Robert Ludlum successfully plots the good life
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from September 1982.
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The room, amidst the old-world grace of the Hotel del Coronado, had a view of modern Navy warships floating sullenly in the bay.
Ludlum, here for a visit, agreed that it might be just the place for one of his super-spies to meet a beautiful woman over a kir while those at other tables plotted the end of the world.
"It has crossed my mind. I sit here and fantasize where I would have my planes landing, that sort of thing. We're getting a tour of the hotel today - it's the kind of place that will show up somewhere," Ludlum said. "Somewhere" for Ludlum is almost always a best-selling book.
He is one of America's most successful authors. His latest, "The Parsifal Mosaic," is firmly seated atop the sales charts.
Ludlum's characters are trench-coated figures working their way through terrifying, labyrinthine struggles between governments, with the help of a woman who usually turns out to be the one true love. There is a trace of Ian Fleming's "Bond" in some of the Ludlum characters, but there are significant differences.
While Bond is fascinated by power, a character like Ludlum's "Havelock" is both fascinated and appalled by it. Ludlum's characters are more often injured emotionally and their lives are less trivial - characters that are a bit like Ludlum, himself.
"I write about power, or the abuse of power. I have a great animosity toward those who abuse power. I suppose my initial interest in the kind of thing I write about came because I'm a political animal," he said.
Some of the reasons for those abuses come from what we have done to our public figures, he said.
"We have a tendency to elevate people to such power that they can't possibly meet our expectations. We grant them abilities and intelligence that they don't have - things that no one could have.
"It is the Icarus syndrome. We force our public figures to soar so high that the wax in their wings and heads melt," Ludlum said. Ludlum seems to have the uncanny knack of writing about figures who undergo drastic personality changes and become dangerous to those they serve. In his new book, for instance, there is a secretary of state who operates beyond any of the conventional restraints. It is impossible to read about this character without having the uneasy feeling that Ludlum foresaw Alexander Haig on the day of his "I am in control" speech after the attempted assassination of President Reagan.
"People are always asking me if I'm clairvoyant. I'm not. I am an observer and I have lucked out on occasion. But I can't even spell clairvoyant," Ludlum said.
If Ludlum were indeed clairvoyant, his work would be cause for optimism because his characters normally persevere and win in the end.
"I am basically an optimist. I think people are blessed with the will to survive and with their principles intact," he said.
There is much cause for optimism on his part both because of his success as an author and in his ability to handle it.
He is a handsome, softspoken man with gray hair and blue eyes. He is 55 and did not write his first book until he was 40. It was an almost instant success.
Before that he had been an actor and producer on Broadway and an actor for television.
"When I was 40 I began my mid-life crisis, or whatever, and I wanted to get out of the theater - it was getting like the real estate business. I went to my wife, Mary, and told her I wanted to take some time and write a book," he said.
It was a decision not devoid of apprehension.
"My wife agreed with me but she asked if we could please take a vacation at the Connecticut shore. I didn't understand why at the time, but I know now that she thought we'd never have the money to take another one," he said.
But the book sold well and when it went into paperback he "was offered an amount of money I thought was equal to all the money in Saudi Arabia," he said.
He rarely looks back, but when he does it is often to go after the feel for an audience that he learned in the theater.
"My influence is from the theater. It's where I learned how important it is to keep an audience's attention. If you open on Saturday and bore your audience you'll be closed on Monday.
