On Thursday, February 27th news came out that author Clive Cussler had passed away at the age of 88. Here’s a link to an obituary written by Michael Carlson presented on theguardian.com:
In many ways, Mr. Cussler is responsible for the author I am today, even if I haven’t read a single one of his books since probably the very late 1980’s or early 1990’s.
His first four released novels featured intrepid hero Dirk Pitt and were, in order: The Mediterranean Caper (1973), Iceberg (1975), Raise The Titanic! (1976), and Vixen 03 (1979). He wrote one novel, Pacific Vortex, before these others but it wasn’t formally released until 1983.
But for me, the novel Vixen 03 did things to me.
For one, this was the first “adult” book I ever read cover to cover, and very likely in 1979/80. I still carry a tattered, beat up copy of it:
It isn’t the actual copy of the book I had way back then (I suspect not, anyway), but it is exactly the same print/year as the one I originally had and read.
So delighted was I by the book that I had to get my hands on the other Clive Cussler novels which, at that time, were limited to the three others I wrote about up above.
I thought all of them were quite good, but it was Raise The Titanic! that seemed to really make Mr. Cussler a star. In fact, in 1980 a movie version of Raise The Titanic! was released. The movie wasn’t all that good, taking away most of the suspenseful subplots involving the Soviets racing to raise the Titanic on their own…
The movie’s making and eventual release seemed to sour Mr. Cussler on Hollywood adaptations of his works and it wasn’t until twenty two years later that another movie adaptation of his novels, the 2005 Matthew McConaughey starring film Sahara, was released…
This film also didn’t sit well with Mr. Cussler and all kinds of lawsuits followed because he claimed the studios were holding back on profits.
Regardless, Mr. Cussler became something of a regular on the Best Seller lists, churning out novel after novel after novel, though in more recent years he always seemed to have a co-writer, which to me indicated maybe the co-author did more of the actual grunt work in creating the work.
Getting back to my original point, I loved the first four Dirk Pitt novels. They excited and inspired me to pursue my own literary pursuits.
However, something happened after those first four books were released: He released more books and I began to realize he was essentially writing the same novel over and over again.
Vixen 03 was followed in 1981 with Night Probe!, then Deep Six (1984), Cyclops (1986), and Treasure (1988). Treasure would be the very last Clive Cussler novel I’d read (he has 25 Dirk Pitt adventures listed over on Wikepedia, along with a voluminous amount of other series).
The Dirk Pitt novels which came after Raise the Titanic!, including Vixen 03, seemed to have the same general plot: We start in the past with some kind of historical event (the sinking of the Titanic, the crash landing of the Vixen 03, the derailing of the train in Night Probe), then fast forward to the “near future” (Mr. Cussler’s books were light science fiction, usually taking place a decade or so after the date of each novel’s release), and Dirk Pitt and company are in a race against time and some very nasty bad guys to get whatever cargo was in the lost vessel we witnessed sink/crash/etc. in the opening act.
To me, the repetition became too much and I left the books, never to return. Many years later my wife, at my recommendation, read Vixen 03 and was turned off by the way Mr. Cussler wrote the character of Dirk Pitt. She said he was what people nowadays view as a “Mary Sue”, only in this case Dirk Pitt was a male “Mary Sue”: A character who can do no wrong and is rough and tumble and gets all the pretty ladies while always being right about everything.
I can’t help but feel Mr. Cussler viewed Dirk Pitt as his alter-ego as he too was involved in similar underwater activities before hitting it big as a novelist. Frankly, I find it amusing even if it is all rather silly.
But Clive Cussler was certainly not the first -or last- author to repeat stories over and over again, but he was the first in my case where I realized this is what was being done.
Thus, Mr. Cussler did two very important things for me as I was growing up and thinking of writing myself: 1) He inspired me to write as well as I felt he did (I may have to go back to those original four novels and see if they still “read” as good as my very young mind felt they were!) and, equally importantly, 2) He made me realize that as a writer I didn’t want to became a repetitious storyteller as I felt he became.
For this is the secret to becoming a writer, whether good, bad, or otherwise: You read others’ stories and analyze what works and -sometimes even more importantly- what doesn’t and you make novels/stories that follow the good while avoiding what you view as the “bad”.
Mr. Cussler taught me, through his writing, the importance of creating exciting stories but also taught me it can go bad if you decide to repeat yourself. Sure, he made a ton of money off his books, and there is a lot to be said about that, but he lost me as a reader and I didn’t want to create works that featured the very same elements time after time.
In the end, though, its sad to read of Mr. Cussler’s passing and one day I hope my novels are even a tenth as popular as his were.
Rest in peace, big guy.
Even if your later works didn’t appeal to me, those first four books have a special place in my head… and heart.