Open Channel D

Jeff Cohen

It's all Napoleon Solo's fault.

When I was about nine years old, I was obsessed with The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the television exploits of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, agents of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. And part of this particular obsession was fed by reading: There were numerous U.N.C.L.E. tie-in novels, including titles written specifically for what would now be considered "middle-grade readers". These, you can be sure, I was allowed to have, since my parents were happy I liked to read. And they didn't expect me to start with Crime and Punishment when I was nine. Come to think of it, I still haven't gotten to that one.

One U.N.C.L.E. book in particular, whose title I am unable to recall, caught my attention. For some reason early in the story, Alexander Waverly (the crusty but lovable boss to our intrepid agents, who was played on television by Leo G. Carroll) had to travel from the U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York to Washington D.C. to have a meeting with... somebody (the details are a little sketchy for me these days). 

Upon arriving in our nation's capital, Mr. Waverly gets into a cab (you'd think a bigshot like him would have a limo waiting to take him to this high-level confab, but no) and starts filling his pipe--no restrictions on such things in the Sixties--and chats with the cabbie. Mostly about how hot and humid it is in Washington.

"Beastly hot," Waverly says (or something like it; I'm working from a memory 45 years old).

"It gets hot a lot this time of year down here," the cabbie replies. "But this is sure hot."

"Hot," Waverly echoes.

(Can you tell it was 100 degrees in New Jersey this weekend?)

No kidding; the word "hot" is bandied about like an especially delicious candy the writer can't stop savoring as it does down. And this goes on for at least a half a page, although my childhood memory stretches it out to a page-and-a-half. That's how bored I was, and how clearly I remember thinking, perhaps for the first time:

"I could have written it better than this."

Now, keep in mind; I'm nine years old, and believe that writers are a special breed, a group of demigods who can take any topic and turn it into gold simply by looking at it (were that such were possible!). I labored under the assumption, as some adults seem to perpetuate, that writers (professional writers, that is) weren't like the rest of us; they were somehow elevated and untouchable.

In other words, they weren't people like me.

But with that moment, that random thought indicating I could have gotten this story told better than whatever mercenary was pounding this one out for a quick buck, I began to think of writers differently. Maybe they weren't above reproach. Maybe they weren't ALL great at what they did. 

Maybe I could do it, too.

Not long after that, I wrote my first story. Luckily, my memory has erased all traces of that one, but I kept going. Shortly thereafter, I realized that the movies and TV shows (like, for example, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) were written, and eventually I started on screenplays and spec TV scripts. 

A mere 33 years after that first impulse, my first novel was published. A wild success story, no?

The point is, I recall thinking like a writer very early on. I noticed that words were being overused, that the story was being delayed and drawn out unnecessarily. I started thinking about how I'd do it differently. 

That U.N.C.L.E. book, which was no masterpiece, started my mind rolling, and to this day, I urge my students to read bad writing, since the mistakes will leap off the page at you and make you (at least) think, "Well, I'll never do that!") So I have to wonder if that was the time I started thinking like a writer. But then, I was already noticing the deficiencies in what I was reading; does that mean it was something that I brought with me straight from the factory? Did I make myself a writer, or was I born that way? 

Does it matter? 

Comments

[bookwitch]

There were books? Oh well, seems I didn't miss much.

This reminded me of the Torchwood book my avid fan of a daughter read some years ago. She's also uncritical of her favourites, so I was pleased (while disappointed) to hear her say what a badly written book it was. Nice to know she could tell, but dreadful that they churn out these things and want to be paid for it.

[Barry Ergang]

I was a big U.N.C.L.E. fan, too, and read a number of the books, most of which were pretty lame despite being cranked out by some reliable storytellers including Michael Avallone and Harry Whittington. I don't know why I remember this after all these years, but I do: Whittington overused (and that's putting it charitably) the word "saw." He used it not only to indicate visual experiences, but also to indicate realizations--e.g., "Napoleon Solo saw that the plane would miss the runway," a sentence I just fabricated because I no longer have the book to draw from.

[Jack Jackson]

I was an U.N.C.L.E. fan, too. Both "The Man from..." and "The Girl from..." series. The whole world was spy-mad in those days...James Bond, Derek Flint, Matt Helm, Danger Man (aka Secret Agent) and The Prisoner. One of my X-mas gifts was the Sears and Roebucks version (almost everything my dad bought new came from Sears) was a knock-off the James Bond briefcase that was chock full of weapons, cameras, spy tools, etc. Anyway, I was such a fan of U.N.C.L.E that I and two buddies wrote an outline for a pilot episode of 'The Kids from U.N.C.L.E' in which 'the kids' [real kids? Wee people? Who knew.] have to keep a code book that appears to be a comic book out of the hands of THRUSH agents. We even mailed it to NBC and got back photos of the U.N.C.L.E cast, some triangular U.N.C.L.E. ID pins and official membership cards signed by the show's producers - Norm Felton and Boris Ingster. I didn't realize that there was such a thing as a crappy book that you didn't need to finish if you didn't want to until much, much later. Maybe that's a seminal event for a young reader/writer that needs to be teased out.

Years later I had the chance to buy one of the U.N.C.L.E. gun rigs - the converted P38, the shoulder holster, the goofy shoulder stock. The dealer wanted something like $200 for it and I wasn't a big enough fan to lay out that much dough. Probably a bad decision but such is life.

[William]

The very first thing I ever wrote was "The Kachina Doll Affair". I don't recall all the details, but it was an eight year old boys' attempt to write an UNCLE novel for Ace Books. Something on an American Indian reservation, a smuggled Kachina Doll filled with crystals that would turn into a deadly airborne virus when exposed to the air, and a blazing fire-pit, plus the threat of Napoleon and Illya being scalped alive.

Thank God it's been lost...:)

[Linwood Barclay]

I credit Man from UNCLE, in part, with wanting to become a writer. One episode a week was not enough, so I had to invent more stories for myself. At the age of 10, 11, I was typing out 50-60 pages novellas based on Solo and Illya. In Grade 6, I sent a script to the studio, which would have been good enough to at last been a third season episode. (Dear God, how the show went off the rails that year.) I got back a letter, and personally inscribed, autographed photos. That show had more of an impact on me than any other, even since. All my UNCLE novels went missing in my mid teens, but over the years I have found them all again.

[Ashley McConnell]

There were a LOT of books, and some of them were MUCH better than the mid-grade one described (I remember fondly THE RAINBOW AFFAIR). There was also a monthly magazine with an MFU novella and unrelated short stories by such "unknowns" as Theodore Sturgeon.

Some of those books *were* "churned out", as you say--written over a *very* short period of time by some poor schmuck of a writer who had rent or an electric bill to pay. But of course nobody in an office job has ever slacked off on anything, ever, or done a hurry-up sloppy report...

[Ashley McConnell]

Count me in as another UNCLE fan. It not only encouraged me to write, but it was a specific factor in getting me a job as a security administrator at a government weapons testing facility. (To be fair, nobody in their right mind WANTED to work in Tonopah, Nevada!) I had no experience, but I was an UNCLE fan, and apparently the boss was just that desperate! (It turned out to be a great job.)

[Jack Jackson]

Wow...How strangely blog threads can turn.

I, too, attempted to become a spook. The NSA gave an on-campus test in 1978 and I scored well enough that I got an application and an expenses paid trip down to Ft. Meade. The first question the guard, who was wearing a .38, asked me was, "Your application says you have a cheloid scar on your left elbow. May I see it, please." "No problem." seemed like the right answer to a woman wearing a gun and looking like she knew how to use it.

Anyway, two days of interviews with 5 section heads - two in computing, one in cryptography, one in French, one in Russian, along with psych inventory tests, physical tests, polygraph tests and some rather invasive interview questions - Have you had any homosexual liaisons? How many women have you slept with? Could you give up marijuana? --they finally made me a job offer. I could join the NSA in Procurement for the kitchen. WTF? They knew from my profile what to offer that would elicit a terse 'No'. I was a junior in college and didn't know then that you get IN and THEN go where you want.

Only place I've ever been to that had beer machines in the cafeteria, though. And the bar in the Holiday Inn was jamming.

[Toni LP Kelner]

I think I have most of the paperback UNCLE novels, but I know I have a complete run of UNCLE digest magazines.

Never tried to write anything for UNCLE--by the time I discovered the show, it was far too late. But I sure did enjoy reading those books and magazines!

[Toni]

I was a huge UNCLE fan too - only i liked Illya (David McCallum - and in his 70's he's still HOT on NCIS). that show inspired me to write my first full length novel at 12 - a piece of you know what, to be sure,but it got me started!

[Toni]

and PS I read all those novels too and you're right - the writing was horrible!

[Mary Axford]

Oh, how you bring back my childhood! I too was a huge fan, and a friend and I discovered the books. We read them so much we started quoting them to each other ("My teeth itch" is the only quote I remember right now). I lost the books when my family moved when I was 13, but I remembered that my favorite of the books was The Vampire Affair. I was over the moon when I found a copy at a science fiction convention when I was in my 20s.

I had met Forry Ackerman at a convention, and was truly startled, when rereading The Vampire Affair, that one of the characters in the book was Forrest J (no period) Ackerman. I asked him about it at another con afterwards and he told me that the book was written by a Los Angeles fan who afterwards had the horrible bad luck of being killed in fall in his shower.

Hm... wonder if I still have that copy? I did, of course, get Forry to autograph it...