This was one of two books that were cobbled together by filmmakers to come up with the script of the 1974 disaster movie "The Towering Inferno" (I'm currently reading the other book and will post about that one when I'm done.)

Fans of the movie will notice a certain number of characters that were subsequently used in the screenplay, although their story line often differs in the original book. I found this book to be a page-turner all on its own, without the benefit of the added characters and plot in the other book. Recommended reading for fans of the genre.


**#38 of 100 books I pledged to read/review in 2015**

Great movie, The Towering Inferno!

One of the worst novels I have ever read! I can't believe I read it from cover to cover. Mind you, it was really tempting to throw it away just a few pages in but something told me that if it was good enough to make a feature film it must have either a good middle or end. Sadly, that was not the case. The book is terribly written. Unnecessary details and aimless dialogue. Frankly the first 100 pages are mysterious. They set the scene and yet leave you confused. I would sincerely urge readers to actively avoid this book. Trust me, there is nothing to gain from it.

read 10.02.84

3.5 stars

I can definitely see elements of The Towering Inferno; I'm not sure which differences came from the other source book, or were general adaptation changes.

It does start off slowly, taking time to set up the calamity, and felt a little dry at times, with sparse language rather than richness of description or character design. Still kept me reading an hour later than I intended.

Fantastic disaster premise, which inspired not only another book at the same time (The Glass Inferno), but the smash hit movie which BOTH books were based on - The Towering Inferno.

Decent read, with some tension, but this book is FAR less entertaining than the fast-moving, action-packed, charisma-stuffed film.

This book focuses far more on individual characters internal reactions to the disaster, and less on the proactive rescue attempts, which come so late in this book - and are so prematurely cut-off - the ending is very anti-climatic.

Stern uses the disaster to present his bias on political maneuvering (present in the film, but very toned down) and feminism (nary a hint in the movie). Gender politics which must have been very topical in the mid-70s, but far less so today. I kept wanting to scream - enough of the gender wars - get to the good stuff!!!

Alas, the good stuff - particularly in comparison with the film - hardly comes at all.

“Outside the city’s tallest fire ladders maneuvered uselessly; the problem was within, not without. On floor after floor, above and below street level, sweating, panting, coughing, and sometimes vomiting firemen wrestled hoses and hurled water, tons of water, at the sometimes seen, but usually hidden enemy – fire. In a thousand points within the walls of the building, ten thousand, material smoldered or burst into hesitant flame, grew in force and fury, or faded into mere glow and then nothingness from lack of oxygen. But where, for example, plastic-foam insulation had melted, flues were formed and in them a new chimney effect reached down and out into open halls and corridors for fresh air to feed the blaze, and the growing flames themselves added strength to the draft…”
-tRichard Martin Stern, The Tower

As premises go, the The Tower is about as can’t-miss as you can get. The high-concept plot can be succinctly described in a single sentence: There is a fire in the tallest building in the world, raging out of control, and there are a bunch of rich-and-famous people at the very top, celebrating the grand opening. In other words, you are taking the Titanic, turning it on one end, and striking a match. What follows is a race against time, set against the backdrop of man’s hubris.

It is strikingly cinematic. Thus, it is not surprising that Richard Martin Stern’s compact, 303-page novel was one of two books used as the basis for Irwin Allen’s 1974 disaster opus, The Towering Inferno. Indeed, if you are seriously considering hunting down a copy of this book, it’s probably because you appreciate the half-camp, all-spectacle grandeur of that film.

(Brief aside: The Towering Inferno was one of a spate of disaster epics released by Hollywood in the 70s, including such glorious titles as Rollercoaster, The Swarm, Airport, and Earthquake. The objective best of this bunch is The Poseidon Adventure, fueled by master-class overacting by Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine. My favorite, though, is The Towering Inferno. It features an all-star cast of past-their-peak stars, including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and William Holden; it has OJ Simpson playing a guy named Jernigan who rescues a cat; it required two directors and two cinematographers; it has an Oscar winning song; and it has a burning Robert Wagner conducting a danse macabre to a John Williams score. It is pure gold. There’s not even space in this brief aside to mention Fred Astaire).

Unfortunately, the only thing remarkable about The Tower is how badly it botches its execution by needless story convolutions, unnecessary side-plots, and oxygen-sucking philosophizing.

The Tower takes place on the day of the opening of the World Tower in New York City. The World Tower – not to be confused with the World Trade Center, located nearby – is the tallest building in the world, and to celebrate its dedication, there is going to be a party on the very tippy-top, with the builder, the mayor, the governor, the senator, a congressman, some guy from the United Nations…well, you get the picture. The only character worth mentioning is the governor, simply because he meets a young lady at the party and falls instantly, deeply in love, a relationship that is stunningly fake, yet does not even make the top-ten list of dumb things in this book.

This is one of those novels that pretends to be a true story, compiled from an official inquiry. It is a conceit that is picked up and dropped at will. Like every other superfluity contained herein, it adds nothing of substance, while calling attention to Stern’s deficits as a storyteller.

What are those deficits?

Simply put, Stern appears to have no idea how a thriller is constructed, how to properly modulate tension, or have the ability to distinguish between A-plot, B-plot, and stuff that should be excised completely.

For instance, The Tower takes around one-hundred pages (an entire third of the total length) to actually get the fire started (the result of a convoluted series of events whereby some guy for vague reasons is able to mess with the electrical grid, while simultaneously, a fire breaks out on another floor because of “spontaneous combustion”). During this time, we are treated to lengthy character introductions of people who are so thinly drawn as to be nearly transparent.

In this overlong buildup, we meet Nat Wilson, who is to architects what Indiana Jones is to archaeologists. The crucial difference is that Indy has a personality. All that Nat has is a wife named Zib, who doesn’t wear a bra and is cuckolding her husband by sleeping with the same slimy contractor who filled the World Tower with cheap wiring.

(No joke: There is an entire paragraph of Nat eating a peanut. The paragraph begins: “Nat cracked, opened, and ate a peanut. It tasted good.” In this scene, the peanut is not on fire, it is not being eaten atop a blazing building, and it is really pointless, providing an early test for a reader’s patience).

As the characters act out their sub-soap opera arcs, Stern fills the interstitial moments with speeches. Belying the reason for its existence, The Tower is incredibly, confoundingly talkative. It really should have been named The Towering Monologue. Much of the talk is ruminative, discoursing on human arrogance, city-planning, and finding love shortly before immolation in a 125-story pyre. Clearly – and this is the reason The Tower ultimately fails – Stern had some things he wanted to get off his chest. His diatribes – there is no better word – are aimed squarely at 1970s New York City, which he caustically describes as a failed state. For Stern, the building of the World Tower is doomed not because of its tremendous height and shaky electrical system, but because the city itself is doomed, and the building should not have been built in the first place. Briefly, I tried to find an actual ethos, to discern whether he was an adherent of Jane Jacobs or Robert Moses. I quickly gave up, because he’s mostly a crank who obviously prefers the sprawl of the suburbs.

(Another Stern target is “Women’s Lib.” That’s what he calls it. Women’s Lib. Stern is so retrograde, so struggling with the concept of women in the workplace, and whether or not they are wearing brassieres, that it’s not even insulting).

The most astounding thing about The Tower is that Stern thinks we care about all this ancillary crap, rather than the natural, inherent theater of people struggling to live while the hourglass drains down (and the fire burns up). One striking example: Two-thirds into the novel, Stern cuts away from the creeping flames to give us seven pages of Zib’s backstory working at a magazine.

I sort of get it. Suspense can be a tricky thing. Focus too long on the peril and it becomes familiar, thereby losing some of its edge. Orchestrating scenes so that they grip the reader and advance the drama, without blunting that edge, is an art that Stern does not master here. (Despite all the critical sneers, The Towering Inferno attains this balance perfectly, and without breaking a sweat).

Before the RMS Titanic sank in 1912, there was a book called Futility, written by Morgan Robertson, that eerily prefigured this real-world event. Robertson’s work is not good, but the way he imagines the largest ship on earth hitting an iceberg – nearly fifteen years before it actually occurred – is chill-inducing.

There’s a touch of that prophecy in The Tower. The ghosts of September 11, 2001 hover over these pages. It is impossible, as we read about the World Tower, not to think of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, flaring like gigantic candles. More pertinently, Stern explains a bunch of flaws in the central core system of these mammoth high rises that – on that awful day – actually led to the collapse of both buildings, before many people near the top could escape. Still, because it is so disappointingly average, it is difficult to give Stern too much credit in the foresight department.

The Tower should have been a sweaty-palmed divertissement. Instead, it’s an overthought, overwrought bore that smothers any flicker of excitement with ponderous dialogue and half-thought social commentary. I can only recommend it as a curiosity for those who love The Towering Inferno as much as I do. But really, you’d be better off skipping this and just watching the movie again.

The movie was better

After reading the 2 books, (This and The Glass Inferno) I could tell that the tower was the least used. It started out good bit got caught up in drama and no action. The ending was a downer and there are too many "goddammed" is use. Call it lazy writing.
I expect so much more, but felt it was a letdown. I could see that the director had to piece the 2 novels together to make a movie. But also create some tension that wasn't present in the book.

It doesn't happen often, but I have to say that the movie (The Towering Inferno) was better. Too many of the three hundred-ish pages were spent dealing with various wife-borrowing scenarios which didn't really add to the story. I suppose for four bucks at a secondhand store it wasn't so bad, but I can see why the moviemakers had to combine it with another book to get a exciting disaster story.

One of the two novels that the movie The Towering Inferno was based on. It has its moments of drama, tension, and action. It also has poorly developed characters and storylines. With blue bloods living and partying in the top floors of a 125 story building, an explosion in the bottom floors creates a fire that traps them. The author has characters giving lengthy speeches to one another that too often stop any momentum cold. In the end the fate of too many characters are left unresolved.

Chillingly prophetic

Yay ::::) 8uilding ::::)