Did the world need another James Bond novel? I would argue that it did, if only to keep the Bond estate from making another film from recycled material. Certainly a talented filmmaker can breathe new life into an old source, as Casino Royale just proved, but still it will be nice to see a fresh story onscreen.
And rest assured that you will, because what Sebastian Faulks, the talented author of Birdsong and Engleby, has given us is, more than anything, a treatment for a future script. It's hard to read Devil May Care, the new Bond novel, without imagining how it will translate to the screen. As a novel, it's only as good as it needs to be, and you can sense Faulks holding himself back from the literary flourishes that mark his earlier work in order to conform to the dictates of the Bond canon--or "Bondage," as he puts it. It's just a film waiting to be made.
Faulks was an inspired choice to write the new installment. Birdsong showed that he could write both sweeping historical fiction and romance that crosses cultural boundaries. Engleby showed his deft hand depicting the world's villainy and creating psychological suspense. Both talents are relevant to the Bond universe.
Becky and I met Sebastian at a dinner thrown by Random House last fall to celebrate a few new books. New England booksellers joined the publisher in Boston to break bread with Faulks, Jeffrey Toobin (author of The Nine), and a less well known but talented novelist named John Burnham Schwartz (author of The Commoner). I spent a lot of time that night both with Faulks and with Toobin. I came away from the evening having learned two things: first, that no matter how famous a writer is, he will practically melt with gratitude (Toobin) when you ask him a halfway intelligent question about his new book. A new book is like a new baby, you see.
Second, I learned that Sebastian Faulks is a funny, funny man. He has that British facility of being able to talk extemporaneously in an incredibly witty fashion and in complete sentences. Paragraphs, yet. He had the entire room in stitches.
A sad coda to this story. I asked Sebastian if he would ever consider extending a tour that included Boston to also include Concord. He thought for a second, and replied that his writing was too important to him to take too much time away from it, especially if that time was spent slogging through unpopulated countryside only to find oneself addressing 20 people and no more.
It was a point that filled me with bitterness but I had no argument against it.
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