Biography of Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy (born 1947) writes novels of adventure and espionage in the international military-industrial complex that have earned him enormous popularity in the 1980s as a creator of the "techno-thriller" genre.

Tom Clancy was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1947, the son of a mail carrier and a credit employee. After graduating Loyola College in Baltimore in 1969, Clancy married Wanda Thomas, an insurance agency manager, and became an insurance agent in Baltimore, and later in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1973, he joined the O.F. Bowen Agency in Owings, Maryland, becoming an owner there in 1980. His poor eyesight made him ineligible for a military career, but Clancy maintained an interest in the military and researched various aspects of the armed forces and military technology. The ideas for several novels and main characters he wrote in the 1980s were formed in the late 1970s while he was conducting research. During this time, Clancy wrote in his spare time while working and raising a family, and in 1984, his first novel, The Hunt for Red October, was published by The Naval Institute Press, a noncommercial publisher in Annapolis. The story of the defection of a Soviet submarine commander to the United States, the novel captured the spirit of the Reagan-era Cold War politics that called attention to Soviet military capability and the United States' capacity to meet and surpass the Soviet challenge. The Hunt for Red October was noticed by President and Mrs. Reagan, who praised the book publicly and helped boost the novel to bestseller lists. Casper Weinberger, Reagan's Secretary of Defense, reviewed the book for The Times Literary Supplement, calling it "a splendid and riveting story" and praising the technical descriptions as "vast and accurate." Clancy's subsequent novels continued to feature plots based upon critical world political issues from the perspective of military or CIA personnel, including the international drug trade and terrorism. All of Clancy's popular novels have resided on bestseller lists, and Clear and Present Danger (1989) sold more copies than any other novel published in the 1980s, according to Louis Menand of The New Yorker. Today Clancy continues to write successful novels. Several of his books have been adapted as popular films, including The Hunt for Red October,Patriot Games (1987), and Clear and Present Danger.

Although, according to an interview with Contemporary Authors in 1988, Clancy claimed he did not create the "techno-thriller," his use of highly involved technical detail incorporated into complex, suspenseful plots made him the most successful practitioner of the genre and added a new level of military realism and sophistication to the traditional adventure novel. His books take their plots from the most pressing international concerns of his times. When the arms race was escalating in the 1980s, Clancy's novels The Hunt for Red October,Red Storm Rising(1986), and The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988) used different aspects of the Soviet-American conflict for story lines. In the post-Cold War era, Clancy turned to the South American drug trade in Clear and Present Danger, IRA terrorism in Patriot Games, and Middle East peace and nuclear proliferation in The Sum of All Fears (1991). Clancy takes his characters from various levels of military establishment insiders, from elite soldiers and crewman to commanders, generals, espionage operatives, and government officials. Their goals and motives are often clearly good or evil, and while later novels feature some ambivalence or introspection in lead characters, most of the moral choices characters face are straightforward questions of right and wrong. In addition to using declassified documents and tours of vessels and bases, Clancy conducted interviews with personnel in order to draw his characters accurately. The hero in many Clancy novels is Jack Ryan, a sometime CIA agent who epitomizes integrity, bravery, and ingenuity in a changing, high stakes world. Whether he is assigned to resolve a crisis, as in Clear and Present Danger, or stumbles accidently into an international incident and becomes a target for revenge, as in Patriot Games, Ryan is adept at using available technology to achieve his mission; as Clancy stated in the CA interview, "the superior individual is the guy who makes use of [new technology]." The accuracy of Clancy's descriptions of military-industrial technology and personnel has been characterized as remarkable for one outside the establishment, and his favorable portrayal of the American armed forces has earned him respect in military circles.

Ronald Reagan called The Hunt for Red October "the perfect yarn." This comment could be a summation of critical reception to Clancy's novels. Although some critics found the plots of The Sum of All Fears and Clear and Present Danger too lengthy and bogged down by the detailed technical descriptions, most agree that Clancy is successful in creating suspenseful, thrilling action stories. Appreciation of Clancy's technological details varies among critics; some find the insider's glimpse of weaponry and tactics presented with clarity, accuracy, and interest, while others, perhaps more knowledgeable about the technology described, find Clancy's renderings inaccurate and implausible. Critics are almost unanimous in their negative reaction to Clancy's skill at characterization, finding them underdeveloped, and the hero Jack Ryan too flawless and unbelievably virtuous. Clancy responded to criticism about Ryan by giving him some vices in later novels, a change some critics found unbelievable. Clancy's novels usually are received by critics in the spirit they are written, to entertain and educate while highlighting the important international issues of the times and showing how the United States can meet difficult challenges with moral integrity, courage, and the wise use of modern technology.

Known for hugely successful, detailed novels about espionage, the military, and advanced military technology, Tom Clancy was proclaimed "king of the techno-thriller" by Patrick Anderson in the New York Times Magazine. Since the 1984 publication of his first novel, the acclaimed Hunt for Red October, all of his books have become best-sellers. Popular with armed forces personnel as well as the public, they have garnered praise from such prominent figures as former President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Clancy's work has also received more negative attention from officials who found his extrapolations from declassified information uncomfortably close to the top-secret reality and from reviewers who criticized his characterizations and too-perfect weaponry. Still, sales in the millions and constant best-seller status attest to his continued popularity as "novelist laureate of the military-industrial complex," as Ross Thomas described him in the Washington Post Book World.

The Hunt for Red October, which describes the race between U.S. and Soviet forces to get their hands on a defecting Russian submarine captain and his state-of-the-art vessel, marked a number of firsts. It was a first novel for both its author and its publisher, Naval Institute Press, whose catalogue had previously consisted of scholarly and strategic works and the occasional collection of short stories or poems about the sea. It was the first best-seller for both parties as well, and it became the first of Clancy's books to be made into a motion picture. Conceived before the author, an insurance agent, had ever set foot on a submarine, it is "a tremendously enjoyable and gripping novel of naval derring-do," according to Washington Post Book World critic Reid Beddow. The book contains descriptions of high-tech military hardware so advanced that former Navy Secretary John Lehman, quoted in Time, joked that he "would have had [Clancy] court-martialed: the book revealed that much that had been classified about antisubmarine warfare. Of course, nobody for a moment suspected him of getting access to classified information." The details were actually based on unclassified books and naval documents, Clancy's interviews with submariners, and his own educated guesses, the author asserts. Admitting that "neither characterization nor dialogue are strong weapons in Clancy's literary arsenal," Richard Setlowe in the Los Angeles Times Book Review nonetheless expressed an opinion shared by other reviewers: "At his best, Clancy has a terrific talent for taking the arcana of U.S. and Soviet submarine warfare, the subtleties of sonar and the techno-babble of nuclear power plants and transforming them into taut drama."

In Clancy's second novel, Red Storm Rising, U.S.-Soviet conflict escalates to a non-nuclear World War III. Crippled by a Moslem terrorist attack on a major Siberian oil refinery, the Soviet Union plots to defeat the countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) so that it can dominate oil-rich Arab nations unhindered. The novel covers military action on land and in the air as well as on submarines; its complicated narrative prompted Chicago Tribune Book World reviewer Douglas Balz to note that Clancy's "skill with the plot ... is his real strength." Balz and other critics faulted Clancy's characterization, although in the New York Times Book Review Robert Lekachman deemed the problem irrelevant to the book's merits as a "rattling good yarn" with "lots of action" and the "comforting certainty that our side will win." John Keegan, writing in the Washington Post Book World, called Red Storm Rising "a brilliant military fantasy--and far too close to reality for comfort."

Patriot Games, Clancy's third book, tells how former Marine officer Jack Ryan, a key figure in The Hunt for Red October, places himself between a particularly fanatical branch of the Irish Republican Army and the British royal family. Several reviewers criticized it for lack of credibility, lags in the action, simplistic moral lines, and, again, poor characterization, conceding nevertheless that it should appeal to fans of the earlier books. Anderson voiced another perspective: "Patriot Games is a powerful piece of popular fiction; its plot, if implausible, is irresistible, and its emotions are universal." Pointing out Clancy's authentic detail, powerful suspense, and relevance to current history, James Idema suggested in a Tribune Books review that "most readers [will] find the story preposterous yet thoroughly enjoyable."

Ryan appears again in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, which returns to the theme of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. In this episode, regarded by critics such as Lekachman as "by far the best of the Jack Ryan series" to date, Clancy focuses on the controversial laser-satellite "strategic defense systems" also known as "Star Wars." According to Lekachman: "The adventure ... is of high quality. And while [Clancy's] prose is no better than workmanlike ..., the unmasking of the title's secret agent, the Cardinal, is as sophisticated an exercise in the craft of espionage as I have yet to encounter." Remarked Fortune contributor Andrew Ferguson, Clancy "aims not only to entertain but also to let his readers in on the `inside story,' meanwhile discussing with relish the strategic and technological issues of war and peace." Concluded Ferguson, "It is refreshing to find a member of the literati who is willing to deal with [defense policy] in a manner more sophisticated than signing the latest disarmament petition in the New York Times."

In Clear and Present Danger Ryan, in league with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), joins the fight against the powerful South American organizations that supply illegal drugs to the U.S. market. After the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is murdered on a trip to Colombia, the fight becomes a covert war, with foot soldiers and fighter planes unleashed on virtually any target suspected of drug involvement. Reviewing the novel in the Wall Street Journal, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams wrote, "What helps to make Clear and Present Danger such compelling reading is a fairly sophisticated view of Latin politics combined with Mr. Clancy's patented, tautly shaped scenes, fleshed out with colorful technical data and tough talk." Abrams commended Clancy's awareness of the ethical dilemmas that complicate such covert military operations. Some reviewers echoed earlier criticisms of Clancy's characterizations, his focus on technology, and his prose style, but, noted Evan Thomas in Newsweek, "it doesn't really matter if his characters are two dimensional and his machines are too perfect. He whirls them through a half dozen converging subplots until they collide in a satisfyingly slam-bang finale." Thomas called the book "Clancy's best thriller since his first" and "a surprisingly successful cautionary tale."

Unprecedented knowledge of military technology, plots of rousing adventure and taut suspense, and themes that address current international concerns have combined to make Clancy "one of the most popular authors in the country," in the estimation of Washington Post Book World writer David Streitfeld. He is so well liked by military personnel, in particular, that he has been invited to military bases and given tours of ships; reported Evan Thomas in Newsweek, "Bluntly put, the Navy realized that Clancy was good for business." Some critics even credit the author with helping to banish the negative opinion of the military that arose after the United States's controversial involvement in the Vietnam War. As for criticism of his work, Clancy admitted in a Washington Post article: "I'm not that good a writer. I do a good action scene. I handle technology well. I like to think that I do a fair--fairer--job of representing the kind of people we have in the Navy ... portraying them the way they really are. Beyond that, I'll try to ... improve what needs improving." The secrets of his success as an entertainer, concluded Anderson, are "a genius for big, compelling plots, a passion for research, a natural narrative gift, a solid prose style, a hyperactive ... imagination and a blissfully uncomplicated view of human nature and international affairs."

Historical Context

• The Life and Times of Tom Clancy (1947-)
• At the time of Clancy's birth:
• Harry S Truman was president of the United States
• Jackie Robinson joined Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming first black in major league baseball
• Albert Camus published The Plague
• The times:
• 1950-1953: Korean War
• 1957-1975: Vietnam War
• 1960-present: Postmodernist Period of American literature
• 1991: Persian Gulf War
• 1992-1996: Civil war in Bosnia
• Clancy's contemporaries:
• Erma Bombeck (1927-) American writer
• Tom Wolfe (1930-1996) American writer
• John Updike (1932-) American writer
• Bill Clinton (1946-) American president
• Stephen King (1947-) American writer
• John Grisham (1955-) American writer
• Bill Gates (1955-) American computer executive
• Yo-Yo Ma (1955-) French-born classical musician
• Selected world events:
• 1949: George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four
• 1953: Convicted Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed
• 1965: Black activist Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City
• 1973: U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion
• 1981: John Irving published The Hotel New Hampshire
• 1987: Peter Greenaway released film Drowning by Numbers
• 1991: Soviet Union was officially dissolved
• 1993: North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed

Further Reading

• Bestsellers 89, Issue 1, Gale, 1989.
• Bestsellers 90, Issue 1, Gale, 1990.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 45, Gale, 1987.
• American Legion, December, 1991, p. 16.
• Chicago Tribune Book World, September 7, 1986.
• Detroit News, January 20, 1985.
• Fortune, July 18, 1988; August 26, 1991.