it s funny you should mention them...Fleming and Cussler...
I just picked up a book in London that I was after by a English author John Buchan. It was too expensive to get in the USA. Buchan's early 1900s character is Richard Hanny.
See
http://www.foliosoc.co.uk/folio/john_buchan.phpUnbeknownst to America, the Hannay character is really the first James Bond, and/or most certainly the first Simon Templer/the Saint: that of thee British, solo adventurer on international mysteries with serious bad guys (note one of Hanny's adventures is called Greenmantle. Goldfinger-Greenmantle.) In the Hannay adventures he helps the British government fight a middle-east Jihad, and spies, etc., often acting as a government agent. Richard Hannay was inspired by Edmund Ironside, a British soldier Buchan had met in South Africa.
For more on Ironside see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edmund_IronsideMost people are vaguely familiar with the very old Hitchcock movie -
The 39 Steps - in which producers changed up the Hannay character. The original old book is from the old 1910-ish era format and this a sidestep from the Sherlock Holmes format. In the first Hannay book "The 39-Steps, the chapters are even called "The Adventure of...this or that.." ala the Holmesian penchant. But talk about setting standards, from the review page of the movie - "The Thirty-Nine Steps, is Hitchcock's first film with
a classic theme that he modeled repeatedly for the remainder of his career." Really original ideas.
So...MANY British authors, too include Flemming, borrowed
heavily from the original concept of Buchan's adventurer. Technically, Flemming's books are mere shadows of the format created
by the movie series - which REALLY created the secret agent model and the gold standard dupicated by everyone and his uncle. Some of these uncles are now rich.
AND then we come to the money-rich Uncle Clive Cussler - to me an utterly horrible, corny writer when it comes to prose and structure - created his Dirk Pitt a lot FROM the James Bond concept. Pitt is a tall, dark headed, Naval (Bond was a naval commander) James Bond. America finall had its version of Naval Commander Bond
So, you really have:
1) Richard Hannay - an original
2) Simon Templer/ The Saint (and types)
3) James Bond MOVIES
4) and all Bond wannabes - to include Cussler's Dirk Pitt
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As an aside, Pitt has been portrayed in the two movies...
Raise the Titanic - Pitt played by Richard Jordon
Sahara - Pitt played by Mathew Maganahay (sp?)
Jordon possesses none of the Connery-esk, Pitt machismo, but was better than Maganahay! How in the world? The universe...the Sahara movie producers picked hippy-boy, smary, frat-boy Maganahy to play the tall, dark, handsome Dirk Pitt is a giant, missbegotten mystery, and actually the subject of a multi-subject lawsuit by Cussler upon the movie studio. Cussler thinks his book was smashed every which way by the movie. Even Pitt's sidekick in the books is a very overweight, genius type. In the movie, the part was bastardized by an even more airhead, hippy-head, actor, futher infuriating Cussler.
I think that Flemming made an abstract contribution to pop culture and Cussler/Pitt would never have been born with him.
I think someone here on the forum, (was it Bri-Thai) recently made the comment that every story seems to be a repo of another past story and that is so true. But, it is hard to be utterly original and very commercial. The public likes these repo stories over and over again...
As the Beatles so aptly put it...
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a
paperback writer,
Paperback writer.
Hock
Author
Topic: Heros Blast from the past (Read 770 times)