114 replies to this topic

[Scrambled Eggs]

I'm a little suprised by the reaction to this. I think the problem might be one of expectations?

This was always going to be mostly a pastiche, we've known about "writing as Ian Fleming" for a while. By definition, no pastiche is going to fully capture the spirit of the original. Faulks has opted to have fun with it rather than be too precious about fine detail - I think thats how it should be.

Afterall, who is to say what is truly Flemingian? Imagine if Fleming had never written YOLT, if a continuation author had written a novel in which Bond becomes convinced he'd a Japanese fisherman, I imagine he'd have been criticised for being silly and not Fleming enough.
And of course, Fleming himself was never that consistent about the fine details....

[Trident]

I'm a little suprised by the reaction to this. I think the problem might be one of expectations?

This was always going to be mostly a pastiche, we've known about "writing as Ian Fleming" for a while. By definition, no pastiche is going to fully capture the spirit of the original. Faulks has opted to have fun with it rather than be too precious about fine detail - I think thats how it should be.

Afterall, who is to say what is truly Flemingian? Imagine if Fleming had never written YOLT, if a continuation author had written a novel in which Bond becomes convinced he'd a Japanese fisherman, I imagine he'd have been criticised for being silly and not Fleming enough.
And of course, Fleming himself was never that consistent about the fine details....

At the moment my disappointment doesn't concern pastiche. To be honest, I'd very much welcome pastiche (and the 75 percent approach Faulks mentions seems a very sensible thing to do IMHO) and I can easily live with minor or at times major inconsistencies. After all, Fleming wasn't perfect himself. Come to think of it, who really is? Apart from Stephen Fry?

No, my problem is that I don't feel this assault-scene is serious. I already mentioned, how remarkably untouched Bond is during and, most of all, after the events. Apart from doing away with his assailants with no apparent effort he doesn't even wonder who attacked him. Or why?

It just doesn't ring true to me at the moment. Perhaps this will go down a bit easier and settle in my gut when I have the actual book in my hands. But at the moment it feels like, well, satire?

[Loomis]

I'm a little suprised by the reaction to this. I think the problem might be one of expectations?

This was always going to be mostly a pastiche, we've known about "writing as Ian Fleming" for a while.

See, I always took "Writing AS Ian Fleming" to mean that the reader would be able to pick up DEVIL MAY CARE and not be able to tell that it hadn't been written by Fleming.

If Fleming had written DMC, he wouldn't have put in a gratuitous Beatles and Stones reference to say "Ho ho ho, James Bond's in the 1960s!". Because it would have been the present day as far as he was concerned. Why mention what pop stars are getting up to? These jokey pop culture references seem more appropriate to Austin Powers.

[[dark]]

I'm inclined to agree with the consensus here - but I'll reserve complete judgement until I've read the novel's 300-odd pages.

Maybe it's been the enormous hype surrounding this book (has any continuation novel ever been the subject of such intense promotion?), but I wasn't blown away. It was good, but not remarkable.

The Bond/M scenes in the Fleming books are among my favourites, but having read this extract, Faulks' meeting was somewhat unmemorable. So was the bike chase, for that matter. Perhaps it plays a larger role in Devil May Care, but the way it reads, that's not the impression I got.

It's well written enough, but it does appear guilty of "ticking all the Fleming boxes" to the point of being unsubtle about it (though that's to us fans). And suddenly transplanting Bond back into '60s society after his "sabbatical" seems like a slightly forced measure to similarly place a 2008 reader in that era.

Maybe I expected something groundbreaking - something revolutionary - from Devil May Care, but it seems increasingly likely we'll be getting a by-the-numbers Bond adventure.

I look forward to reading tomorrow's extract to see whether Faulks just struggled with the MI6 team.

[spynovelfan]

If Fleming had written DMC, he wouldn't have put in a gratuitous Beatles and Stones reference to say "Ho ho ho, James Bond's in the 1960s!". Because it would have been the present day as far as he was concerned.

I agree - those references seem very contrived.

This is just an excerpt, and I'm sure things will hot up and as we get further in it will become more its own thing, but this read to me as a cross between a serious attempt at an opening to a Bond novel and pastiche/parody: something Faulks might have handed in as his contribution if the Times had asked seven leading British novelists to write an opening to a Bond novel to commemorate Fleming's centenary, or something of that nature. As a start to a real Bond novel set in the 60s, though, it felt to me like a very good impression of a weak Fleming opening, following almost exactly the same beats one would expect, with tons of frankly rather hamfisted references thrown in. To be fair, Fleming himself could do that, and also frequently made continuity errors. An example of the former from From Russia With Love; would a real Russian spymaster say to another Russian spymaster the following:

'First we lose Gouzenko and the whole of the Canadian apparat and the scientist Fuchs, then the American apparat is cleaned up, then we lose men like Tokaev, then comes the scandalous Khoklov affair which did great damage to our country, then Petrov and his wife in Australia - a bungled business if ever there was one! The list is endless - defeat after defeat, and the devil knows I have not mentioned the half of it.'

Well, he's mentioned most of it, and very conspicuously, too! Khoklov is mentioned by the Russians five times in the novel. In real life, I think they'd all have avoided mentioning it like the plague, and would surely not have bothered to give such a neat chronological run-through of 'all the problems we in Russian intelligence have had recently' in such a way. It's just to let the reader know, but it's a bit obvious with it. And here's an infamous example of a Fleming continuity error, also from From Russia With Love:

'Bond had never killed in cold blood...'

Somewhat contradicts Casino Royale!

Back to Faulks, though. It is just an excerpt. But my first impression was that it was disappointingly weak - I'd be delighted to be proved wrong by the rest of it, though.

[Loomis]

Disappointing indeed. Here are a few more fanboyish gripes:

May, the Scottish

[Jeff007]

So far Benson is much closer than Faulks for writting as Fleming.

[spynovelfan]

On a wider point: Faulks seemed pleased in one interview I saw that he'd found a substance (heroin) that fascinated his villain and a location (Afghanistan, at a guess) that Fleming hadn't used. True, although Fleming used heroin-smuggling in Risico, which Faulks baldly references (''It reminds me of Kristatos and that Italian operation,' said Bond...'). But Faulks seems to be unaware that heroin-smuggling was used many many times in spy thrillers of this era. Best known, perhaps, are Len Deighton's Horse Under Water (1965), the title of which is a reference to the drug, and The Spoilers by Desmond Bagley (1969), but a slew of American thriller-writers, many of them influenced by Fleming, also used it: The Death Bird Contract by Phillip Atlee (1966) (in which Joe Gall, the American agent and narrator, deliberately gets himself addicted to heroin to complete the job), The Mark of Cosa Nostra by Nick Carter (1971), Assignment Bangkok by Edward S Aarons (1972) and so on.

I appreciate that it would be next to impossible to come up with something that hadn't been covered in one way or another by previous writers, so I'm probably sounding very picky indeed - but, for me anyway, heroin smuggling, even by a man with a monkey's paw (very Harold Saltzman!), was one of the single most over-used plots for 60s pulp spy thrillers.

Still... I am looking forward to the rest of this.

[Major Tallon]

Having read this a couple of times, I've come to some preliminary conclusions. As I previously said, I've got mixed feelings. The writing of the scenes with May, Moneypenny, and M strikes me as terribly flat and unconvincing. This simply fails to capture the flavor of Bond's relationship with these characters. The problems with M's briefing are more troubling yet. If the setup for the mission, as conveyed by M, fails to stir the imagination or convey a sense of urgency in what Bond is being assigned to do, the entire novel suffers. In this case, I found that scene uninvolving.

I thought that the chase with the motorcyclists came off somewhat better. I'm bothered, however, by the idea that all this mayhem can take place on a London street and Bond afterwards just drives off to the airport with the attitude along the lines of "That's them sorted, then." Does he not summon the authorities or try to find out who the attackers were and what motivated them? The attack suggests that there's a threat to the security of the Secret Service just outside its headquarters, for goodness sake. That's a matter potentially more pressing than the mission M has given Bond, and Bond doesn't put an investigation in train.

I'm not, on the basis of this extract, pronouncing the book a failure. Remember the intial negative reaction to the first published extract of Silverfin? Still, my expectations for Devil May Care had been very high. Now I'm concerned.

[K1Bond007]

On a wider point: Faulks seemed pleased in one interview I saw that he'd found a substance (heroin) that fascinated his villain and a location (Afghanistan, at a guess) that Fleming hadn't used. True, although Fleming used heroin-smuggling in Risico, which Faulks baldly references (''It reminds me of Kristatos and that Italian operation,' said Bond...'). But Faulks seems to be unaware that heroin-smuggling was used many many times in spy thrillers of this era. Best known, perhaps, are Len Deighton's Horse Under Water (1965), the title of which is a reference to the drug, and The Spoilers by Desmond Bagley (1969), but a slew of American thriller-writers, many of them influenced by Fleming, also used it: The Death Bird Contract by Phillip Atlee (1966) (in which Joe Gall, the American agent and narrator, deliberately gets himself addicted to heroin to complete the job), The Mark of Cosa Nostra by Nick Carter (1971), Assignment Bangkok by Edward S Aarons (1972) and so on.

I appreciate that it would be next to impossible to come up with something that hadn't been covered in one way or another by previous writers, so I'm probably sounding very picky indeed - but, for me anyway, heroin smuggling, even by a man with a monkey's paw (very Harold Saltzman!), was one of the single most over-used plots for 60s spy thrillers.

Well in that interview (I believe it's the same one) he just merely said he was looking for something that Fleming might have used but never did. I don't think he cares what other espionage novelists have done. Opium fits what he was looking for though and frankly it's refreshing enough that it wasn't something Fleming has used (or feels over used) like diamonds or gold or ?? whatever.

I agree that there's a lot issues that one can take with this extract, but I'm also surprised by the reaction that so many seem to have and conclusions so many are coming to. The book is overhyped so perhaps so many of us expected more. I've always said the "Writing as Ian Fleming" bit was stupid and obviously brings with it a higher degree of criticism, which is kind of unfortunate considering Faulks has even stated he was not going for 100% Fleming.

[spynovelfan]

Well in that interview (I believe it's the same one) he just merely said he was looking for something that Fleming might have used but never did. Opium fits that. He touched on drugs in Risico and the beginning of Goldfinger, but otherwise Fleming didn't really touch it. Frankly it's refreshing enough that it wasn't something Fleming has used (or over used) like diamonds or gold or ?? whatever.

You're right, of course. But... I think what bothers me about it is the methodology in the first place. It's very calculating, isn't it? Not all that spontaneous. He analysed Fleming's novels, decided he liked the ones where Bond is a sort of 'international policeman breaking up a racket', but also the bigger political jeopardy angles, so thought to combine them. I'm okay thus far. But then he just replicates what Fleming already did in Diamonds Are Forever but uses another substance? He is debriefed by M in the office, the villain has a deformity...

These are all Fleming by numbers ideas, aren't they? I'm not a fan of Colonel Sun, as some here can attest, but the first few chapters of that are superb, because Amis captured the spirit of Fleming without simply imitating him. He didn't just have a variation of a plot idea that Fleming had already used (which is what it looks from this excerpt as though Faulks has done - at least to a degree), but brought in a rather different kind of plot idea that still seemed like Fleming might have used it. He didn't just have Bond debriefed by M in the way he had been in several of Fleming's novels, but scratched that entirely and went for something much bolder - M is kidnapped! The style of it was in keeping with Fleming, but the content was an imaginative leap from broad Fleming ideas: a beautiful girl, a monstrous villain, exotic locations and so on.

My worry is that Faulks has cleaved too closely to Fleming, and instead we're just going to get 'a monstrous villain with an absurd physical deformity', 'a racket to break up but with a different material being smuggled this time', 'a beautiful girl whose name means something'. I was hoping for something a little more original than that. To say that at least it's not diamonds or gold seems to be gratitude for very small mercies - that would have been a dreadful let-down! And Fleming did use heroin, twice tangentially and through his apparent involvement in The Poppy Is Also A Flower. There must be plenty he didn't use, but I think even taking 'what substances or precious materials did Fleming not use' as an initial consideration for the plot is a rather predictable and reductive approach.

I'm still hoping for him to hit it out of Regent's Park, but I'm afraid I also agree with Major Tallon on the set-up. What has triggered this investigation into this character - what's the evidence against him, why is MI6 involved when there's no apparent British connection, why a Double O agent for a fact-finding mission, etc...

[Loomis]

I'm not, on the basis of this extract, pronouncing the book a failure. Remember the intial negative reaction to the first published extract of Silverfin? Still, my expectations for Devil May Care had been very high. Now I'm concerned.

Muggins here is certainly revising his expectations. Swipe me, yes.

On reflection, I guess Sebastian Faulks Writing AS Ian Fleming was never going to be a realistic proposition. Not that that wasn't what we were promised, mind you. But I guess Joe Blow doesn't want to be dropped straight into the unadulterated Flemingverse, thrown in at the deep end of a book that's impenetrably and unapologetically THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN II.

The public doesn't care about Fleming's Bond. It may like to think that it does, and appreciate being told that it does. But it doesn't. If it did, we would have had plenty of continuation novels mimicking Fleming's voice and being set in the Fleming time period.

For Joseph Schmo, the cinematic Bond must be acknowledged, and not just acknowledged but welcomed warmly into the text whether he belongs in it or doesn't. Or at least that's what Glidrose/IFP seems to have thought ever since COLONEL SUN.

So I'm revising my expectations. I expect that DEVIL MAY CARE will be goofy fun. Rather goofier than I could have ever imagined, but fun nonetheless. But do I want a "fun" Bond "novel"? Well, no, not really - this time, at least, I wanted A Serious Novel™ that also absolutely reeked of Fellmmmmingn.... and with literary genius Faulks on board "writing as Ian Fleming", I'd felt more than a little encouraged in my desire.

Instead, what do we have? Well, on the face of it, a book that's little more than a vehicle for Faulks laddishly 'avin a larf. *Sigh* I guess these things are written and published for the general public, and not us Fleming diehards. *Takes comforting snort of Benzedrine*

[spynovelfan]

[quote name='Loomis' post='873625' date='24 May 2008 - 22:44']I wanted A Serious Novel

[Scrambled Eggs]

See, I always took "Writing AS Ian Fleming" to mean that the reader would be able to pick up DEVIL MAY CARE and not be able to tell that it hadn't been written by Fleming.

I think that's an unreasonable expectation. Despite Miss Broccoli's comments and despite Faulks's immense talent and undoubted ability to analyse Fleming's sentence structure etc, no novel not written by Fleming could ever pass itself off as 100% Fleming.
Any pastiche is going to be a little "knowing" (if thats the right word) and that can easily be misread as flippancy or taking the mick.

If Fleming had written DMC, he wouldn't have put in a gratuitous Beatles and Stones reference to say "Ho ho ho, James Bond's in the 1960s!". Because it would have been the present day as far as he was concerned. Why mention what pop stars are getting up to? These jokey pop culture references seem more appropriate to Austin Powers.

I actually think that, had he lived long enough to write James Bond novels set in 1967, Fleming could not have failed to've mentioned Bond's reaction to the popular culture of the time.
I recall that in Thunderball, Bond has a conversation with a teddy boy taxi driver. We see Bond's reacton to a culture thats rapidly changing from the one Fleming and Bond grew up in. I think the the Beatles/Stones reference is in there for the same reason.

Sebastian Faulks: Literary Bond Reinvigorator or Sarcy Mickey Taker? As has been said quite a few times already, we'll all have to wait for the book to make a proper judgement.
My own hunch is that DMC will have significantly darker moments than this extract and will also be a quite a bit racier than the Flemings. We'll see.

[Loomis]

[quote name='spynovelfan' post='873627' date='24 May 2008 - 23:56'][quote name='Loomis' post='873625' date='24 May 2008 - 22:44']I wanted A Serious Novel

[zencat]

Zencat what do you think???

He had me at Monkey Paw.

Aside from the Monepenny banter (which I thought was too much out of the films), I liked what I read. I like the references to the hippies of '67 London and I didn't think M being into Yoga was out of character at all. Fleming established that M is a health faddist (think of Shurblands). The "writing as Ian Fleming" prepared me for the style... Can't judge it much more beyond that. Looking forward to seeing how he writes his villains and women.

BTW, I'm in London so I was able to pick up a hardcopy of this in The Times magazine. Very nice because it's illustrated.

[Jim]

Not what I expected.

This is because I have come to expect much worse from Bond continuations.

It's bound to be contrived; accept the contrivance and enjoy. I'm looking forward to it hugely. Anyone expecting Raiders of the Lost Ark will probably be disappointed. Am I in the wrong thread?

The monkey paw thing is fun but personally I would have gone for a baboon's backside. Daily.

[zencat]

LOL.

[MkB]

For those interested, Il Corriere has published the Italian translation of the same extract (a tad shorter though):
http://www.corriere....44f02aabc.shtml

[Tiin007]

I'll reserve my judgement until the novel is released (I opted not to spoil myself with this extract), but some of the comments here are making me nervous...

[Single-O-Seven]

I'll reserve my judgement until the novel is released (I opted not to spoil myself with this extract), but some of the comments here are making me nervous...

That's exactly where I stand. I'm avoiding the extracts, but skimming over some of the comments made by members whose opinions I generally respect is giving me a bad vibe. I'm standing by the fact that, overall, Faulks is a great writer, and some of that greatness - perhaps unseen in the extracts - is bound to be emerge throughout the bulk of the novel. We'll see...

[spynovelfan]

I just had a horrible thought. Is he going to stick so close to the Fleming formula that, just as beautiful diamond-smuggling gal Tiffany Case had a name that ironically reflected her profession, we're going to get a beautiful girl involved in the heroin trade called something like... Poppy Flower?

[SilencedPPK]

I work at Barnes & Noble and we got our shipment of Devil May Care, and the boxes are currently in receiving. I wanted to open up the box and see the book. I'm excited to read it on the 28th!

[MkB]

I just had a horrible thought. Is he going to stick so close to the Fleming formula that, just as beautiful diamond-smuggling gal Tiffany Case had a name that ironically reflected her profession, we're going to get a beautiful girl involved in the heroin trade called something like... Poppy Flower?

Ooooooooops....

Well, to be fair, I think (hope?) this extract doesn't do justice to the novel. I guess it has been chosen because it shouts "Fleming's Bond" at every line, with all the Bond attributes mentioned, and the publishers surely guess that it's what the general audience wants. But introducing the character We All Know And Love ™ is a not an easy part, and my opinion (thus far) is that Faulks didn't achieve it as brilliantly as some of us expected (this extract is still too Pistache flavoured to my taste, if you see what I mean). BUT my guess is that Faulks will have a true Flemingesque tone in the extracts where he'll be "writing as Faulks" rather than when he tries to be "writing as Fleming", like in this extract.

[terminus]

Poppy Flower?

Weren't Tiffy and her sisters in The Man With The Golden Gun named after flowers with Tiffy standing for 'artificial' because her mother couldn't think of any more flowers?

[spynovelfan]

Poppy Flower?

Weren't Tiffy and her sisters in The Man With The Golden Gun named after flowers with Tiffy standing for 'artificial' because her mother couldn't think of any more flowers?

Indeed.

'"My momma had six girls. Called them all after flowers. Violet, Rose, Cherry, Pansy, and Lily. Then when I came, she couldn't think of any more flower names so she called me Artificial." Tiffy waited for him to laugh. When he didn't, she went on. "When I went to school they all said it was a wrong name and laughed at me and shortened it to Tiffy and that's how I've stayed."'

It's clever, but far too cute (would anyone really call their child Artificial?). It's one of Fleming's weakest novels, and that's a weak moment in it. I don't want this book to imitate all the weakest Fleming motifs and ideas - I want a new spin on it, something Fleming could have done but really had not. Just as Fleming himself did - one great thing about The Man With The Golden Gun is that it didn't simply start with a limp explanation for the ending of the last book (which is what he did with Live and Let Die) and have Bond go in for the usual debriefing with M. He comes back to London brainwashed by the Russians and tries to kill M! That's original, moving on, but didn't feel unBond at all. That's what Fleming was best at. My impression from this was that Faulks was trying too hard - hopefully it's just a glitch.

[Harmsway]

[quote name='Loomis' post='873625' date='24 May 2008 - 16:44']So I'm revising my expectations. I expect that DEVIL MAY CARE will be goofy fun. Rather goofier than I could have ever imagined, but fun nonetheless. But do I want a "fun" Bond "novel"? Well, no, not really - this time, at least, I wanted A Serious Novel

[Trident]

I just had a horrible thought. Is he going to stick so close to the Fleming formula that, just as beautiful diamond-smuggling gal Tiffany Case had a name that ironically reflected her profession, we're going to get a beautiful girl involved in the heroin trade called something like... Poppy Flower?

Ooooooooops....

Well, to be fair, I think (hope?) this extract doesn't do justice to the novel. I guess it has been chosen because it shouts "Fleming's Bond" at every line, with all the Bond attributes mentioned, and the publishers surely guess that it's what the general audience wants. But introducing the character We All Know And Love ™ is a not an easy part, and my opinion (thus far) is that Faulks didn't achieve it as brilliantly as some of us expected (this extract is still too Pistache flavoured to my taste, if you see what I mean). BUT my guess is that Faulks will have a true Flemingesque tone in the extracts where he'll be "writing as Faulks" rather than when he tries to be "writing as Fleming", like in this extract.

To be honest, I don't mind the 'writing as Fleming' thing, nor do I mind some minor faults. Hell, for all I care Faulks can do DMC 'writing as Franz Kafka', I'd still welcome the piece and wolf it down in no time at all. My concern is that DMC might lack a certain seriousness within the boundaries of its own plot. It really is far too small an excerpt to judge the whole novel by. But there are some indicators that suggest to me DMC was perhaps not written with the amount of dedication I have hoped for.

Don't get me wrong, that still needn't mean DMC must be a bad misfire. Not at all, and neither DMC nor Faulks as its author is responsible in any way for my, overnourished by the hype, tremendously high expectations. That's entirely my own fault. But, as others have pointed out already, there is fanfiction around that beats the living daylights out ouf this, granted perhaps not very typical or flattering extract.

PS: On sober reflection I almost think this would call for another chapter of 'Bondkiller'...

Edited by Trident, 25 May 2008 - 08:43 PM.

[spynovelfan]

Don't get me wrong, that still needn't mean DMC must be a bad misfire. Not at all, and neither DMC nor Faulks as its author is responsible in any way for my, overnourished by the hype, tremendously high expectations. That's entirely my own fault. But, as others have pointed out already, there is fanfiction around that beats the living daylights out ouf this, granted perhaps not very typical or flattering extract.

[color="#ffffff"]'For thirty minutes, dressed only in a towel and naked from the waist up, he stood on his balcony, drying himself in the dropping sun, watching the city die for the day and thinking of nothing except her. How she had said little or nothing at the inquest. How she had stood, never removing her sunglasses, never betraying herself

[Trident]

(If you fancy an out-and-out parody of Ian Fleming and most of the continuation authors, I humbly - no, shamelessly - offer up my own [/color]Bondkiller, which I wrote in September 2005, possibly on three grains of Benzedrine... )

And which has the single one fault that you finished it too early!

But thanks for the tip. I've already discovered Jim's work but decided to keep addiction in check by obeying a strict regimen that allowes me only one fix per month of this fine stuff.
Of course, if somebody finds a way to intern Jim and make him deliver a minimum of 2000 words a week, we all could get our regular dose of high-octane Fleming/Steward and nobody would be forced to ration his or her intake...

Edited by Trident, 25 May 2008 - 08:56 PM.