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 | Daily Mail Courts Further Controversy As It Features Under-Age Lingerie Photoshoot

You might expect that the Daily Mail would have had enough controversy. Also that it'd know how to structure a sentence elegantly.


First the newspaper called the Brass Eye satire on paedophilia 'unspeakably sick' while featuring two pre-pubescent members of our royal family in swimsuits on the very next page.


But now the blackshirt piece of shit broadsheet newspaper is courting more drama by featuring a lengthy article - about how MTV's show Skins is courting more drama by having its under-age stars pose in lingerie - in which the under-age stars of MTV's show Skins pose in lingerie.


Six members of the show's regular cast posed in just underwear, or provocative clothing for the Elle Magazine shoot featured in the April issue.


Of the six cast members, half of them are considered under the age of consent in the US.


Eleanor Zichy, pictured in a just a floral bra and shorts, is just 15 years-old.


'We have some concerns about it,' Helissa Menson, the Director of Communications and Public Education for the Television Parents Council, told Entertainment Weekly.


'We had concerns about the GQ photo shoot of Glee, even though [that cast] was over the age of 19, because they were presenting themselves as high schoolers.'


'With this Daily Mail article, even though the poses are less provocative, the fact that they have these underage girls wearing lingerie is troubling, as is the fact that the reporter attempts to implicitly criticise the Elle Magazine photoshoot while featuring exactly that same fucking pageful of underage girls wearing lingerie. It's almost as if they're a bunch of foul, sermonising hypocrites or something.'


We'd feature these same pictures on Silkworms Ink, of course, in order to titillate our readers with the allure of the nymphette even as they shake their weary heads in disgust, but we're just too classy. Also, we don't have the copyright.

Wider Reading | Why Everyone's Talking About Wagner

He seems to be everywhere at the moment. Facebook updates from excited people saying how much they love Wagner or how much they hate Wagner; how fond they are of his music or how untalented he is. Groups devoted to him and so on.


I must say, I’m delighted; but also astonished. For why should the nationalistic German composer have suddenly found such an audience for his work? And why, particularly, amongst the young?

This man came up when I Googled 'Wagner'. But it's ok; I don't think he's the sort of person anyone in their right mind would give a shit about.

Part of me would like to think that it’s simply a new generation accepting the great artist for his music – finally, now that enough time has passed, being able to appreciate his work in spite of his appalling anti-semitic views. But I’m afraid I really don’t think that’s the case. Rather, the current media obsession with Wagner is a clear reflection of the current political climate and, in particular, the cracks that are showing in the notion of idealistic patriotism, the collapse of the grandeur and ‘highness’ of thought that exists in the composer’s work – the realisation that all politicians are, in their own way, Alberichs.

I’m referring, of course, to the latest glut of Wikileaks leaks. When I saw the self-righteous, belligerent responses from American politicians, claiming that exposing their illegal activities in the UN counted as a “terrorist attack” or an act of war, I was instantly reminded – and who wouldn’t be? – of Wagner’s assertion, in ‘Religion and Art’, that


“From its first faint glimmerings, History shews Man's constant progress as a beast of prey. As such he conquers every land, subdues the fruit-fed races, founds mighty realms by subjugating other subjugators, forms states and sets up civilisations, to enjoy his prey at rest.”


Many commentators have argued that these new leaks tell us little that we weren’t already aware of; the Russian government has links to organised crime, Saudi Arabia is troubled by Iran, Prince Andrew is mouthy and has a pretty good idea how a bribe works. True, but that isn’t the point – the monstrous, previously comfortably settled political Man Wagner speaks of has got a bit of a nasty jolt; it’s become entirely plausible that the Internet may give birth to virtual powers that can affect ‘real’ world powers, even be able to hold them accountable for their actions through public opinion. The significance of that shouldn’t be understated. When Hillary Clinton says that the leaks upset the fabric of responsible government, she really means that they upset the veneer of responsible government.

Now this is Wagner.

It is revealing that some of the US politicians chose to view Wikileaks as if it were a country in its own right. It’s equally revealing that Silvio Berlusconi is said to have laughed at the revelations about him; this is a man, after all, who’s had his disease-ridden underbelly exposed times beyond counting, and who hasn’t been toppled yet. He knows that scandals are easier to ride out when they’re made into a joke; the Americans, however, do not seem to share his sense of humour. I can’t help but be reminded of Sarah Palin, just last week, complaining about Michelle Obama as someone who didn’t love her country unconditionally – saying, in so many words, that a US citizen should love the US no matter what the US does.

Alberich, we may recall, is able to do great harm in the Ring Cycle once he is invisible – once nobody is capable of passing judgement on him. He also, notably, responds to his mockery at the hands of the Ringmaidens by falling into a terrible rage and trying to attack them. It doesn’t end well for him. And the gods don’t come out of the whole thing too well, either, their divinity shattered; their lust for power revealed to all.


Let Wagner, then, become the symbol of anti-patriotism; of conditional love for one’s country dependent upon the actions of one’s country. Of freedom of speech, regardless of ‘national interest’. When we hear ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, let’s see those helicopters once again. And let’s be glad that, in such a critical political time, our young people are obsessing about a man named Wagner.