Through a Glass, Darkly

(You'll find no spoilers in the discussion of Steven Pressfield's latest book, The Profession, below. I can't tell you why I think "You scared the shit out of me, bro" is as fine a line of dialog as any I've encountered in a novel for years without ruining it, but I'll tell you now that one of the finest lines of dialog I've read in years is in this book. In fact, I can't promise you'll even be able to determine what the book's about from reading this. For that - if you need it - here's the web page. That said, I'll ramble on.)

Along the wall in my house given over to bookshelves there's one filled with Tom Clancy's novels. From the time I'd finished Red Storm Rising while on a deployment to Egypt in 1987 to the early years of this millennium I acquired and read them all. I'm not even sure if Clancy has written anything in the last decade, his works became too much for me to read. That's got nothing to do with quality and is due only in part to the length of book/time available ratio. The simple truth is that while I can assure you the late-cold war military - those people and organizations that Clancy described so well - once existed as such, the concurrent fact that I have to use past tense in that assurance is reason enough for me to move on. I witnessed the vanishing of that first-hand, and wish that so much of the competency of that era hadn't slipped away, too. While I enjoy history and believe it to be critical to understanding the present and the future, and I'm as vulnerable as anyone to moments of nostalgia (I do still have all those books, after all), I reject the desirability of living in the past.

Where to now, then? The shelf above Clancy's contains other techno-thrillers, military themed adventures, and spy novels from Alistair MacLean, John le Carré, Ian Flemming and others. Fine books, but few with pages I'd still call white. On up - the next shelf above contains one work: an eight-volume edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, flanked by souvenirs of a trip to Italy; on one side a small replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, on the other the Coliseum. None of these things were purchased with that arrangement in mind, it all came together just so during the latest shuffling of the shelves a few months ago.

Above that shelf is one of non-fiction works on America's recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including those written by my fellow milbloggers. But we're talking fiction here (I think) and we've definitely departed that realm. So bring the gaze back downward, past Gibbon, and to the center of that row of books just below.

There's the Steven Pressfield section, books with crisp pages and covers that still shine. Oddly enough, my most recent additions to this particular shelf deal with the most ancient of epic adventures. Or at least on the surface they do. From Gates of Fire to The Afghan Campaign, his fictional accounts of ancient warriors and their battles connect the books above them on my shelves to those on either side and below. In looking at that arrangement now, I'm certain I never thought of it in just that way when placing them all where they are. My decision was simply these books go here, and these belong here, and this one here... and I spent less time thinking that through than you just spent reading it.

Whether conscious or not, the connection was in my mind. Now that I've finished Pressfield's latest work, The Profession, and added it to that mix, I realize it was in his, too. If he stops writing of warriors now (and I hope he doesn't) he still will have achieved something that's only vaguely illustrated in one small section of bookshelves in my little house: he's completed a circle. There's something mystic in that, as there's an element of the mystic in The Profession, too.

"My most ancient memory is of a battlefield. I don't know where. Asia maybe. North Africa. A plain between the hills and the sea..."

That opening line from the book evokes the moment in the movie Patton when the legendary General stands on an ancient battlefield, quoting verses from his "Through a Glass, Darkly" poem to Bradley. I even imagined I heard that distant echoing bugle call from the movie's score as I read it.

But Patton isn't the only modern military leader that comes to mind while reading of Pressfield's fictional General James Salter. MacArthur is the more likely comparison. If you've a bit of knowledge of the classics, however, you'll add Caesar, Alexander, Xenophon, Alcibiades, and a host of other obvious and not-so obvious archetypes to the mix. "Gentlemen," one character encourages his comrades on page eleven, "as Sarpedon said to Glaucus, 'Let us go forth and win glory - or cede it to others.'" This book might be set in the near-future, but it is Steven Pressfield after all.

But let's veer out of those depths a moment, and to another level of the book. Call it the shallows. I don't use that term derisively. If your knowledge of war and warriors is limited to Patton the movie (a good one), or if you've never wondered "What if a re-born Caesar had commanded a modern incarnation of Xenophon's Ten Thousand..." (I never had - until I read this book) you'll still find much here to enjoy. Whereas depth is an aspect of fiction embraced by so many critics and literature professors - and eagerly sought by the readers they influence - I believe the shallows are the level no work of fiction works without. And The Profession works as a beach read, too - something to take along on the vacation. A page-turner, a ripping good adventure yarn, one I consumed in a few disconnected half-hours in exactly that vacation environment, without having to flip backwards through pages past to remind myself of some character or plot detail.

I've already mentioned Alistair MacLean. If you've never heard of him don't worry - he'd faded away before Clancy's day. I read his books so long ago I can recall only vague details of his plots and nothing of his style. Likewise I haven't seen the movies made from them in years, but recall The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, and a handful of others as some of the best examples of the genre from back in the day. While rapidly moving the pages of The Profession from my right hand to my left, the thought occurred to me more than once that as far as vision matters, here's a modern movie mostly made. It's a summer blockbuster waiting to happen, maybe even one that will lead others to pick up a copy of the book.

And in the pages of The Profession some might discover the depths I've alluded to above. They're subtle, between the lines - author-inspired but reader-supplied. Pressfield offers much to think about, much to discuss, but he does it without preaching, without telling you what to think. Who you'll cheer for probably depends on what you think of America today - or the direction you perceive our Republic headed. Pressfield's America of 2032 might be a nation worth defending, but beyond the ever-rising price of a gallon of gas, whatever sort of place it is isn't described in much detail in this book - and I don't think that's author laziness or oversight. The idea that perhaps you should spend some time thinking about the events in this story, set in a near future rather than an ancient past, should not be dismissed. If Clancy's warriors have mostly vanished from the military of today, that doesn't mean they aren't somewhere to be found, and the members of Pressfield's Force Insertion seemed very familiar to me.

"Will he be able to navigate those waters?" Pressfield's hero asks the reader regarding Salter's plan to cross a modern Rubicon. "No one ever has."

Indeed, that's a lesson history teaches us. No writer has ever accurately predicted much of the near-future in a thriller, either, but I can describe this one in one chilling word:

Plausible.

So The Profession has found a place waiting for it on my shelves, just under that replica of a ruined coliseum.



2011-07-18 15:21:57