NY Times Bond article

Polar Bear 0007 · January 2014

In today's book review section of the NY Times, there is an article discussing the "attempted reincarnations of literary characters" (page 27).

Interestingly , one of the writers, Pankaj Mishra, writes that "non-western markets matter too much now for 007 to be able to fulfill neo-imperialist fantasies of power and domination". He does write that "Solo hints at the recycled myth" of the Fleming formula. I found that too, and in my opinion "Solo" was the closest to the Fleming formula since "Colonel Sun".

Thunderpussy · January 2014

I have to admit that even though some of the continuing novels haven't been as good as Flemings
work. The only two Bond books I've ever been bored reading have been " High time to kill " and " Solo".

Sir Miles · January 2014

Have you read all the continuation novels, TP ? Some of Gardner's latter books are dreadful...

Thunderpussy · January 2014

) Yes I've read them all, and yes some are bad, but I always found them entertaining. -{
Although when I get round to reading them again, I could change my mind.

)
( I don't use this one much !

)

Sir Miles · January 2014

A few of the latter ones are truly dreadful...I only finished them for completion sake...

Thunderpussy · January 2014

I remember having a discussion about Cold / Cold fall, which I liked but most seemed not to.

)

Sir Miles · January 2014

Indeed...its his worst in my eyes...lazy writing...just dreadful X-(

Revelator · January 2014

The article is located at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/books/review/james-bond-sherlock-holmes-hercule-poirot-why-do-we-keep-resurrecting-the-same-literary-characters.html?ref=books.
Here's the full text of Mishra's Bond-related comments, which are frankly all over the place:

Ian Fleming’s James Bond, on the other hand, was a product of Britain’s post-imperial bleakness. Outwitting menacingly acronymed conspirators in warm countries, Bond stoked a fantasy of national potency and significance at a time when, as Dean Acheson remarked, Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role. (Appropriately, the Conservative prime minister Anthony Eden recuperated at Fleming’s Caribbean villa after the Suez disgrace of 1956.)

Shorn of their historical context, sequels and remakes today seem no more than rebranding exercises in an age of socioeconomic crisis, widespread uncertainty and creative stasis. Unlike most novelists, those refurbishing James Bond or Philip Marlowe can count on a ready-made store of readerly understanding and good will. As they do with the numerous renderings of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in India and Indonesia, audiences respond to familiarity spiced with the right measure of novelty and strangeness. Such tickling of the mass unconscious can be remunerativetoo: Unfocused nostalgia has a powerful lure in postindustrial cultures that seem to have a recurrent present but few clear traces of the past nor an avid anticipation of the future.

Naming the recent remakes of Bond in his witty book “The Man Who Saved Britain,” Simon Winder blurts out, “I’m sorry: I just can’t go on it’s all so terrible. They’re roughly the same, come out at irregular intervals and tend to have the word ‘Die’ in the title.” The increasingly pained-looking Bond played by Daniel Craig seems to concur.

Britain is geopolitically too insignificant, and non-Western markets — as well as political sensitivities — matter too much now for 007 to be able to fulfill neo-imperialist fantasies of power and domination. The artless seducer of women with names like Pussy Galore and Octopussy, a man who once charmingly hoped for sex to have “the sweet tang of rape,” also risks driving away a crucial demographic from the theaters. It is surely a sign of the times that in “Skyfall” a non-misogynist Bond retreats to his family estate in secession-minded Scotland, improbably preoccupied with a childhood trauma after what seems to have been a wholly unexamined life.

“Relax. You need to relax!” the film’s villain taunts him. In the age of Jason Bourne, the C.I.A.'s intriguingly mislaid human drone, and Edward Snowden, Bond does look ready for a long sabbatical. Fans need not despair, however. William Boyd’s Graham Greene-reading Bond in the novel “Solo” hints that recycled myth can occasionally construct a fresh relationship with history. Assigned to protect the interests of oil companies in a nasty West African civil war in 1969, Bond appears to himself as “insubstantial and weak,” even “unmanned”: a fleeting glimpse of the commonplace, everyday tragedy of life — disappointment, failure and decay — that might suit remakes better than thickly costumed farce.

NY Times Bond article

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