Ambrose

[Pak_43]

Several years ago I bought a copy of Citizen Soldiers just to see what all the fuss was all about. This was when Ambrose was at the height of of his popularity and before the controversy over his methods had reached the general public. I don't think I had gotten more than 20 pages in before I spotted three glaring inaccuracies. I mean these really stood out, and if an amateur like me notices them on the first reading, what's a professional doing leaving them in print after presumably proofreadings and redrafts? At that point I closed the book in disgust, refusing to waste more time on such a shoddy product.

Oh, I did look at the after word where he describes how in childhood he came to acquire his hero worship of the American GI. I wouldn't fault him for childhood hero worship. I suspect most went through that; I certainly did. But to deliberately distort history in service of that, especially in the face of criticism of some of those same GI's whom he claims to admire is criminally unprofessional.

Someone else has stated about "The Greatest Generation" that that title is a misnomer. They were just ordinary guys who, when the time came, found themselves doing extraordinary things. I think in that lies their true greatness. And I think that should have been enough for Ambrose too. By inflating their deeds with falsehoods, he casts their reputations into doubt, and they do not deserve that.

Michael

I had exactly the same experience with Citizen Soldiers Michael. I found it grating to read as well...

[Sgt Joch]

You have to take Ambrose for what he is, a "popular" historian, more of a journalist/novelist. He was more interested in a good rather than an accurate story. His methods, interview techniques, were not scientific.

I was leafing through the autobiography of "Buck" compton yesterday of "Band of Brothers" fame. In his book, he says his only contact with Ambrose was a 30 minute telephone conversation and he spends a lot of his book correcting the stories about him in "Band of Brothers".

My real problem with Ambrose is the fact that so many people rely on him as gospel, as here:

According to Stephen E. Ambrose, of the roughly 1,000 US combat veterans that he had interviewed, roughly one-third told him they had seen US troops kill German prisoners.[57]

:mad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#Germans

[Michael Emrys]

You have to take Ambrose for what he is, a "popular" historian, more of a journalist/novelist. He was more interested in a good rather than an accurate story. His methods, interview techniques, were not scientific.

I fear we have to go further than that. His methods were not merely unscientific, they were downright dishonest. He isn't just a poor historian, he is a liar, since he never did many of the things he claims to have done to write his books. Furthermore, he allowed known inaccuracies to stand in subsequent printings of his books. Taken as a whole, to me he is a con man who has done damage to the record of the war in many minds.

Michael

[JonS]

Yep. If he's 'more of a journalist/novelist' then his books should be labelled fiction on the back cover, and moved to the fiction section of bookstores and libraries.

He wants (well, wanted) to be a historian, that was his professional title, and it's on those grounds that he should be judged.

[Magpie_Oz]

Yep. If he's 'more of a journalist/novelist' then his books should be labelled fiction on the back cover, and moved to the fiction section of bookstores and libraries.

Or my favourite "Docudrama" or "Historical Fiction" i.e. we got a real event and sexed it up so it isn't as boring as all get out

[JonS]

Heh. I quite like historical fiction. I've read a fair few of James A Mitchener's books, and also Clancy's (although I rapidly went off those once Jack Ryan started getting rapidly promoted - is he The Grand High Emperor of the Universe yet?)

[Magpie_Oz]

Heh. I quite like historical fiction. I've read a fair few of James A Mitchener's books, and also Clancy's (although I rapidly went off those once Jack Ryan started getting rapidly promoted - is he The Grand High Emperor of the Universe yet?)

No, but I believe all the bad politicians, drug lords and terrorists have now been killed by black ops which no one has a problem with being carried out without consent.

Many of them in all cleansing large explosions

[Michael Emrys]

Clancy believes in magic. He also believes that only the US possesses it, although we do loan it out now and then to trusted allies. But only temporarily and with strict supervision.

Michael

[Affentitten]

Tom Clancy is not one of us

[Michael Emrys]

“Rape and pillage” — now there’s a career I could give my heart to.

Hmmm. Not sure I'd want to be one of you either. I have to give the guy credit that at least he's right up front with it though.

Michael

[JonS]

Funny. I just finished watching Runt for ra Red Rocktober again.

[Michael Emrys]

IMO that was the best of Clancy's books (which isn't saying a very great deal) and the movie was pretty good for what it was. But it seems to have been all downhill ever since. I gave up in disgust after reading RSR. I felt ripped off for both my money and my time.

Michael

[gunnergoz]

IMO Clancy's writings are basically fantasy porn for the wannabee spy/intel guy who thinks he knows how the world really works. He has not been on my must buy list for a long, long time...probably since I figured out that I really don't know everything about everything and neither does he.

[Affentitten]

The last one I read was Rainbow 6. Basically all the English characters called each other "Old Boy". Then when they got to Sydney, the extent of the research was obviously to buy a map from somewhere in DC. You had Australian characters describing road routes according to the road number (which appears on maps) but we don't do that. We use the proper name of the road, like "Pacific Highway" or "Parramatta Road". We'd never say "Take the 13 till you get to the F3 on-ramp."

[Magpie_Oz]

No doubt Clancy and his ilk tell a good tale, problem is that they hit a formula and tell it over and over and over and just change the location and add a few more characters to replace the ones they had jailed or blown to pieces in the last book.

This thread brings to mind a thing I saw on the History Channel a little while ago. The doco was talking about the US in Europe and spoke at length with first hand interviews with veterans on how amazing the BAR was and how it outclassed the MG42 with it's rate of fire ..............

When you see something that patently wrong you wonder about a whole lot of other things.

[Dietrich]

Speaking of historical fiction... Len Deighton, anyone? (Other than his spy novels, that is.)

This thread brings to mind a thing I saw on the History Channel a little while ago. The doco was talking about the US in Europe and spoke at length with first hand interviews with veterans on how amazing the BAR was and how it outclassed the MG42 with it's rate of fire..............

I would've liked to see that doco (or at least that part of it), if only for a laugh. =P

Speaking of Ambrose, though... in BoB, when Winters & Co. reach the crest of the embankment and surprise-attack that Waffen-SS company, did the Germans have no MGs, or what? Because it certainly seemed to me that the paratroopers were taking very little return fire. Sure, I reckon there are practical/tactical reasons why the Germans in that instance didn't/couldn't make use of what MGs they had (to say nothing of the tentative counterattack by that "whole other company"); but I'm thinking, rather, that it's actually a case of "SPR-osis": namely, in the final battle scene of SPR, the Germans have several MGs but are never seen to actually fire them, nor (IIRC) do the paratroopers/Rangers ever come under high-volume fire.

[Magpie_Oz]

Yes I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Len Deighton's "Bomber". I also enjoyed his TV series "Soldier"

As for the movies mentioned, well I gave up a long time ago taking anything useful from dramatisations of events however real or imagined.

As my long suffering wife cries in despair "JUST WATCH THE F****** THING WHO CARES ABOUT THE FACTS !!!!! "

She just doesn't understand but I do love her so

[JonS]

Concur on "Bomber".

I rather liked RSR, but didn't enjoy HftRO all that much as a book. I guess the key to RSR was grokking that the real stars and characters of the book are the various pieces of wood-inducing technology. The folks who wield them are totally incidental - like fluffers in a good pr0n movie. You can't really accuse Clancey of deus ex machina because the machina is always deus in his books.

[Tarquelne]

As my long suffering wife cries in despair "JUST WATCH THE F****** THING WHO CARES ABOUT THE FACTS !!!!! "

Heh. We had a computer-as-DVR hooked up to our cable well before TV was around. At this point I don't think I could stand watching TV without a Pause button. What do you do when you can't stop for a quick discussion of the plausibility of a given event, whether or not someone's acting in character, or the various levels at which a particular joke works?

My wife's pretty much used to it by now. If I hear teeth grinding I just make a note to save stuff up for afterword... or until someone does something really silly, and then we can review the last 15 min of the program all at once.

[Magpie_Oz]

Heh. We had a computer-as-DVR hooked up to our cable well before TV was around. At this point I don't think I could stand watching TV without a Pause button. What do you do when you can't stop for a quick discussion of the plausibility of a given event, whether or not someone's acting in character, or the various levels at which a particular joke works?

Will you marry me ?

[Michael Emrys]

Speaking of historical fiction... Len Deighton, anyone?

Not fiction—I hope—but I rather liked Blitzkrieg when it came out. Not the best book on the subject, but it got me started on a closer examination at the time.

Michael

[Bigduke6]

The thing I love about Clancy, is the perfection. It's just hilarious.

What I mean is, everything works. To spec. All the time. And even when it doesn't work, the overall system has taken care of it, you know, maybe one of the Exocets gets decoyed but no worries, the bad guys knew how that could happen so the missiles are coming in salvos. All the technicians know their equipment. The women are gorgeous and well-dressed. The bureaucrats are dedicated professionals never touched by even a whiff of careerism. Not a one of the soldiers, ever, thinks that maybe laying low and waiting out the firefight and not standing up in all that flying metal would be a better move than jumping up and doing what he is supposed to do. And pretty much all of the time, when he DOES stand up all the flying metal takes a detour around him. Call it the CPHFF - Clancy Personal Heroic Force Field.

And of course there is the whole separate category of language. These Clancy novel characters zoom all over the planet, they get into the most obscure and Godforsaken regions, and always just happen to speak the local barbaric tongue or even better it turns out that Bakhtiar the Yak Herder, who just happened to see the US ueber-secret reconnaissance aircraft crash-land on the high Tibetan plateau, is a big fan of MASH reruns and so just happens to speak excellent colloquial English.

Or the fact that, over several decades of story arcs spanning the entire Cold War, with the Soviets as the main baddies, never, ever, anywhere, under any circumstances, is a ethnic Russian in a position of responsibility drunk on the job.

This of course is incredible. As is, over the same period, the Chinese never once stop whatever military operation or espionage or international subterfuge they are engaged in for the sake of Clancy's plot, to have a proper lunch with fresh rice and at least two entrees. Over a billion Chinese on planet Earth, and Clancy manages to populate his novels with the total 200-300 ethnic Han worldwide that are not food-obsessed.

In Clancy novels, no one is incompetent, ever. No corruption, no laziness, no one makes doofus move out of ignorance. Intelligence is accurate and the analysts are experts in their field, and what's more they never happen to be on vacation when the plot needs them.

Red October was fun, but Clancy lost me with Red Storm Rising.

At one point this Air Force weatherman stationed in Iceland turns into this Rambo guerrilla type because the Soviet marines invade and rape this Icelandic blond woman he falls in love with and has Tender Sex with a few days later.

Then this guy (who just happens to run marathons for fun) becomes a Partisan Behind Red lines (true assisted by a single SAS trooper with a broken ankle but since he's SAS it doesn't slow him down) wreaking havoc on the Kamov helicopters and Gaz trucks the Commies have landed. The whole point is that he's a mild-mannered rear echelon fellow but since the Reds offended the Woman He Loves, he too becomes a Deadly Cold Warrior.

By the time I got finished I was having trouble believing Clancy was serious. Did he really believe people would pay to read idiocy like that?

Although, judging by the size of Clancy's bank account, clearly he was right. Wasn't it PT Barnum or WC Fields or some one like that that said, "No one ever went broke overestimating the general level of stupidity of the American public."?

[JonS]

In Clancy novels, no one is incompetent, ever. No corruption, no laziness, no one makes doofus move out of ignorance. Intelligence is accurate and the analysts are experts in their field, and what's more they never happen to be on vacation when the plot needs them.

Oh, that's simply not true! How dare you besmirch Clancey like that!

In RSR, the Orion pilot recognises his mistake in firing his, erm, Harpoons? Mavericks? at the trojan-horse transport ship off Iceland, rather than the, erm, hoevercraft? that were shuttling the troopies ashore, and which he could actually sink with the weapons on the a/c ... he just annoyed the trojan-horse when the captain executed a perfectly timed turn to port so that the missiles hit too far above the waterline.

There's also the rather stunning intel lapse prior to the invasion of West Germany, leaving the NATO forces flat-footed for the first couple of days. Of course, IIRC, Ryan and his Russian-movie-watching buddy had figured it out ahead of schedule, but no one would listen to them.

But that's all beside the point because, like I said, you can't really accuse Clancey of over-using deus ex machina, because the machina is always deus in his books. That's about as relevant as accusing water of being wet, or steel being heavy. Clancey's human characters The human characters are just there to flip the right switches and push the right buttons when the deus requires them to be flipped and pushed.

[Tarquelne]

It's hardly unusual for sci-fi novels to be technology and/or plot driven. Bad ones, at least.

Clancy is like Star Trek - Utopian in attitude, full of technical gobbledygook and magically-competent characters - but day-after-tomorrow near-future.

Jack Ryan vs. Captain Kirk: Who would win? (Or would they combine forces to conquer the galaxy? Scary!)

[gunnergoz]

It's amazing what cr@p is out there. I recently quit a supposed WW2 novel less than 10 pages into it when the main character rode a "land rover" to the airfield where his "tiny" Mosquito fighter awaited him. I was pissed to have mis-spent the $7 or so the book cost me on such...drivel.