It’s All Feast, No Famine for Clavell : But Hunger Still Haunts Best-Selling ‘Whirlwind’ Author

Liz and I have a mutual friend we met years ago in Hong Kong, fellow called Marlowe, a writer. He always carried a can (of sardines) with him, iron rations in case of famine.

--Whirlwind, Page 1,085. Peter Marlowe is the alter ego (“the best of me”) of James Clavell, author of “King Rat,” a 1960 best-selling novel based on his experiences as an 18-year-old prisoner during World War II at a Japanese camp in Singapore.

Clavell went on to write three more best sellers about Asia: “Taipan” (published in 1966; the movie version, starring Bryan Brown, has just opened), “Shogun” (1970), “Noble House” (1981) and now, “Whirlwind.”

His First Contemporary Work

The new novel, Clavell’s first contemporary work, is about a British helicopter evacuation of pilots and planes from Iran during 24 tense days in 1979, as the Ayatollah Khomeini was consolidating his power.

Last January, Clavell, acting as his own agent, auctioned the mammoth completed manuscript of “Whirlwind”--the book contains more than 1,000 pages--to William Morrow & Company for a record $5 million, by far the highest price ever paid for North American hard-cover and paperback rights. Morrow should get its money back: Reviews have been mixed, but the book, out in time for Christmas, is at the top of most national best-seller lists.

‘Better for Survival Than Caviar’

Does its millionaire author, who can well afford caviar, still carry sardines at all times? “I did for a long time. I always carried the money to get them. Sardines are better for survival than caviar. If you mix a can of sardines in rice, you can feed 10 people. And if 10 people each carry a can, you can all live for 10 days.”

The former POW still feels the pinch of hunger, the wind at his back. Each of his novels involves an enormous amount of research and enough plot for a dozen books. All describe strategic thinking during wartime: Teams of tough British boys try to extract themselves from tight spots in exotic locales, often in parts of the former Empire. In “Whirlwind,” Clavell makes the story of the helicopter pilots’ escape so gripping that, as his editor, Jeanne Bernkopf, says, “You don’t notice that his characters are trying to control civilizations that are beyond their control.”

Clavell, like his character Peter Marlowe, is “a tall man . . . with fair hair, a patrician accent and a strange intensity behind his blue-gray eyes.” He was born in England and looks the part in a blue blazer, tattersall shirt and regimental tie. A scar on his right cheek, left by a Japanese bullet, is a permanent souvenir of his POW days. His limp has more prosaic origins: A broken leg never healed properly. He is soft spoken, with an extremely polite but unmistakably steely manner.

On the Move: An Air of Mystery

He also likes to affect an air of mystery. “Whirlwind” refers to the CIA, the KGB, SAVAK and just about every other secret service extant. He is evasive about his writing methods: “I work all the time.” Asked where he lives (he spends time in England, France, Switzerland and the United States), he replies, “I move around--I prefer to be a moving target.” Who’s after him? “Oh,” he replies vaguely, “people want to know if I’ve really been to Iran.”

Clavell began his writing career with movies. In 1953, he and his wife April, a former actress,

immigrated to Hollywood, where Clavell worked as a screenwriter and director. His screenwriting credits include “The Great Escape” and the original version of “The Fly.”

“The famous scene where the fly is found in a spider’s web, crying ‘Help me! Help me!’ was my invention,” he said. “One day my younger daughter Holly, who was about 9 then, came home from school and said, ‘Hey, Dad. Did you write “The Fly”?’ When I told her yes, she said, ‘ You wrote “The Fly”? Gee .’ I grew about eight feet; it was one of the great moments of my life.”

Films Bought Time for Novels

Clavell ascribes his unusual switch from screenplays to novels to “my contrariness. The film business gave me the time to write books, and the money. It’s not money that’s important in this life. It’s the lack of it.” The film career also, perhaps, led to the cinematic effect in his books. “Whirlwind” contains many scenes--a fleeing man stumbles into a leper colony; a woman is nearly stoned in a remote village--that Clavell wrote like a film editor. And at every chapter’s opening, the reader can visualize the title and the location flashing across a big screen.

Clavell says that when he starts a book, “I don’t have a plan. I look at storytelling in picture form. I watch the story happen, and I describe what I see. When you write a screenplay, you write only what you can photograph and what you can hear. As a result, my books have no fat, no purple prose, and they’re very visual. Dickens does the same thing. He has a very strange way of writing that is totally filmic. He gives you the big picture first, and then moves in--long shot, medium shot, close-up.

“When I started ‘Whirlwind,’ I was terribly secretive about the subject. My wife was the only one who knew I was working on a book about Iran. I once told my publisher that I was working on a novel about Japan in the 1600s, and the sales force thought I’d gone crazy. I had the title--one of Khomeini’s titles is ‘Whirlwind of God.’ I had visited Iran in 1974, when things were peaceful, with a friend in the oil business. I knew I wanted to write about a multinational, multiracial group of helicopter pilots who are mercenaries of a sort. Helicopters are vital to the oil business; the two go together.”

As part of his research, Clavell, who already had a pilot’s license, learned to fly a helicopter and visited oil rigs in the North Sea.

“I wanted high adventure, and I also wanted to explain Islam,” Clavell said. He began work on “Whirlwind” five years ago, when the Ayatollah was no longer in the headlines, but just as “Whirlwind” was published, America’s latest Iranian hostage crisis became news.

‘Not a Mad Dog’

Clavell, who likes to talk like one of his own characters, commented, “I have enormous joss (Chinese for luck). I can’t explain it; it’s a paradox. It’s important that people read ‘Whirlwind’ and understand that the Ayatollah is not a mad dog. He represents a very large number of people who believe what he believes. What is happening in Iran makes sense if you know the country’s history--the effect of the Shah’s reforms, the difference between Sunni and Shiite Moslems, and so on. Don’t forget, I’m not taking sides. I’m trying to present the thoughts of each separate character as accurately as possible.”

Both superpowers and every side in the Middle East are roundly criticized in “Whirlwind.” Clavell, always the former POW, profoundly distrusts government: “There’s no point in putting your faith in princes because princes plead expediency. Governments lie. The only thing of value is a family. With my family, it’s one for all and all for one.”

Wife Urged Him to Write

Clavell credits his wife with pushing him to start his first novel. Now his older daughter, Pamela, a literary agent, handles his foreign rights. He says he’s “rather glad” neither daughter became a writer: “It’s thankless. All writers have two jobs. My second job used to be film making; now it’s publicizing my books and selling the rights.”

Clavell gets involved in details like his books’ covers, and he tried to sell the rights to “Whirlwind” for only 15 years, a condition no publisher would accept. He always tries to drive the hardest possible bargain--and he is in a position to do so. One publishing insider noted, “Clavell is one of the very few writers--Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon, Louis L’Amour, James Michener, Stephen King are others--whose names have marquee value. Clavell’s name on the cover sells enormous quantities of books--whether or not they are good. Many publishers are watching ‘Whirlwind’ in hopes that it doesn’t do very well; they don’t want to pay that kind of advance routinely.”

Honor in Merchandising

“I don’t feel I lose face as a writer,” Clavell explained, “by being vitally concerned with the merchandising of my work. There’s no point in writing something if it’s destroyed.”

This year, Clavell did something unusual: he wrote a children’s book--for love, not money. Typically, he chose an illustrator and typographer himself and presented Delacorte Press with a complete package. As always, Clavell worked hard. His children’s book, “Trump-o-moto,” has a long, complicated plot involving travel from Australia to Japan, England, supernatural realms, and back again.

Soon Clavell’s vision will be almost ubiquitous. He has sold “Noble House” to NBC as an eight-hour miniseries: “It’s better to be with No. 1.” The series starts shooting the first week in January, and the author will be on the Hong Kong set “for good joss .” “King Rat,” already a film, will be a six-hour ABC miniseries, using additional material that “my editor quite rightly made me cut out of the book. It’s about the women involved with the men in the POW camp.”

“Whirlwind” is not for sale. “I know exactly what I want to do,” Clavell said, shrouding himself in mystery once again, “but it’s a matter of timing. You can write that anyone who says he has a deal with me is full of blank.” As usual, the former POW is controlling his own life--and work.