19 replies to this topic

[zencat]

Just found this recent interview with John Gardner at the excellent Bond website Dr. Shatterhand's Botanical Garden. Good questions. Gardner goes into some things I've never heard him talk about before. And he let slip yet another unused title; BLONDES PREFER GENTLEMEN. (It's unclear which book this was intended for.)

Read the interview here.

[Mister Asterix]

Thanks for point out the article, zen.

[Xenobia]

Three marriage proposals...and all three women die. I know one was Flicka, one was a ruse, who was the other? Sukie?

-- Xenobia

[zencat]

Hmmm. Flicka...yes. And there's Harriett Horner in Scorpius. But who's #3? I know he suddenly decides he's in "love" with Easy St, John in DAF, but I think she dies before he gets around to popping the question. Maybe Beatrice Maria da Ricci in WLD?

[Xenobia]

No Beatrice makes it back in time to be there for Cold Fall. Which DAF are you talking about?

-- Xenobia

[zencat]

Oh, whoops, I meant DIF. Death Is Forvever. I think that's #3.

[Xenobia]

Thanks.

-- Xenobia

[Blofeld's Cat]

Originally posted by zencat
I know he suddenly decides he's in "love" with Easy St, John in DAF, but I think she dies before he gets around to popping the question.

A homage to Jill perhaps? Gardner's homage not yours, zencat. But, maybe....?

[Jim]

Very interesting. Fair amount of damning with faint praise going on there. Fascinating answers to well thought-out questions.

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Jim

Very interesting. Fair amount of damning with faint praise going on there. Fascinating answers to well thought-out questions.  

Right. Gardner seems a class act (I note the "Kingsley was always very nice to my face.").

I find the following extremely interesting:

This was the one thing I did not like about doing the Bonds: they expected a full outline before I started work, and I don't work that way. I like to start with a small idea _ maybe a set-up or a villain and then I'd like to see how that progressed. But they wanted a beginning, middle and an end before I began writing. I don't do that so I used to produce what my then agent called "It'll be all right on the night outlines." I guess I spent a lot of time trying to convince them to let me just get on with it. ...

You have to remember that there were huge pressures on me. I really couldn't do as I wanted. It was like being in a straight jacket as far as writing was concerned. When we came to the editing phase I was edited three or four different ways _ By Glidrose, then the British publisher (Richard Cohen wanted me to completely rewrite and re-set the first book): then the American publisher. I was sliced and diced every time. It was as though everyone wanted to get into the act....

[scaramanga]

A great interview. Some really good questions and answers. For one thing, it must be really hard when you have a good outline that your pleased with and then the puplishers rip it to shreds.

[Jim]

Actually, that's quite a revealing comment about the nature of writing the thing for commercial purposes (speaking from the publisher (boo hiss bad guys) angle).

Bond is a commodity and it's inevitable that people would stick their oar into it - although quite surprising from this how many there were doing this.

Perhaps a little naive for JG to have imagined that he - the contracted author - would be able to alter the commodity, the brand to his vision (that there's some shortsightedness on the part of the owners of the brand in trying to keep the books "like the films, like" is a topic already well ventilated).

That may be why many of his later books do have an insubstantial quality to them - perhaps (this is supposition birthed out of reading them) out of frustration, he gave up on them and submitted them for reshaping by a team of brand managers. Again, may (note: may) also explain why Mr Benson was eminently suitable as a successor (malleable - although it would appear he had his issues, perhaps less of an authorial vision to "lose", and feel sore about losing, therefore less "trouble" to the publisher. Fascinating comment about Mr Janson-Smith's remarks about The Man from Barbarossa once Mr Benson was in tenure - perhaps they saw someone far more readily willing to accept the publisher's vision than JG, to fit the game plan).

Difficult balance - frankly, as an editor, if (as I do) I have responsibility for a brand I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't sure of the product - surprises are not good brand business. It is a business. It is purely cash - bit hard nosed, maybe, but so be it. Profit.

I assume this is really no different from writing a screenplay (Zencat will advise)

Speaking as a fan, however, it's rather depressing that what we are presented with is some sort of casserole rather than steak. Unless they really go for it and get a "bankable" new author, it's time to bite the bullet and realise that such authorial freedom as Fleming was allowed (and even that was somethimes pretty limited) is never going to be extended to a new author. Anyone thinking (say) their fan fiction would squeeze through unscathed - read the interview again and have a long hard think about that.

Tonight, and for all future nights, we dine upon whatever we can make out of the leftovers. Bon appetit.

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Jim

Unless they really go for it and get a "bankable" new author....

I don't say that it's likely that they'll do this, but what exactly would they have to lose at this point by commissioning someone like Martin Amis, J.G. Ballard, Julian Barnes, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan or Paul Theroux (for one book only) and giving him carte blanche?

[Jim]

Originally posted by Loomis


I don't say that it's likely that they'll do this, but what exactly would they have to lose at this point by commissioning someone like Martin Amis, J.G. Ballard, Julian Barnes, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan or Paul Theroux (for one book only) and giving him carte blanche?

Apart from a huge - no, colossal - advance, little (at least on the literary merit side).

Save this (commercial side, given that it's evident from JG that literary merit is fairly low down the list of concerns for the James Bond publishers (the remark about Benson being "a journalist" is a substantial bee-atch of a thing to imply - funny, though)):-

The Bond novels are dead in the water. Haven't been selling. Perhaps (clinging onto the thread title) too many cooks haven't just spoiled the broth, they've gone the full Tyler Durden.

Ergo - even, and perhaps more so with a "name" author, the marketing would have to be massive. Look at the amount of marketing "name" authors do get anyway. This - to justify the advance - would have to so far outstrip in sales any post-Fleming novel as to make them look like small changers (deficit publications). To achieve that, word of mouth is just no good - there would have to be not so much a blitz but total campaign.

And then they'd have to do it for the next book. And the next. And the one after that.

Otherwise any poor sod brought in on a multi-book contract after (say) Martin Amis' Bond has sold a million really has got the most thankless of tasks. Firstly, comparison. Secondly - if Amis is a success, the limited imaginations of the powers that be sticking him to Amis' model - difficult author to mimic, comes off as pastiche. Thirdly, if Amis is not a success - retreating into the way it has been for the last twenty-odd years - having lost a lot of money on the way.

I don't envy the publishers their task here.

Maybe "Robert Markham" needs disinterring (although there's a whiff of Allan Smithee about it). But is that a "name"?

Christ, there are real problems here.

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Jim

This - to justify the advance - would have to so far outstrip in sales any post-Fleming novel as to make them look like small changers (deficit publications).  

Wouldn't a "name" author automatically create far better sales than those of any post-Fleming novel, even with as little spending on promotion as The Powers That Be could get away with?

Indeed, I don't see how a new Bond novel could do any business at all unless written by a famous name. Non-Fleming Bond novels no longer have the novelty value they had back in the days of "Colonel Sun" and early Gardner. The last few continuation novels have sold miserably, as I understand it, and are probably perceived by "the public at large" as cheap knockoffs aimed at teenagers.

Originally posted by Jim

And then they'd have to do it for the next book. And the next. And the one after that.

Otherwise any poor sod brought in on a multi-book contract after (say) Martin Amis' Bond has sold a million really has got the most thankless of tasks.  

To be honest, I'm thinking along the lines of just one new novel, a glorious last hurrah for the literary Bond (such as a book by Amis or whoever published to tremendous fanfare [and surely at least respectable sales] in 2008, Fleming's centenary year - Gardner and Benson will have been well and truly airbrushed out of history by then), rather than the resurrection of the literary series as a going concern.

I don't see them signing anyone to a multi-book contract ever again. If they couldn't/wouldn't make it work with Gardner and Benson, why bother?

[Jim]

Originally posted by Loomis


Wouldn't a "name" author automatically create far better sales than those of any post-Fleming novel, even with as little spending on promotion as The Powers That Be could get away with?

Not automatically - generally, the more expensive the author (and I doubt anyone's going to do this for free) the more will be spent on marketing their product. Think something like Amis' "The Information" - name author, probably the leading British contemporary author -

[Triton]

Very interesting interview. I like how Mr. Gardner was purposely evasive at times when answering questions. Very diplomatic of him.

I also agree that Blondes Prefer Gentlemen would have been a great title, very Fleming-esque and along the lines of Live and Let Die and Diamonds Are Forever.

Concerning who should pick up the Bond series after Raymond Benson, that's a really difficult question. Unfortunately, the writers who I think would do a very good job wouldn't want to deal with the constrictions that Glidrose would place on them. They would rather do their own thing with their own characters and plots, and who could blame them.

[Bond111]

Great interview, zencat. But what's the deal with "The Killing Zone"? I never knew such a thing existed. Does anybody have any info (i.e. Why and How it was published)?

[Methos]

Thank you for this Zencat!!! It was a brilliant read, that shall be shared with a Bond friend of mine in the coming days!!! I too happen to be clueless about this Bond Novel 'Killing Zone'. I found that most intriguing!!!!

[Loomis]

such authorial freedom as Fleming was allowed (and even that was somethimes pretty limited)

Really? Never knew that.