As William Boyd resurrects James Bond in a new novel, Sinclair McKay considers the dangers and rewards of reviving our best-loved literary characters.
Daniel Craig as James Bond in
Skyfall Photo: Film
Stills
Some years ago, ITV had a cultishly enjoyable show called Stars in Their Eyes
in which members of the public impersonated their favourite pop acts. The
literary equivalent of this is when highly respected authors say: “Tonight, I am
going to be Ian Fleming.” The latest to do so is William Boyd, whose James
Bond novel, Solo, is shortly to hit the shelves.
He follows in some heavyweight footsteps: from Kingsley Amis (Colonel Sun) to
Sebastian
Faulks (Devil May Care). It’s ironic that these
authors have demonstrated a rather deeper range than Fleming himself ever could.
But there is something about vintage 007 – both Faulks and Boyd have opted for
Sixties settings – that makes every male writer of a certain age want to reach
for the Walther PPK. And the wider phenomenon of literary resurrections throws
up a whole raft of questions about authors, readers and their relationships with
much-loved fictional characters.
Why are very good writers drawn to the immortal creations of others? What is
in it for the deceased authors’ literary estates? And do readers ever take these
resurrections to be the real thing; or merely thin burlesques on the brilliant
originals?
The question takes on a wider significance because yet more of these
continuations are on the horizon. Sophie
Hannah has been asked to rise to the challenge of Agatha Christie and Hercule
Poirot; the first writer since Dame Agatha’s death in 1976 to do
so. She knows what she is up against: anyone who imagines that Christie’s crisp,
plain style and precision plotting is easy to replicate is very wrong.
Elsewhere, the highly distinctive literary voice of Raymond Chandler is, with
the blessing of his estate, being brought back next spring with Black-Eyed
Blonde, a new Philip Marlowe novel. This happens to bode well: the author
walking into Chandler’s noir world is John Banville, a novelist deeply
accomplished in exploring real darkness.
Conversely, there is the trick of helium lightness and exquisitely
frictionless farce: next month sees publication of Jeeves and the Wedding Bells
– a P G Wodehouse “homage”, as the cover declares, by the versatile Faulks.
Here, the formidable challenge is not to sound like a fruity Thirties parody;
advance word is that Faulks has done an uncannily good job and that his Wooster
reads with affectionate authenticity. But Faulks will know better than anyone
how fanatical Wodehouse’s followers are.
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