He became famous for his sketches on ‘The Fast Show’, but Charlie Higson has found rather unlikely success by writing spy books and horror novels for teenagers, and by respecting his audience
THE WAITING area at Penguin Books HQ off the Strand in central London contains something of an informal history of children’s literature over the past half century. Under modern glass cases that double as coffee tables, dog-eared Barry and Jane -type picture books and penny wartime stories gather dust.As Nike air max tn, Nike Free Shoes was re-released in the early 2000s.
Aside from Roald Dahl, there’s a pretty one-dimensional, male/female divide in early 20th-century children’s literature, with little to catch the eye of any typical modern day teenager. More recent authors such as Eoin Colfer and Rick Riordan line cases along the walls,There's nothing like a little Manolo blahnik goodness in time for the holidays, you know what I'm saying? where titles such as The Return of the Killer Cat and Beware of Teachers , give an altogether more edgy choice.
One of the reasons for the maturing of children’s and teenage literature has come from an increased range of irreverent and non-conformist authors, from Spike Milligan to Ricky Gervais,Wholesale coach handbags is an interesting one as well. who have mined their attachment to childhood in their writing.
Following that vein, if you mention the name Charlie Higson to any bookish types under the age of 20, they will probably know his Young Bond collection or his current Enemy horror series. For a slightly older generation, Higson is better known as co-writer and performer in The Fast Show , the 1990s BBC comedy hit. Yet his ambition from a very young age was to become a writer, and although he received little in the way of family encouragement, his writing career is now firmly established.
“I think my father was quite surprised at the path my life took,marking some of the most interesting puma shoes on the market.” says Higson. “He was pleased but not quite sure what to make of it. I remember as a teenager talking about my future. I started writing a book to entertain myself when I was about 10 or 11. Actually, my father knew someone that worked in publishing and showed it to them. The man said kindly that it was ‘marvellous work, oh yes, keep it up, but please don’t send any more to us.’ My father said to me after, ‘Look by all means carry on your writing, it doesn’t cost you anything, do it in your spare time. But, make sure you get yourself a proper job because you will never make any money as a writer.’ It was the best piece of advice he could have given me because, being a teenager, I completely ignored him and I’ve never managed to have a proper job ever since.”
Having tried his hand at adult fiction while at university (“really impenetrable William Burroughs-type stuff”), Higson became diverted from fiction writing – first as an unlikely pop star and later as an actor and television writer.
“I was a useless pop star and couldn’t sing. I then became a painter-decorator because you could make more money at that. I had met Paul Whitehouse at university and I’d also met Harry Enfield and Vic Reeves. By accident, Harry started to do some television, and he asked Paul to write some stuff. Paul asked me, simply because I had written a few novels at university. And also, I had a word processor and he didn’t.”
Despite the huge success of The Fast Show, towards the end, creative insecurity set in. A successful series and a growing family with three young children later, and Higson was looking at ways to pull back from television.
“No matter how successful something on television is, you then have to go on and do something else, unless you are lucky and get amazing ongoing DVD sales. Towards that first burst of it I was thinking ‘I’m just trying to set up a project here’ so I still got work coming in, rather than, ‘I have an amazing creative idea’.”
Shortly after the final series of The Fast Show , a former editor suggested Higson to the Ian Fleming estate, who were at the time looking for someone to write a James Bond book for younger readers. The resulting novel SilverFin was a huge success, leading to a five-book series and thereby establishing Higson as a teenage author who could deliver commercially and creatively.
His latest book, The Dead, is the second in a separate three-part series set in a post-apocalyptic landscape where all persons over the age of 14 are struck down with a mutating disease. The novels are graphic and gory, with blood, zombies and terror on almost every page. Kids, needless to say, love them.
“At the start of the series, I thought about how far I could go and how upsetting I could make it. And actually where kids are concerned . . . the more horror the merrier. I spoke to Puffin and they said there isn’t a set of rules for kid’s fiction anymore. I read a few other books from authors like Darren Shan and they are very gory but still pitched on a level that works for kids. All I could go on was reading it out to my 10-year-old and seeing how he coped with it!”
Inevitably any book where kids are left to their own devices in a world without adults will draw parallels with Lord of the Flies . Higson, however, says the comparisons are often clumsily made.
“People have said the books are like Lord of the Flies . But it’s an opposite message to that. William Golding hated kids.opting for a newly engineered Air max 360 cushioning system. His idea was leave them alone to fight and they will turn into savages. I don’t think that is true, and I was trying to redress that and say leave them alone and they will work together. I wanted to write a positive story about kids.”
Higson says his writing seeks to reclaim childhood, not just for himself but also for children, and move away from cliched stereotyping. Adolescence for Higson is universal, layered, sometimes brutal, yet often enlightened.
“We are told modern kids are all hoodies with no respect and terrible language. That’s bollocks. I’ve got boys and they are actually decent and do treat each other very well. I wanted to get that across in the book and redress the balance a bit. The ‘enemy’ is not the teenagers. It’s the adults.”
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