World Famous Comics: Rogue Male (New York Review Books Classics)
Rogue Male (New York Review Books Classics)
By: Geoffrey Household Publisher: NYRB Classics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: NYRB Classics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 224 Publication Date: November 06, 2007 Release Date: November 06, 2007
Product Description: 1930-something: a professional hunter is passing through an unnamed Central European country that is in the thrall of a vicious dictator. The hunter wonders whether he can penetrate undetected into the dictator’s private compound. He does. He has the potential target in his sites and is wondering whether to pull the trigger when security catches up with him. Imprisoned, tortured, doomed to a painful death, the hunter makes an extraordinary and harrowing escape, fleeing through enemy territory to the safety of his native England. But that safety is delusive: his pursuers will not be diverted from their revenge by national borders; the British government cannot protect him without seeming to endorse his deed. The hunter must flee society, and he goes literaly underground, like a fox to its earth. The hunter has become the hunted.
Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male is a classic thriller and a triumph of suspense. Described by Household as a “bastard offspring of Stevenson and Conrad,” the book is no less remarkable as an exploration of the lure of violence, the psychology of survivalism, and the call of the wild.
A top-notch pursuit story rich with political commentary Bored, a professional hunter decides to see if he's capable of assassinating a national leader. He's caught in the process, badly beaten and left for dead. But he survives, and the rest of the book is a cat-and-mouse game with the security forces scouring the globe for him.
This is a humbling book, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's a damn gripping read, great fun on a strictly superficial level. Second, it's loaded with political musings on class and social structure that ring as true today as they did when it was written in 1939. Finally, though, it's humbling because it's a reminder that time just keeps ticking. When it was released, the London Times declared it "Simply the best escape and pursuit story yet written." Yet if I hadn't come on a link to it from a blog, I'd never have heard of it, and I don't think I'm alone.
Which is too bad, because it's a great, thoughtful read.
Writing Quality Rogue Male was meant as a thriller. One could put it in the same genre as books by Dan Brown, Michael Crichton, even Elmore Leonard. However, there is one distinguishing feature that separates Rogue Male from the dozens of thrillers filling the aisles of bookstores and that is the quality of writing. None of the above can measure up to RM in terms of language and syntax. The difference in quality is palpable. Basic descriptions and plot devices are figurative. Sandra Stotsky writes about this in her book, Losing Our Language and I am starting to agree with her. Books fifty years ago were better written on average than books today. Books written 100 years ago are an even better deal if one likes quality. Very few present day writers of even serious fiction (I am excluding Cormac McCarthy, J.M. Coetzee and Toni Morrison,) can stand comparison. I am not sure whether many writers write down to their audiences or whether this is what our education system now produces. Rogue Male reminds us that good writing is getting harder and harder to come by.
If you'd like to disappear If you'd like to disappear, consider reading this book for the least appealing methods at your disposal. It's a tale of a man's endurance beyond the ordinary and it becomes so microscopically focused on his effort to disappear that it effectively loses the broader picture of his rationale for having become a fugitive. In spite of its dark nature I never considered giving up on the book because it offers outstanding glimpses into the games our minds often play with us. This isn't the book for everyone, but it's worth the "getaway" for those who enjoy negotiating British personalities and mannerisms.
Classic thriller with a surprising real world premise Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male is a classic thriller. Household was a British writer, born 1900, who spent some time in the US "just in time for the Depression". He began writing in the US, then returned to England. This is his second novel, published in 1939. He spent the War as an Intelligence Officer in Rumania, then returned to a fairly successful career writing. Rogue Male remains his most famous novel, though Arabesque (made into a movie with Gregory Peck, as I recall) is also well known.
Rogue Male opens with the never named first person protagonist aiming a rifle with a telescopic sight from 550 yards at a certain Head of State. It's never made precisely clear who that is -- a country on one side or the other of Poland, which leaves two pretty evil candidates as of the late 30s. It's pretty likely that Hitler is the real target, but the book takes care never to reveal which of Hitler or Stalin was the target -- on purpose, I think.
The protagonist claims he had no intention of shooting -- he was just "stalking the most dangerous game" for the fun of it, to see if he could be successful. This doesn't play well with the local secret police, who torture him and leave him for dead. But he rather incredibly escapes, and makes his way down a river, soon pursued by his enemies. He stows away on a boat for England, but soon is again pursued. When he is forced to kill one of his pursuers, he becomes wanted for murder by the British police. He flees to the country, planning to literally hole up for the duration. But even his careful plans aren't quite enough -- some bad luck leads to the British police getting a lead, and though he can elude them, the bad guys are able to track him down.
It's pretty good stuff. Exciting, not too ridiculously implausible, and at least somewhat interested in exploring the moral basis of the protagonist's decisions. (Though there is plenty of guff, too, in particular lots of stuff about the wonderful ineffable qualities of the English Upper Class.) (Some of the book is the protagonist's own coming to terms with his real motives and intentions.) It helps of course that the protagonist's target is a real-life maximally evil sort -- even if we continue to disapprove of his assassination attempt, it's hard not to sympathize at some level. The book is also quite dryly funny on occasion. The ending is interesting in retrospect. The protagonist, having again escaped, decides his only recourse is to finish the assassination job. And there the book ends. But it was published in 1939. Then it was a very "open" ending. Now -- any time since 1945 really -- the ending has closed somewhat -- we can only conclude that the protagonist failed in his attempt and was presumable summarily executed. (Though I understand there was eventually a sequel.)
A Fugitive from State Terror This 1939 suspense thriller was his first big hit. It is written in the form of a journal or confession by an Englishman gentleman sportsman who hunted the most dangerous game. The writer was caught, tortured, then thrown off a cliff to make his death look like an accident. But he survived and escaped from a central European country. However, the agents of this country were put on his trail in England.
The unnamed hero withdraws funds from his account, then disappears into the country to hide in solitude. But in his escape an enemy agent dies, and the English police are on his trail too. The foreign agents can now use police reports to locate this fugitive. The story tells how he escapes, how he hides, and what happens after his is tracked down by a secret agent. The good guy escapes, assumes the identity of this secret agent, and lays a false trail out of the country.
This story records the thoughts of the hero. Dialogue is sparse. Parts of this story explain the operations of a secret agent. The author served as an Intelligence Officer in Rumania and the Middle East during WW II. His "Rogue Justice" is the sequel to this book. If you can accept the premise that his captors wouldn't finish him off in the beginning, the rest of the story follow. It reminds me of "The Great Impersonation" by E. Phillips Oppenheim, and a John Buchan story (hunted in the mountains).
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