Wind | Fiction | Wind In The Willows Reboot To Tackle The Financial Crisis?

An interesting announcement in the Guardian today; the estate of Kenneth Grahame has made it clear that they intend to release a sequel to The Wind In The Willows, tentatively titled, The Wind In Willows: Wealth Always Wakes, written by none other than famed thriller-writer James Patterson. It’s not as bizarre a choice as you might think – Patterson has written about ambiguously animal creatures dwelling in a land of humans before, in his sensically-titled Maximum Ride series about avian hybrids, and he’s even ventured into children’s fiction once or twice, in his collaboration with Neil McMahon, Toys, a charming novel about sentient toys, and a couple of Alex Cross adventures for younger readers, Pop Goes The Weasel and Four Blind Mice (which also reminds us of his skill at taking on the reins of an existing franchise).

Patterson actually mentioned the project on his personal website, saying how proud he was to take the series on. He also explained that this will be an ‘updated version of the classic tale’ that brings Toad, the greedy and charming capitalist pig, ‘kicking and screaming into the twentieth-century’ by exposing the darker side of his actions.

‘It’s going to be a wild ride…we’re actually going to take it further than the originals ever did. So in my story, Toad doesn’t just stop at motor-cars. He buys a limousine, then a helicopter, then a plane, and ends up destabilising the world economy. I mean, this guy is a selfish dick, and I wanted to show that side to him. The wealthy, chauvinist, materialist rogue no longer has a place in our fiction, even as an anti-hero. He’s a banker, and that word itself has now taken on a whole pejorative vocabulary of its own.”

Patterson did assure fans of the original that his book would be suitable for young children (the scene in which Toad, high on cocaine smuggled in to his minimum-security prison, garrottes a washerwoman before fondling her small, child-like breasts will only be available as part of a special omnibus), with the satirical subtext visible to adult readers without being crass.


“It’s a wonderful story, and I think it can be relatable to today’s children with the minimum of tinkering. The kids may not understand that Mr. Badger’s intense misanthropy is a result of his psychologically-scarring experiences murdering women and children in the second Gulf War, and they probably won’t pick up on the exact nature of the close relationship between Mole and Ratty either. But they’ll love to see these colourful, clearly-defined personalities engaging in plenty of action without too much plot, nuance or character development slowing things down.”

This won’t be the first Willows sequel, of course (William Horwood wrote several books in the series) or even the first one to try and feel like a big man by stamping all over the proverbial sandcastle of a beloved seventy-year-old children’s book and proving how it’s appalling when considered as an adult’s social manifesto. Jan Needle’s 1981 Wild Wood recast the predatory stoats, ferrets and weasels as hard-working, oppressed members of the rural proletariat, struggling against the lazy aristocratic Toad, the petty bourgeois Ratty, and Mole, who by his wide-eyed enthusiasm for the comforts of Toad’s lifestyle, is clearly a class traitor. I’m sure we can all agree that such a book definitely needed to be written.


But, of course, another outdated but much-admired British archetype is currently being given the modern-day dust-off, in the form of James Bond; it’s probably fitting that the reins of his rotten funereal carriage are being handed to an American writer, Jeffrey Deaver. We know that Deaver is a dedicated researcher (while beginning work on his first thriller about quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme, he has confessed that he spent an entire forty minutes lying very still on his bed one Tuesday morning, only moving to scratch his nose), so thankfully we can be sure that the re-booted Bond of Carte Blanche, an Afghanistan veteran, won’t just be a vague pastiche of well-known English traditions; we know, for example, that he enjoys Radio Four.


Long before we get to see any of that, however, we will enjoy the BBC’s modern-day Sherlock Holmes reboot, Sherlock, returning to our television screens, including a version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which this editor is especially intrigued to see considering that the plot would make absolutely no sense in a modern-day context. But then again, neither did The Blind Banker, although it did manage to get in a few pointless swipes at bankers for being greedy, which is obviously how you make a classic appear relevant and urgent in a modern reboot.

Jon Ware
Fiction Editor

Wider Reading | That Nasty Little Thug

In his 1958 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen spin-off, Black Dossier, Alan Moore introduces a suave, suited super-spy fellow, who for copyright reasons is only known as 'Jimmy'. Jimmy tries to pick up a girl by the name of 'Oodles O' Quim' in a bar, deploying some pickup techniques that people who read and enjoy Neil Strauss' The Game probably think are super awesome. He then leads her down to a deserted building and attempts to rape her, but is surprised when she swings her handbag at him (which contains a brick), before calling him a 'nasty little thug'. An immortal Allan Quartermain then turns up and proceeds to kick the living shit out of Jimmy, all the while lecturing him in surrogate-author mode; "Is this what it's come to? The British adventure hero? Pathetic."



I'm torn about 'Jimmy's' inclusion. On one hand, Moore doesn't let his obvious contempt for James Bond get in the way of making some good points - later on, Bulldog Drummond complains that Bond's reliance on 'tricks' and gadgets during combat is cowardly - and the character works because neither Fleming's Bond nor the character of the movies are miles away from being a sex pest anyway. But on the other hand, if you're going to tear an existing character to pieces, it really is queering the pitch to make them a rapist. If I were to write a satirical version of Rorschach, for example, and I had him try to murder a small lollipop-carrying child in a fit of lust and rage ("The child is the emblem of the city. Of the hateful, impure thoughts, running through the rivers of blood like a cat running away from an axe-wielding, spit-drooling dark God."), I'd be addressing the existing dark aspects within the character, but I'd also be ignoring the boundaries its creator drew up in order to make my own argument. "Is this what it's come to? The Raskolnikovian alienated urban anti-hero? Pathetic."

Meanwhile, the more affectionate variety of James Bond spoof has become tired and played-out. This is fairly self-evident. What would be your response if, tomorrow, you saw a big trailer for Austin Powers 4: The Man With The Golden Phallus, proclaiming, 'He's Back! Yeah, Baby!' as if the film-makers carried the mistaken and hubristic belief that we'd be pleased to see him? Would many of us really shed a tear if it turned out that Johnny English 2, in spite of the presence of Rowan Atkinson, Pierce Brosnan, Tim McInnery, Rosamund Pike, and Dominic West (hang on, all of the other actors are themselves tired and played-out. What the fuck did Dominic do?), would never see the light of day?

This is why it's going to be difficult to convince you that Archer is the funniest and sharpest show on television right now.

Archer is an animated US show, made by Adam Reed, that guy who keeps making animated shows online, about a spy called Archer, who works for a spy agency called ISIS, which may or may not be owned by the US government, in a peculiar alternate universe that uses the visual style of the 60s (and a Mad Men-style opening sequence, as well as flat, Hanna Barbera-style animation given a modern twist) while riffing off modern tropes. Archer himself (first name Sterling, played by a gravelly H. Jon Benjamin) is a marvellous monster of a character. Lazy, dry-witted and callous, who breaks out into raptures of boyish, self-loving enthusiasm whenever he ices a baddie or performs a cool stunt ("I know, right? Totally McQueen!"), Archer also bullies his co-workers and friends, shoots innocents, tattoos babies and requests in the middle of firefights that people give him a moment to come up with a better quip. He is Alan Moore's Jimmy...without the rape bit. And oddly likeable, as well, in the way only an anti-hero who sets fire to the bodies of murdered prostitutes can be.


He's supported by a cast of supporting characters that run the gamut of dark, off-beat comedy; his mother, played by Jessica Walter, essentially acting out a more extreme version of her Arrested Development character Lucille Bluth, her secretary, played by fellow AD alumnus Judy Greer, as a secretary with a fetish for being choked to death, a genuinely mad doctor named Krieger (he used to spend his evenings taping homeless people fight, but now he's into something...darker), and his butler, Woodhouse, a doddering old Englishman with a heroin problem, who was the one who really shot William Burroughs' wife that time.


Now, I'd never suggest that Archer is in any way influenced by Alan Moore's depiction of Bond, or by The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a whole, but the two certainly have a fascinating amount in common. Archer, despite its name, is not about one ubermensch saving the world so much as it is about a gang of loose allies, each of them with their own motivations and bizarre hang-ups, dealing with the realities of life as well as more colourful adventures. Archer is also occasionally a little too extreme and a little too 'how far can we push this?' for its own good, but it makes up for it with a wealth of smaller references, often literary, often arcane (a joke about a lemur, for example, mentions that it's called Babou - Salvador Dali had a pet lemur by the same name, and when Archer's mixed-race ex, Lana, played by Aisha Tyler, yells at him for describing her uncertainly as 'black-ish', he snaps back, "Well, what am I supposed to call it, Lana? You got mad when I said quadroon!" which is a joke as obscure as it is appalling as it is funny.) And, much like The League, the gang live in a pastiche world - a place where the Cold War still rages on, but everybody has mobile phones and can reference current affairs.


But it did occur to me while I was watching it what was wrong with Moore's 'Jimmy' Bond - he didn't take into account the sense of humour that's come to shape the established character of Bond through the films. And sure, he is very obviously working off Fleming's blueprint and not, say, Connery's. But if you're going to have Mr Hyde as a hulking giant - handwaving an explanation for this - then you are working off the collective impression of a character, and not off the author's original work. And the collective impression of Bond is not as a 'nasty little thug', but as a douche; a wonderful, alpha-male douche who endures in our imagination because he's just charming and funny enough to carry his essential douchality. And Moore - who does have a sense of humour, I think, but maybe not a taste for conventional zingers - could never have come up with the ultimate exchange, in terms of the disparity between how a Bond character sees himself and how others would see him in reality;

(Archer and Lana are on an airboat. Archer is enjoying himself.)

ARCHER: WOOOO! THIS IS WHAT IT MUST BE LIKE TO HAVE SEX WITH ME!

LANA: How can an airboat be selfish?

Wider Reading | Nineteen Reasons Why, Contrary To Public Opinion, Thunderball Is The Greatest James Bond Movie

Because Tom Jones fainted as he reached the highest note of that theme song.



Because that’s a real jetpack Bond uses in the opening, and it’s really being flown by a human pilot in at least one of the shots. The equally ridiculous scene at the end in which Bond and the heroine Domino are rescued by flying on the end of a rope attached to a plane was also, apparently, a real thing.


Because it contains Sean Connery’s favourite Bond performance.


Because Austin Powers has seen fit to spoof its iconic set-pieces more times than any other. (There’s the eyepatched villain, Blofeld disposing of his henchmen through their own chairs, Bond matching wits with a baddie over a card-game, using a villainess as a human shield, holding the world to ransom for a sum of money, and pet sharks. Yeah. Take that, You Only Live Twice.)

I think the woman on the far left is supposed to be Paula, who is actually in the film as Bond's contact in Nassau. I have absolutely no idea who the other three are supposed to be.

Because it contains more one-liners, puns, and wordplay than any film ever, including Ridicule and Commando. I counted 2,998 (so that’s around 3 witticisms per every word of dialogue). The classic harpoon-impaling “I think he got the point” is obviously the most famous, but I have a special place in my heart for the following exchange:

BOND: (Spotting a mole on DOMINO’s left thigh as she climbs out of the sea) I was right; couldn’t miss.

DOMINO: (Confused) I’m not with you.

BOND: You soon will be.


Because it contains a climactic underwater battle between the CIA and Spectre agents that goes on for far, far too long and yet remains completely awesome. After about fifteen minutes, even the local sea-life decides to join in.

Because Johnny Cash was originally going to sing the theme song, and his version was fantastic (though hilariously inappropriate). And before him, Shirley Bassey, then Dionne Warwick were going to sing the theme song. Their version, ‘Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ was equally fantastic, and slightly more appropriate.


Because the heroine is called Domino.

Because everyone spends most of the movie’s length in swimming costumes, but the pudgy villain Largo is always ingeniously kept covered up. Nice save there, movie.

Because Thunderball brazenly admits what so many other action movies try to cover up; that the basic form of the action pic is one in which the hero represents competent action and everybody else can only achieve incompetent inaction. Who is more useless – Largo, who imprisons the heroine, a highly competent swimmer, in an ordinary cabin behind an unlocked, unguarded wicker door on his yacht, a short distance out to sea from the major port of Nassau, with her hands loosely tied in front of her, or Domino, who doesn’t even make the effort to get out of this easily escapable situation? How about Felix Leiter, supposedly Bond’s opposite number, whose only role in the movie is to agree with Bond and give him slightly creepy compliments (“On you, everything looks good.” “You’re right, James.”)


Because it’s the first movie in the series to use the famous guns-and-babes artsy silhouette-montage during the opening credits.


Because it’s the first movie in the series in which the man shooting at the camera from down the gun barrel is actually the actor playing Bond (I kid you not.)


Because there’s a bit where Bond punches Leiter in the stomach for almost saying, “007”, and then says, “Sorry, Felix, but you were about to say 007” in front of the man they’re not supposed to be saying “007” in front of.


Because it contains the bizarre yet strangely epic chase music “Street Chase”, which went on to be used in many, many other Bond films.


Because it’s the only Bond film portraying every 00-agent.


Because Lazlo Katze has a marvellous character arc of redemption that goes almost completely unnoticed by the film.

Because it cannot be held responsible for Never Say Never Again.

Because it contains an entirely impossible deep-sea sex scene.


Because the Dutch version of the title translates to, “Calm Down, Mr Bond.”