Marathon Man

 

Marathon Man – William Goldman

I bought this one as a Kindle Special mainly because I recognized the title as being a popular 50-year-old movie (yes, the 1970s WERE 50 years ago).  It’s always a bigger temptation for me to buy a book that I’m at least somewhat familiar with than it is to be wooed by a nice book cover or a compelling synopsis.  Sometimes I’m happy with my purchase, other times I’m not (I made a similar purchase a year ago, buying the book “Bridge of Spies” that Steven Spielberg made into a movie.  That books was awful.  The movie I haven’t seen).  Fortunately, this book was very good, and I actually watched the movie in my living room only an hour or so after I finished the book.  Thank you Amazon Prime.

This is a book that takes a bit for the story to fall into place. We’re not really sure where we’re going here.  The story begins with two old drivers in New York City embattled in “road rage” that ends up catastrophically for both.  We then are jarred to reading about a secret agent named “Scylla” who does a lot of shady work underground. It seems Scylla is always about to be killed by a sneaky adversary, or is himself trying to kill other sneaky adversaries.  We then jump to the actual “Marathon Man” - a young graduate student who lives in rather squalid conditions in New York City who is training to run marathons. Tom “Babe” Levy ends up being our main character.  He has a bit of an unpleasant past. We’re told his father committed suicide after being targeted by the Joseph McCarthy witch hunts, and there’s no mother either.  His only living relative is his older brother “Doc” who we read about from time to time. So Babe is a bit of a loner.

Although it took a while to figure out where this story was going, I was never bored.  Author William Goldman does an excellent job telling his readers what and how his characters THINK and FEEL and although I wasn’t sure how things would all tie together, I didn’t mind being in the dark for quite a while.   When the pieces DO finally start to come together, I must admit I was hooked.  I found the second half of this story to be a phenomenal page turner and there were many intriguing twists that caused me to think “Whoa! I did NOT see THAT coming!”  As I’ve already mentioned, I watched the movie immediately after I finished this story.  If that isn’t a sign of a good book, I don’t know what is.

It must be pointed out that we need to remember how long ago the 1970s were.  I was still a kid back then (which is why I didn’t see the R-rated movie at the time), but there’s so many things that we see in this movie that make an older person chuckle as they remember things such as Watergate and the Bicentennial. At one point, Babe writes his brother a letter.  On pen and paper.  And then puts it in an envelope and mails it.   It all seems so strange now.  It also seems quite bizarre to remember a time when people didn’t carry around a cell phone in their back pockets.  So many stories like this one that were written pre 2000 just can’t be “modernized” as the technology simply has made the world way too different a place. Nowadays, if one is being chased through the dark deserted streets of New York City at 3 a.m., they can just pull out their smart phone and dial 911.  They didn’t need to find a pay phone; or a dime.

And then we come to the fact that in 1973, World War II and the Holocaust weren’t that long ago.  The newspapers that carried the brutal stories of Hitler’s concentration camps still had not yellowed with age, and the world was still reeling from the madness.  This was especially true in the Jewish parts of New York City where it wasn’t uncommon to run into strangers who were still hand-tattooed indicating that they actually lived in, and thankfully survived, such insanity.  I mention this because this is a very key part of the eventual story.

I must also point out that sometimes when you read clandestine thrillers, it’s never easy to tie up all the loose ends and figure out exactly what everyone’s role and motivations are.  Example: There’s a very famous torture scene in this story involving a dentist.  Now, I see where torture is necessary to get the “enemy to talk” or to reveal high level state secrets that might change the direction of worldwide politics, but when I found out the “motivation” for the torture here, I never could quite figure out why torture was necessary.  Maybe I’m missing something here, but it seemed as though the author just wanted a really neat torture scene in his story (And he succeeded.  Man, did he succeed.) but it never seemed to make sense when one puts on their thinking cap and tries to rationalize things.  I guess in stories like this, the action is so good, that maybe the intention is that the reader or viewer not think and just enjoy the ride.  So don’t try to think too much when reading the story.

Speaking of the movie, I must say that I thought it was excellent as well. It stays mostly faithful to the book.  The only thing that seemed significantly different was the ending.  I read where the author wasn’t happy with the ending (when are authors ever happy when a director changes their story?) but I confess that I liked the ending of the movie better than the ending of the book.  The ending of the book, while satisfying, didn’t really seem as exciting as I thought it should be for such an exciting book.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book. I highly recommend the movie as well.  If books aren’t your thing, watch the movie.  If books are your thing, watch the movie after you read the book.  Of course, a lot of the excitement will be gone because you’ll know a lot of the “ah-has!” but the movie was a very good adaptation overall.