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Bond Authors Charlie Higson And Sebastian Faulks At Oxford Literary Festival

Event to be held from 31 March through 6 April

Man, I'd love to go to this. A double whammy.

Really.

Can't say there are two many events out there featuring two Bond authors at the same time.

Anyone here planning on attending?

Sometime, not often, I do miss the UK.

Tickets for Sebastian Faulks ordered.

Bumping this up as a reminder. We have Jim at Faulks. Anyone going to see Charlie? I'd love someone to provide a report for my site.

Report on Faulks appearance in The Times. Nothing new about DMC. Kind of weird how he talks about the Flemings.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle3660622.ece

God, I'd love a plot tease of some kind. A Bond Girl name, a villain name, a location, anything! All he keeps saying is how fast he wrote it. "Dashed off in a couple of weeks for the Flemings." Maybe he doesn't even remember the Bond Girl name. Or maybe she's just "Bond Girl" to save time. Be nice if he gave the slightest hint that he took this seriously.

Curious event. Most curious.

Just listened to a podcast of this. Pretty fascinating how he talks about his other work, and how he talks about the Flemings comes off as more joking than it does in print. The moderator ends the Bond section with a big joke, "We all look forward to the first chapter when Bond goes into analysis", and everyone sheiks in laughter.

Of course, I don't know why that's a joke. After all he's been through, James Bond in 1966 might be on the couch. Frankly, I'd love to see a Faulks Bond novel start this way. Maybe Bond has been forced into analysis, Shurblands style, by M, and he hates it. This would actually be a great way to get out exposition. It would also be interesting to know Bond's (ie, Fleming's) thoughts about analysis.

But, no, it's apparently it is unthinkable to have something like this in a James Bond novel, which, we all know, is ONLY about guns and girls. Even the suggestion of serious content is hysterically funny.

Of course, it was the mod who made this joke, not Faulks. I know Faulks has to appear above this whole James Bond thing, but...

I'm afraid that I think he doesn't take it seriously - not as seriously as he takes the great novels that have won him literary acclaim. I reckon he thinks of his Bond book as a (lucrative) bit of fun. Bond is not his career, and I suspect that DEVIL MAY CARE isn't one of the works he'd like to be most remembered for when he's six feet under (although I'm sure it'll still be amazing, because it's Faulks).

If no one minds me quoting something I've read over at MI6, here's Kingsley Amis on COLONEL SUN:

"I wrote this book, sidestepping out of my career as a straight novelist for the occasion, because I was asked to do so and because I found the project irresistible."

http://www.mi6.co.uk/sections/literary/col...php3?s=literary

There ya go. Faulks is the new Amis, and I suspect that he'll give us the best continuation novel since COLONEL SUN. Why do I suspect this? Because I've read some of Faulks' novels and was blown away by their brilliance.

In any case, I don't want to know about Bond girls, locations and so on at this point. I think it's very refreshing how little we know about DEVIL MAY CARE. Hopefully I'll be able to crack it open next month without knowing chapter and verse and be, like, in suspense about how it's going to unfold, just like in the old days before every new book and film was always ruined by spoilers.

I'm sure it's all utterly beneath him.

The Amis comparison isn't really that valid as Amis was a huge Bond/Fleming aficionado who had already written two books about Bond before he took on CS. Despite what he said later, I think it's clear that he took CS very very seriously when wrote it. Just Amis saying "I found the project irresistible" is light years beyond anything Faulks has said about Bond.

And I don't need spoilers, I'd just like to get a sense of what original elements Faulks is bringing to the party (or his own sense of excitement or pride at what he's produced). The title is generic. I just want something to wash the increasingly foul taste I'm getting from interviews like this one where DMC is presented as pure fluff or worse.

Good point. Mind you, I was under the impression that Faulks was a Bond fan - of sorts, anyway. Didn't he write some kind of parody short story once about Fleming's Bond being appalled by the modern world? And didn't he give TWINE a favourable (if rather bafflingly favourable!) press review? Hardly acts of someone with patrician contempt for all things 007. Still, I accept that Amis was in a whole different league of fandom.

If Faulks didn't have any interest in DEVIL MAY CARE and simply rushed it as a piece of lucrative hackwork the way that an acclaimed screenwriter like Robert Towne might do some autopilot "work" on the script for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II, then it'll certainly come through in the quality of the book. Also, it's frequently the case that brilliant talents - motivated by a curious combination of ego and "having a laugh" - dabble in side projects that turn out to be dire, e.g. Tarantino doing FOUR ROOMS after PULP FICTION.

For the moment, though, my money's on a superb Bond novel, simply because of Faulks' amazing talent and track record, although I'll concede the possibility that it's a dud, and if it is I certainly won't be championing it any more Just Because It's Faulks™. Anyway, time will soon tell.