Chuck Logan apparently watches C-SPAN
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 3:30AM Got a copy of Homefront from my Mom for my upcoming birthday, and quickly scanned through the last hundred pages or so, missing the entry that involves me. So I next started from the beginning, sort of scanning/reading.
It's a good book, which uses the global war on terrorism as sort of a big, distant backdrop. The characters, Broker and Nina, have a past--as they say. As the cover description says, no one in their small MN town knows about how, months earlier, they played crucial roles iin averting an act of terrorism--or how it changed them.
The dynamic of the book is that current events in this small town "set off an avalanche," and it all starts with a grade-school bully.
In form, it is reminsicent of a really great David Cronenberg movie, "A History of Violence."
The writing seems very sharp, especially if you like dialogue.
Anyway, I'm working through the first hundred pages, and see references to TV personalities and a brief discourse on the differences between various news networks and . . . C-SPAN. Hmm. I see that and I'm sort of believing this is a book where I might be mentioned.
Then into the second hundred pages, and there's a reference to how Nina has mastered getting inside her enemy's OODA loop, with a quick mention of Boyd.
Then I got nervous. Davison said the reference to me was on the same page as the Boyd mention. I mean, how many Boyd OODA references would a thriller have?
So I keep scanning/reading, and finally find it on page 245:
Broker studied Griffen's face as he said that, always the lilt of the road not taken in his voice. "It's all changed, Griffin; you wouldn't recognize special ops anymore. The people are different, the gear, the thinking. Hell, they even have a different map of the world.""Yeah," Griffen said wistfully, slouching back, drawing his neck into his shoulders as a gust of cool breeze blew over them. "I saw that snappy consultant guy, Barnett, give his briefing on C-SPAN. There's the globally connected core. In the middle you got Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, all the ragheads in the nonintegrated gap."
"Face it, man. We're dinosaurs," Broker said.
The second OODA reference is on the bottom of the page, referring to Nina's as an MP in Bosnia and later training with Delta.
Logan's book has a number of such grounding, near-pop culture references, and it was kinda cool to see the Core-Gap thing used in that manner, signalling that it's really embedded in the minds of a significant number of people that he felt confident enough to use it in a book with minimal explanation. If you're in the vision business, you have to like that.
Spent the last couple of fog-filled days making lotsa calls and emails (the usual), working some stuff for Oak Ridge National Lab (the delayed seminar with scientists on Development-in-a-Box), and catching up on my paperwork.
On the house front: basketball hoop is up. It's a huge one, like everybody's else's in Indiana, nice enough to sit in a high school gym. Got the garage totally ship-shape, and tested the emergency generator. Now down to just my office and the larger yard. Tire mulch goes around playset today, along with trimming hedge. Once grass seeded, flag pole goes up and we're pretty much done. Feeling very nice to be settling in so.
Reader Comments (2)
Congratulations on becoming a realistic background detail!
a really great David Cronenberg movie, "A History of Violence."
****
I'll second that recommendation. Will have to pick up the book to. Almost done with "The Final Battle" by William C. Dietz. Fast read, escapist sci-fi.
Kudos on becoming pop-icon material.