Maybe it's fatigue, but when Said starts planting Limpet Mines what should have been tense was instead as tedious as anything from the previous 6 books.  I longed to get back to Moscow so real-life Andrei Gromyko could make another generically Russian proclamation.

3. So not only Gromyko but Yasser Arafat appears as a character.  I guess this is a running quirk we should be documenting - real people as characters adding, er, adding.. something or other.  I'm sure this meant to add gravitas to the story, but it seems sort of random - why not Jimmy Carter or Trudeau? 

4. Never have submarines been rendered so boring.  That is an accomplishment.

Looking ahead:

Now that I am about to start Triad, I can read thinking of this notion of robbing the climax by redoing the ending of the last book.  I'm betting this isn't a technique like The Alexandria Quartet, where the first 3 books tell the same story from different perspectives and with different sensibilities.  But it doesn't change the story. 

I'll see soon enough later this week.

When you're writing a screenplay, they tell you to think about the poster.  Can an audience understand it, just from that?  I guess Periscope Red would make an okay movie poster.  Submarines, terrorists, the White House... but you could never cast it.  Because there aren't any characters.  No lead, no villain, no sidekick, no love interest.  No henchman, no double-agent, no dead child or disappointed father in the hero's past.  No ex-wife, no chief who tells the hero to play this one by the book.  No mentor, no reporter, no genius hacker.  No villain's girlfriend.  No nothing.

It's like some sort of bizarre exercise, like writing a novel without the letter "a."

Here's what happens in Periscope Red.

Palestinian terrorists get on a freighter with a mysterious cargo of super mines.  (The Palestinians, for reasons known only to Richard Rohmer, are working for the Soviet Union, and against the interests of the Arab oil states.  This isn't a plot point.  It just is.  They're just doing it... because.  They're basically the Beagle Boys.)  Meanwhile, the President of the United States decides to send troops to Pakistan.  This angers the Russians.  A British submarine encounters a device that blocks sonar.  This means Russian submarines can get into the South Atlantic without being detected.  The Russians tell the Americans to take their troops out of Pakistan.  The Americans say no.  The Palestinians use their super mines to blow up a lot of oil tankers.  The Russians use their submarines to blow up a lot of tankers.  The British submarine doesn't get sunk at first, but then it does. This means war the end.

And it's unbelievably boring.  I mean, it's excruciating.  Not only does it go on and on, but it has so little drive it gives you a sensation of learned helplessnes, because there's nothing building.  So you can't imagine how (if ever) it could possibly end.  And you realize it's not building because it's Rohmer, so there's going to be a cliffhanger instead of an ending.  It's awful.  It's easily his worst book yet.

Because no one does anything.

It doesn't even have any howlers about sex and natural gas.

Sure, it makes as little sense as the classic early Rohmers:  Why does the plan require the Palestinians at all?  Why not just have the Russian submarines sink all the tankers?  And why does Yasser Arafat issue a statement about sinking some but not others? Why not all of them?  Or none?

But the fun is gone.

I think there's one great line, after the President has sex on Air Force One, about the First Lady's "satisfied thighs," but nothing could make me look it up.  I'm not going through that hell again.

Triad, boys?

Last night I read another sixty pages of Balls! Tough going, it was nowhere near as exciting as Joey Kowal’s lengthy Ponce de León-like quest for extension cords.

Having reached page 239, I have a horrible feeling that I’ve read the last of the Kowal clan. Still, I hold out hope. After all, is there not something magical in their journey? Consider Joey’s station wagon, which can burrow “like a huge mole”. What of the enchanted snowdrift that envelopes the Kowals, protecting them from the horrors and cold of the outside world? How long before the White Witch makes an appearance? How about Mr and Mrs Beaver? Tumnus is sure to alert Aslan to their plight.

I don’t mean to go all Edmund here, but I’m grappling with a loss of faith. Pray forgive me for thinking Harvard Law School graduate Joey Kowal is a dim bulb.

Evidence:

• Though Joey and his kin are secure, if uncomfortable, in his parents’ duplex - the one they bought in 1950 (p.69), the one they’d decided to buy (p.70), the one with the price that was right (p. 70), the one they chose to buy (p. 70) – he believes that the best course of action is to leave.
• Faced with the worst winter storm in Buffalo’s history, he decides to take to the road in an overloaded station wagon carrying five adults and two infants (intending to pick up Papa Joe along the way).
• Though there is “gasoline rationing in Buffalo and throughout the United States”, Joey thinks he’ll be just fine with half a tank.
• Lawyer Joey decides on a southern route to Florida (1775 km), even though Canada - which is untouched by the TransState Gas Distribution Corporation cut-off is just a couple of kilometres to the west.

I lived in Toronto for four years, and it’s just shy of six since I moved to St Marys, yet I’ve still not visited Buffalo (a mere 2 ½ hours south-east). I now know to wait until spring. Here are other things I’ve learned about the city from Balls!:

• All buildings in Buffalo – be they detached Victorian Italianate, mid-20th-century condo, high school or government edifice - are heated by natural gas. No oil. No electricity, either.
• Not one residence in Buffalo features a fireplace. Houses have no insulation and paper thin exterior walls.
• Water freezes more quickly in Buffalo than it does in the rest of the world.
• Buffalo’s electrical grid is second to none.

Here are a few other things I've learned through Balls!:

• Should disaster befall an area between Election Day and Inauguration Day it falls on the President-Elect to declare a state of emergency.
• The United States National Weather Service provides thirty-day forecasts.
• One thing more boring than reading a travel itinerary is an account of how same came together. 
• Smoking is bad.
• Conservationists are emotional.
• Sam Richardson is black.

Just over one hundred pages remain.

I devoured the last of Richard Rohmer's Balls! in one sitting last night.  And with that fresh in my mind -- and the horror of the image fresh in yours -- here are my thoughts:

Sir Michael Wilson and Qasim Khan (the man with hooded eyes; The Cobra)

On page 12 of Balls! we are introduced to Michael Wilson, ship broker, and Qasim Khan, ship haver.  Qasim has heard a rumor that pretty soon someone's going to be needing tankers in the worst way, and Qasim wants to make sure Wilson brokers his first.  Qasim threatens to blackmail Wilson if he doesn't get the message and do what he's told when the time comes.

This never comes up again.

Does Qasim know Buffalo's about to get a President-killing snowstorm that will turn America from a nation of many needs, abilities, gifts, dreams etc., into a entity only interested in buying tankers?

If so, how does he know?  Does he own a weather machine? Would a weather machine be more valuable than a boat? If you owned a weather machine, would you use it to attack Buffalo, in order to sell more boats?

Sam Harris, Oil Man

Vanishes, with a golden parachute, on page 175, never to be seen again.

I think the disappearance of Qasim Khan is just one of those things that makes Rohmer Rohmer.  It's like Glenn Gould's grunting.  Abandoned plot threads are part of the fun.  Like getting the same information a half dozen times, or the inevitable appearance of the Mackenzie Delta. (Page 226)

I think the disappearance of Sam Harris -- oil genius/sex machine -- and the appearance of George Stratton -- oil genius/sex machine -- is something else entirely.  It's evidence of a heavy (and hacky) rewrite.

I think the whole book is about Sam Harris, president of TransWhathamacallit,  and "George Stratton", Vice President of the United States, is his Tyler Durden.  Same guy, different name.  And the result of a really late-in-the-game overhaul.

Here's a story that kinda makes sense:  Sam Harris runs an oil company.  They fuck up (or get attacked with a weather machine) and kill almost everyone in Buffalo, NY.  Sam Harris decides that will never happen again, and sets out to buy thousands of oil tankers and convert them to LNG tankers.  He does, the end.  (Yes, that's a lame ending.  But all Rohmer business deals have the same lame ending.  This guy flies around asking people to sell him things. They do. Tah-da!)

Here's a story that's a mess:  Sam Harris runs an oil company.  It screws up, and everyone in Buffalo drives their car into the snow.  Sam Harris feels so bad about it, his bosses fire him, because, oh yeah, they also just found out his mother was Jewish.  Sam Harris is never seen again. Meanwhile, the President dies, the new President picks s a completely different natural gas-obsessive, Senator George Stratton, to be Vice President.  The President has a mission for George: America (the country) is going to start buying natural gas by the trillions of cubic feet and America (the country) is going to buy thousands of ships to move it.  So George does just that.  Because he and the President are both Republicans (and so is the Senate and so's Congress, we're told) and they love free enterprise.  A hasty note, very late in the game -- "Oh, yeah, and we'll get the oil companies involved."

It's not just bad storytelling.  It's nonsense.

I think Rohmer wrote another businessman's day dream -- "A guy should buy all those oil tankers and turn them into LNG tankers" and someone (Editor X) told Rohmer thrillers need Presidents.

And maybe some kind of conspiracy?  Or at least a double cross?  Or even a setback?  Anything?  So it's not just:

Hi, will you sell me those tankers?
Yes, I will.
Thank you.
Thank you.

How about a really ugly/beautiful PLO assassin?  Or the most careless hit man in Calgary?  Maybe Balls II?

As Dudley Moore says to Peter Cook, "The main trouble with your story is that it lacks everything."

Air Force One

It was nice to see that Rohmer had improved on Ultimatum by having the President travel by Marine One (which actually exists) rather than his personal Navy helicopter that doesn't.  Also, putting Air Force One at Andrews AFB -- where it is -- rather than Dulles -- where it isn't.  But Rohmer has over-corrected (Glenn Gould: "Hguhnah-uh--uh-uh") and now all airplanes are more or less "Air Force Ones" and he goes out of his way for various cyphers to tell each other the Vice President will be taking the 707 Air Force One -- with its markings painted over! -- and not the 747 Air Force One, or any of the other Air Force Ones that are lying around.

When the President is on a plane, it's designated Air Force One.  When the President isn't on it, it's designated something else.  He also has a plane called Air Force One.  All the other planes aren't Air Force Ones.  They're just planes.  Unless the President gets on them.  Who cares, of course?  But it sounds dopey when Rohmer goes to crazy lengths to get it wrong.

I'll be driving my private car.  It's the 3:15 Greyhound from Amarillo to Dallas.
You'd better have it painted over.
No need.  It's not a bus.  I just call it that.
But not in this case?
Right.  Today it's just my car.

During the last 100 pages of Balls! -- when it became clear that there weren't any twists to the business deal coming, and when it looked like we were setting up to do Ultimatum again, with Canada holding out on the juice, and when he complained about environmentalists again -- for the first time, and I know I'm being childish, I really sort of hated Richard Rohmer.

I'm only in the very early going in BALLS! but the cover is starting to make me mad.  You've got John Dean on the phone at the White House, and an Arab, and a blond guy from a suit ad -- and that's all very exciting.  What's John Dean doing on the phone?  Is he ordering a suit?  Where does the Arab come in? Then you've got this huge cool-as-balls supertanker.

It's like BALLS! is short for "cool-as-balls."

And then the book itself turns out to be about how Buffalo needs home heating oil.

If they made a Mad Libs of thriller premises and one line was:

"The fate of the world hangs in the balance as ________ demands ________."

And you wrote in the words "Buffalo" and "home heating oil" you'd win at Mad-Libs.  Every other answer for any other Mad Libs ever could only be the second best answer.

I'm hoping this is one of those Rohmers were he loses interest in the original story a couple of chapters in, and PEI decides to separate from Canada while the PLO hires the mob to kill the Shell Answer Man.

Now things are getting interesting.  The whole question of when a text is closed.  Finished.  Done.  Which is the real novel, Separation or Separation II?  The original, or the artist's last word?

Did Auden think "we must love one another or die" or "we must love one another and die"?  It depends when you asked.

Who shoots first, Greedo or Solo?

Or is the question even bigger than that?  The whole experience of being human.  Who's to say what's real?  Is my memory any more valid than yours?  I leave the table, the conversation at the table continues. Or does it?  I leave the room, the room continues.  Or does it?  A Calgary oil man hires a hit man to kill the Prime Minister, or does he?  The airmen with their legs sheared off by the crash... we look away...  Quick: Were there two of them, or just one?

The text is no help, because the text is in flux.

Let's start again, at the beginning.  But wait, the beginning is different.

Here's your hat, Julio Cortazar.  Richard Rohmer will take it from here.

Only vaguely related: Watch this clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcIkqSNZ_qg

What does it mean?  How is it connected?

Stan, you might want to brace yourself for Separation Two.  This time it's oil men in Alberta who want out.  I'm only one chapter in, and I can already foresee some pretty lengthy discursions on the well price of OPEC vs domestic crude and federal vs. provincial obligations for maintenance on Highway 1.  I'm also thinking that the premier of Alberta -- while calling the referendum -- may decide not to reveal his personal position on it until the last page.

I don't want to spoil it, but in Chapter One we learn that the death count from the plane crash in ExodusUK has gone back up to two.  Everything else that happened in the last two books is recounted, in Rain Man-detail, right down to the exchange rate for the pound after the embargo ($1.06) except, bizarrely, the Secretary of State is now remembered as a man.

Did Jessica Swift want too much money?

I was thinking that Separation might be sort of interesting to Lexie Kelly, who almost took Canadian history last fall, and who likes that sort of thing.  (Her introduction was Brian Busby's Encyclopedia of Questions and Answers About Canada.)  But Rohmer keeps tripping over the difference between what would actually happen in our system and what he needs to have happen for his plot.  He can't have Parliament called back into session and still keep Pseudeau Trudeau as PM, so he figures out a way for that not to happen.  It feels like the same sort of thing is happening with the national government in Great Britain.  People from opposing parties agree to table all kinds of issues they'd never table, just to keep the story moving.

The same goes for (SPOILER ALERT, STAN) the Palestinian terrorist assassinating the Saudi who shut off England's oil for selling missiles to Israel.  She should be on his side.  You just have to accept that she thinks she's gotten a better offer.

This assassination subplot really does feel like it was from some other book, and by "some other book" I mean The Day of the Jackal, which came out five years before Separation.  I kept waiting for the Lady Hawk to kill everyone who helps her -- the plastic surgeon, the gun shop owner -- and I realize now it's not because I've got better armchair-quarterback ideas than Rohmer, it's because that's what happens in Jackal.  And every other thriller with an assassin playing tourist in France.  The chapter fades from the sexy assignation to morning, with the car driving away from the small hotel, and then the maid -- farmer, mailman, barge captain -- finding the body.

Do we all own "Separation II"?  Let's do it, get it out of the way, and get on BALLS!

Something from Separation (The Beginning) before we move on:

Early on, we're told that the British people have a stiff upper lip about their closed banks, rationing, emigration and having their life's savings wiped out when the pound dissolves.  (Not to mention the fact that the whole mess is happening because some clod involved themselves in a middle east arms deal.)  That's all okay with John Bull.  Oil under the bridge.  What drives them crazy is the idea of not controlling the labour contracts for drilling in the North Sea.

This seems unlikely.  Or, at the very least, like a willful act of projection by an ultranationalist oil lawyer.

(Okay, though.  If you're watching Pokemon you accept that what every character our heroes encounter wants is Pokemon.)

Late in the book, representatives of Quebec and English Canada meet, and spend quite a lot of time talking about who will control Air Canada baggage handling in an independent Quebec.  Pages on this and the railways.  But one single line about the civil rights of English-speaking Quebecois who don't leave.  One line.  And it's along the lines of, "and there were some other subjects, too.  Now back to pensions for francophone civil servants...) I remember the rights of English-speakers in the province being a kind of a big deal at the time.  And something even Rohmer would have cared about -- at least cared enough to demagogue.  You know, it a book called Separation.

Aside from Arabs and French Canadians, does anyone do anything except for money?

The best parts of Separation, a book I've read, are the ones that aren't about separation.  I liked the stuff with the beautiful Palestinian terrorist a lot.  (Decades before the White Widow, enemy of America, rapping jihadis and Kenyan malls.)  And how about Great Britain's first lady prime minister, Marion Thrasher, three years before M. Thatcher in horrible real life?  The Lady Hawk and the Hawk Lady -- not bad work in the ripped-from-tomorrow's-headlines department.

Although, as you've both pointed out, the fact that Rohmer's Iron Lady seems to represent the party that's for trade unions makes the whole thing sort of a muddle.  And where are my maps and charts?  This "707" you speak of, is that some kind of aircraft?  If only I had a drawing to help me imagine such a thing.

The stuff about Canadian politics was pretty deadly.  Like an endless car trip on the dullest parts of the 401, enlivened only by the driver occasionally drifting out of our lane into some really weird generalisations about French Canadians. (Who, when not acting in perfect lockstep like the Borg, won't stop accusing English-speaking Canadians of all being alike.)

And lines about pseudeau-Trudeau like:

"He was in power and through him the people of Quebec controlled Canada." 

But the stuff with the casino and the terrorists and the sexy ultraviolence and everything was actually like a real thriller.  What's next?

People Tell Things They Already Know

"French Canada, as you well know, is already in a minority position in Canada."

"You know you will be recognised instantly at any airport or by police any place you go, even here in Paris."

"I know you're tired, Prime Minister, and you may have forgotten exactly what it was you and Hobson agreed to.  Let me read to you to refresh your memory..."

"Just to refresh your memory, Prime Minister, oil imports in 1975 cost us about $7 billion."

"Since we're refreshing each other's memory, let me remind you of some financial facts..."

"There is no way to have an election in the next thirty days.  The electoral laws, as we all know, do not permit this to happen."

"As you all know, Michael Lewis and I met with Premier Belisle in Montreal this morning."

"As you well know, France, our true mother country, is not participating in NATO."

'Then we'll have our meeting in the Privy Council Chamber which, as you know, is just around the corner from his office."

"As you may know, he's a lawyer and became a member of the National Assembly during the last election."

"As you know, any answer I give you will have to be confirmed by the Cabinet and by the caucus and ultimately by Parliament itself."

"As you know, our wealthy Arabs love to gamble..."

"I also bring you greetings and congratulations from my dear nephew, Prince Faisal, who last evening was confirmed as the new King of Saudi Arabia, succeeding his late cousin who, as you are aware, died tragically last Friday."

"Congratulations on your victory and on becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain!"

Prime Minister Thrasher Becomes My Favourite Character in Richard Rohmer

"I know exactly what you mean by a National Government.  You don't have to explain it to me."

Even Though She Never Appears in the Novel, Things Secretary of State Jessica Swift is:
handsome
brilliant

Okay - I assume we're all far in enough into Separation that I can make this comment.  Like Linus when he had the school election wrapped up and just couldn't stop himself from talking about the Great Pumpkin, Rohmer cannot stop himself from talking about energy in the North - even when there is NO REASON whatsoever to do so.


Right after Michael Lucas is told by the PM things he already knows ("Okay, Michael, now that you're the English Deputy Prime Minister representing English Canada and you're going to monitor everything I'm doing"), we get 7 pages - 7 full pages in a short novel - of his backstory as Energy Minister, including the requisites mentions of the Mackenzie Delta, The Prudhoe Bay -to-Valdez pipeline, how much natural gas was found in Prudhoe Bay (7 trillion cubic feet!),  OPEC supply levels sent to Canada (900,000 barrels per day!) and endless legal agreements Lucas had worked out in his outstanding career thus far.  Page after page that not only has nothing to do with the story, but actually interrupts a pivotal scene where we are going to first meet the Quebec premier and get his side of the story.  It's a tense moment, but instead of first confrontation between English and French Canada, we have to take a trip to the North and hear about energy.


I will admit here that halfway through it, I actually looked ahead in the book and seeing there were still pages of oil and natural gas exposition to go, I laughed out loud on the Metro.  I have to wonder if anyone looked at the cover of the book and wondered if it was supposed to be funny.

I liked the ending of Exodus/UK, but I can see that it's a little cutsie and not really earned.  What's the trial movie where you never hear the verdict?  The Verdict?  I'll go back to beating my pet dead horse: Richard Rohmer is reinventing the wheel.  It's not about creating a cliffhanger; he really thought:  I've written two books now, where the only simulation of suspense came from a decision a character capriciously refused to make until the last second... so the reader's got to be thinking, in this one, it's either yes or no... but what if the answer was "I'll tell you later"?

It would certainly stop readers of the hardcover from spoiling it for readers of the paperback.

But who cares if Canada accepts the refugees or not?  The United States has already said that it would.  And the North Sea oil means the whole thing is moot.  Rohmer's draft has come unmoored from his outline.  If he ever wrote an outline.

I noticed, in the first chapter of Separation, that Rohmer just cuts and pastes the last chapter of Exodus/UK, except he's changed the number of crewmen who died in the plane crash.

That's a beautiful cover -- the French edition of Exodus/UK.  I thought it was a little much when Rohmer had the National Assembly vote unanimously to leave Canada.  (Those people are all alike?) Glad to see there were no hard feelings.

Also, Brian, I got a beautiful copy of Patton's Gap in the mail today.  Please thank Linda and Karl, or send me their email, so I can.

Ahhh - now this is more like it.  I want to seize on a thought Chris posted and second it - he does indeed seem to be getting better with each book.  Sure people still talk in stats and tell each other things they already know (In Rohmer World, short-term amnesia must run rampant), but this is the first of the three that hangs together and keeps the digressions to a minimum.  (though the scene where we flashback to ravishing Jessica Swift being offered the Secretary of State job by the president is perhaps the best/worst example yet of this kind of thing.  "Don't forget Jessica, if you take this job..."  followed by a long paragraph telling her exactly what the job entailed.  In case, you know, she thought she was interviewing to work at Tim Horton's).

But the plane crash is actually a well-written action sequence - stressful and tense the way it should be.  Pity it means nothing overall - by the time the PM gets around to talking to the President, everything has been wrapped up except for the issue of the North Sea Oil rights - no thanks to that union-loving Hobson.

Speaking of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hobson is less a character than a purposefully wimpy union supporter who exists to strengthen the theme that unions are the root of all of the UK's problems, not Saudi Arabia.  It's a little obvious that Rohmer is rather transparently anti-union - whenever anyone (okay - everyone except poor old Hobson) speaks about how evil they are, it's interchangeable regardless of the character.

But still - implausibilities aside,  this was definitely a big step up from the first two.  Letter grades????

Hmmm.  Okay - I'll try:

ULTIMATUM - C

EXXONERATION - C+

EXODUS UK - B+

This is all in relation to each other - the only way I think of doing it.


So - what's next?

PS: I just realized Balls! is also about energy.  How many pages till we get to the first reference to the pipeline in the Mackenzie Delta?