BOOKS:Still Writing After All These Years
Mitgang, Herbert
BOOKS Still Writing After All These Years by Herbert Mitgang Eric Ambler is hard at work on his next book. Repeat: that's Eric Ambler, who, beginning in the mid-1930s, wrote a succession of...
...Okay, his publisher told him, in that case I'll give you half the usual advance...
...I'm really not kidding...
...Mark W. Clark's Fifth Army...
...I don't see myself as a portentous figure—in 1979 or 1980, I received an O.B.E...
...The Roosevelt era called to mind his five years of wartime service, beginning as a private in the Royal Artillery and ending as a lieutenant-colonel with the War Office, writing and producing training and documentary films in England and Italy...
...To me, a sense of place has always seemed one of the more mundane components of a writing talent, but it's obviously better to have one than not to have one...
...No, there are no intelligence people in it...
...That may be so, but remember this: if you stay away too long, there will come a day when you will go back and find the well dry...
...I don't consider myself a political person," he said...
...He thought for a moment...
...Obviously, the young broadcaster was unfamiliar with the internal combustion engine that drives a professional writer's life...
...If not democracy, what system did he like...
...No, I don't visit the countries I write about for the purposes of research—that's fatal for a novelist...
...I believe my books have some relevance in a social context, unlike most serious novels today...
...All research has to be is background...
...Unfortunately, it is the squalid truth, and we have the evidence to prove it...
...Eric Ambler and, incredible as it may seem, he's still alive.'" Recalling the remark, Ambler cocked an eyebrow above his pale-blue eyes, looking more amused than chagrined that anyone seemed surprised at the news he was still above ground...
...A walking stick ("it was the arthritis thing that got me"), parked next to our banquette, was his only visible concession to age...
...Another character in the novel speaks of the relationship between the CIA and KGB as "this iniquitous East-West gangster collaboration...
...For my wartime generation, it meant taking the best years of your life and turning them around...
...Why do I write...
...Early in my life and books, I was a little to the left," he said...
...Any novel needs suspense...
...Graham Greene once labeled his thrillers 'entertainments,' as if to tell the reader they weren't as important as his novels...
...He considered chemical warfare a nastier threat than nuclear warfare because there were few inhibitions about using chemical weapons in wartime...
...Although Ambler's thrillers are easier to find in second-hand bookstores than in the big chains in the United States, his books continue to appeal to new readers in Europe...
...He appeared elegant in a blazer, white shirt with widespread collar, pink-and-blue striped tie, brown suede shoes...
...Attributing villainy to both intelligence agencies was a plot device used by any number of his successors in the thriller field...
...I never put the Cold War in any of my books...
...One would have thought so...
...My book tours usually begin in Hamburg...
...I don't admire the democratic process—it's not very uplifting...
...I've never before written a book in which the women are dominant...
...If so, he's entitled...
...I asked him why he continued hitting the keys of his typewriter every day instead of resting on laurels and royalties...
...Nearly all the characters are lawyers...
...In The Intercom Conspiracy, written during the aerial fury of the Vietnam war and the sabre-rattling of the Cold War, Ambler equated the activities of the CIA and KGB...
...Suspense...
...I don't like the word suspense as an adjective," he said...
...When you do, you're worried about what the camera is seeing...
...A lot of Americans hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he was an ideal President...
...I dislike modesty—it's unbecoming...
...Ambler did manage to balance some novel writing with screenwriting for several years, but his reputation remains with his books...
...I remember talking with Graham about his invention of the word...
...As a matter of technique, did he spend much time researching his material in various locales...
...It becomes a filter between you and the story...
...He remembered that after the war, when he was living in Dover, his neighbor, Noel Coward, offered him some advice: "Forget all this film nonsense...
...Incredible...
...Although a sense of irony ran through the conversation, Ambler didn't speak in the dark tone that characterizes the dialogue of some of his early protagonists...
...I always found the Cold War distasteful...
...Not long ago, while I was doing a program for the BBC overseas service," he said, "one of the bright young broadcasters mentioned my writing, and then he said, 'That book is by Mr...
...And, as a matter of fact, by now I can't tell which are 'entertainments' and which are not— they're all Greene...
...The American headquarters officer who handed us the song sheet said it should be sung to the tune of 'God Bless America,' " Ambler recalled...
...The trouble later is that nearly all the notes go into a book...
...I lived in the States for eleven years and in Switzerland for sixteen years, but I remained a British citizen...
...What's the right word for the genre...
...His last contribution to The Progressive was an essay on Carl Sandburg's "Billy Sunday and Other Poems" (July 1994 issue...
...He's more than halfway through it...
...Write more books...
...Philip Toynbee once said that I was good bad, in danger one day of becoming good good...
...Thrillers...
...he began to say, but didn't bother to finish the thought...
...from the Queen, an Order of the British Empire, as if there were a British Empire...
...There are civil servants, but no spies...
...Of course, most serious novels have some relevance in a social context...
...The scapegoat is a man—an Austrian," Ambler said...
...Unfortunately, the Cold War did not help those dreams...
...Ambler's explanation sounded deliberately vague and circuitous, as if he were acting as a double agent to conceal the contents of The Scapegoat from his imitators in a crowded field...
...In the past, Ambler, who studied engineering at the University of London, was especially concerned about the threat of chemical weapons...
...One of the characters deals with a firm in the States that handles commodities futures in St...
...I did a lot of film work, including fourteen drafts of Mutiny on the Bounty for Marlon Brando, but I got off the credits," he said...
...One would have hoped so...
...Impossible...
...With all its retirees, Florida is as good a place as any for losing your money...
...I asked him what he thought about his prolific career and if—as with most dedicated popular writers—it included any regrets...
...If you don't have ambitions, you don't have disappointments...
...In my writing, I'm not trying to reach for intelligent scholars but people who read books and people who go to the movies...
...These thrillers led the late Graham Greene to call himself one of Ambler's "disciples" and John Le Carre' to say that Ambler's novels were "the well into which everybody had dipped...
...For a decade after World War II, he was a multi-thousand-dollar-a-week screenwriter in Hollywood...
...I voted Labour in 1945, but that was the extent of my political involvement...
...Without hesitating, he replied: "I've never looked at myself from the outside...
...Intrigue...
...I know of writers who make a lot of notes...
...His thrillers have been praised for their backgrounds as well as for their endangered characters...
...Never took sides during the Cold War, not that I was a closet Communist...
...I'm still writing every day...
...A central character in The Intercom Conspiracy, in dialogue that could have been delivered by a Greene or Le Carre character, sarcastically declares: "The Central Intelligence Agency's deep devotion to the spirits of peaceful coexistence and international brotherhood is well known...
...If you go to a place and say to yourself, I'll get material here, you're not really receptive to stories—you're not likely to digest...
...I mentioned that when I was an Army correspondent covering the front and datelined my dispatches, "With the Fifth Army," the general's public-relations staff strongly urged me to change them to read, "With Gen...
...It's like taking a camera along...
...After the war, nobody wanted to return to prewar conditions...
...Rather than talk about longevity, Ambler preferred to take a tour d'horizon of his career, with emphasis on the future: his novel in progress...
...He had wanted to write his thrillers under a pseudonym...
...Ambler rose slowly, reached for his walking stick, straightened his shoulders and, in the style of an enigmatic Ambler character, said, "I'm a moderate elitist—or an elitist moderate...
...It's called The Scapegoat but, he quickly cautions, that is only a "provisional" title...
...Because I enjoy it—I don't really need the money," Ambler said...
...he continues to write, in his head if not on paper, even if he's in his eighty-sixth year...
...There's plenty of room for thrillers because there aren't too many serious novels written now," he said...
...My books always start out as straight novels...
...You think that you will always be able to go back to the well...
...Captain John Houston borrowed Captain Eric Ambler to work on the famous American documentary The Battle of San Pietro, an experience that included getting bombed and strafed on the Italian front, but he received no credit for his contribution...
...Perhaps he meant it as a compliment...
...Herbert Mitgang is a writer in New York City...
...It's interesting to note that in his collected edition, Graham took off that label...
...In neutral Switzerland, of all places, the CIA has now allied itself with the notorious Soviet Committee of State Security, better known as the KGB, in a joint conspiracy of terror and coercion...
...No," Ambler diffidently said, "once was enough with John...
...In a changing world, was the thriller a thing of the past or could it still tell us something the news reports omitted...
...The object of the exercise is to entertain...
...I don't really like politics very much...
...While he was hostile to America, he was never rude about it...
...We were dining in a pricey restaurant five minutes by taxi from his London home...
...I suppose there are some young people around...
...But then they move on...
...For the first time in a dozen years, Ambler is at work on a book...
...There are some bad good novels, and a few good bads...
...He paused for a moment, then smiled and added, "He said with becoming modesty...
...I'm of the same generation as Greene...
...The film was suppressed during the war because it showed a burial detail...
...Did he work on any other films with Houston in wartime or later in Hollywood...
...The lyricist wasn't mentioned but I like to think it was General Clark himself...
...the Army told the uniformed filmmakers it was not the business of the War Department to make antiwar movies...
...Ambler makes you realize that a seasoned writer doesn't retire...
...Oh, Graham replied, and dropped the idea of using another name and created the word 'entertainment' to differentiate them from his other books...
...I've been a top name in Germany," he said...
...Among his screenplays are A Night to Remember, Wreck of the Mary Deare, and The Cruel Sea, for which he received an Academy Award nomination...
...His reply surprised me: "I admired the New Deal in America...
...They had dreams of an improved way of life...
...Iwondered if his political inclinations found their way into his books, as they surely did with his friend Greene, and as they do with the current master of the thriller, Le Carre...
...Repeat: that's Eric Ambler, who, beginning in the mid-1930s, wrote a succession of classic thrillers that blazed a trail for two generations of writers of political-suspense novels...
...It takes place during the last thirty years in Austria, Italy, England, and America...
...The better way is to write the story—and then go to see if the research is right...
...What I believe in is political and social justice...
...We exchanged tales about Mark W. Clark, the vainglorious commanding general of the Fifth Army in Italy...
...And he probably didn't know much about Ambler's score of books, including—to name only a handful—Background for Danger, Epitaph for a Spy, A Coffin for Dimitrios, The Intercom Conspiracy, and Doctor Frigo...
...Petersburg...
...Ambler easily topped me with a song that even British officers were requested to sing during social functions at Allied Force Headquarters in Caserta...
...He said it was called "The Sons of General Clark" and, a half-century later, he took delight in its imperishable lyrics: Stand up and sing the praise of General Clark, Your hearts and voices raise for General Clark, Red, white, and blue unfurled upon the field, Its message flaunts Clark's sons will never yield...
...Mark you, I do not argue that means being a standup comedian and going for belly laughs...
...What's unusual for me is that it's mainly about women...
...I have enough to do to look from the inside...
...Some newly arrived correspondents succumbed to the cult of personality until they wised up...
...It was inevitable, perhaps, that such devotion would lead them occasionally into strange and malodorous byways...
...We'll fight, fight, fight with heart and hand, As soldiers true embattled staunch will stand, The Fifth's the best Army in the land, Fight, Fight, Fight...
Vol. 59 • March 1995 • No. 3
