Ian Fleming Memories
Loeffelholz
The United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
Please share your very first memories of Ian Fleming---how old were you, where were you, etc., when you first became aware of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.
Perhaps you borrowed your first Bond novel from the local library...maybe you read the daily comic strips in the newspapers...maybe you only came to the books after having seen the movies...or perhaps you're only now starting to read the books!
Tell us your own personal story about discovering Ian Fleming. The best posts will be gathered together and featured in an article celebrating Fleming's Centenary...
Perhaps you borrowed your first Bond novel from the local library...maybe you read the daily comic strips in the newspapers...maybe you only came to the books after having seen the movies...or perhaps you're only now starting to read the books!
Tell us your own personal story about discovering Ian Fleming. The best posts will be gathered together and featured in an article celebrating Fleming's Centenary...
Check out my Amazon author page! Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Comments
It was a Saturday, and I was desperately bored. My mother and sister were looking at random piles of kid's clothes on one of six or seven folding tables set up in someone's front yard, while I yawned and fidgeted and wondered if they had any G.I. Joe figures, outfits or accessories for sale somewhere...
I came upon a table with several boxes of paperback books---I was already reading well outside the expected 'kids books' purview---there were dogeared Erle Stanley Gardner Perry Mason paperbacks, dozens of dreadful romance novels...I remember picking up a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird and laying it aside, perplexed by the title...
Then I picked up a paperback with a very small illustration in the middle of the cover. The picture showed a pretty blonde woman aiming a gun at me, with a silver rocket at a gantry in the background behind her. The title proclaimed: MOONRAKER. Above it, in even bigger letters, was the name IAN FLEMING...which rang a bell somewhere in the dark recesses of my earnest young mind. Then, along the right side of the cover, was vertically written:
A JAMES BOND THRILLER
Wow!
On the way home, I looked at the back cover, and there was Ian Fleming, aiming a revolver to the right, at someone out of the picture. He looked pretty cool to me---anybody who writes James Bond stories has to be pretty cool---and I opened the book and smelled the pages. It was musty newsprint---a smell that has always heralded great adventure to me; an escape from the humdrum. I remain firmly convinced, to this day, that heaven will smell like old paperback books.
I opened the book to Chapter One, and read the first line of the book:
"The two thirty-eights roared simultaneously."
B-)
And, almost 40 years later, here I am.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I read TMWTGG, and to be honest I was slightly dissappointed. While there were certain parts that I enjoyed, it didn't live up to my expectations which were formed by the films. However, several years later when I found a cheap copy of Dr No in a local bookshop I was ready for the literary Bond of Ian Fleming. This was the proper start of my love of the Ian Fleming books. I devoured DN, and although Ian Fleming books are hard to come by in South Africa, slowly but surely I managed to get my hands on the rest of the Fleming books and read the rest of the book in order. Although it is only three years since I read DN, it feels like I have already had a lifetime's worth of joy from the work of Mr Fleming.
After seeing the movie some months later, and being quite impressed, I saw a paperback in the neighborhood Rexall Drug Store. The red cover was very striking and, by this time I had dismissed the idea that the film was "nasty" and eagerly shelled out 50 cents for the paperback. I especially liked the nice photo of the Walther PPK on the book cover.
Taking the novel home, I began reading it and found myself disturbed by "Red" Grant who actually enjoyed killing people. It really upset me that the Russians let him loose in jail cells to kill on the full moon. I shared this with my mother who confiscated the book.
Mom read the book and ultimately diecided I could read the whole text. By the time I finally got through FRWL I had a clear understanding that James Bond of the novels and the fellow on film were two very different charecters. Ever since I have always preferred the novels - even though I was a great fan of the films.
I didn't understand alot of FRWL on that first reading at ten years old, but have read it many times since - always finding something new to enjoy.
When Ian Fleming died I was very sad. I recall looking at the back of my "Goldfinger" Soundtrack album just before the "last" Bond novel, "The Man with the Golden Gun" was published in paperback in 1965 and thinking "James Bond is now dead." Was I wrong or what!
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
The Pan paperback that first caught my attention was that of a copy of Moonraker and its amazing image of James Bond holding a damsel in distress with a rocket in the background -the image grabbed me!
However it wasn't Moonraker which I read first but actually Thunderball -because the Pan paperback my Father owned was a copy that had two bullet holes in the cover -which to an eight year old boy was spellbinding.
Obviously reading the back covers with the picture of Fleming holding his lit cigarette in its holder with the whisps of smoke rising kind of added to the mystique. It was also around the same time that I was watching James Bond films on television usually when it was a Bank Holiday -such as at Christmas and so on. So for me my introduction to 007 was roughly 30 years ago!
I was going to London to watch Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall and decided I needed something to read on the coach journey down. I stopped off at my local WH Smith's and bought both Casino Royale and Live And Let Die - if I was going to do this then I was going to do it right and read them in order
I remember finding my seat on the coach and opening CR and beginning to read - I was hooked ! I'd read most of it by the time we reached London (I'm not the fastest reader
At eight I didn't understand everything in the books, though with re-reading (many times) as I grew older all became apparent. The only one he didn't have was Octopussy which I picked up later- as was the case with Colonel Sun which I remember looking for a sequel to at the time. That didn't happen for many years, of course, and I began to buy a lot of books about Bond rather than Bond books- The James Bond Dossier, The Bond Affair, etc. Such items were less frequent than today, though of course contemporary publications tend to concentrate more on the films.
Writing this has reminded me that it's been a couple of years since I last read any Fleming- time to correct that, I think...
One day my mother was cleaning out a cabinet that was stuffed with various books that she was going to get rid of, and my mom said "Here are some Ian Fleming books." That got my attention! I piped up and said "I'll take those!" There were four hardcover books which had my aunt's name written in the covers (I don't know why we had them - I suppose I should ask her but I'm afraid she'll want them back!
This was one of the editions:
One summer night I was looking for a book to read and I chose Thunderball. I ended up staying up the whole night until I finished it. After that, I devoured Octopussy and The Living Daylights. It wasn't until high school, however, and that I had a job that put money in my pocket, that I made it a quest to complete my collection of Bond novels and read them through. They were hard to come by (the eighties were dominated by John Gardner's novels) and I often had to wait weeks for my order to arrive at the bookstore. I remember being so amazed by Fleming's writing that two close friends began to read them to find out what I was so enthralled by...
To this day, those original hardcover books (that my aunt doesn't know that I have) rest upon my shelf.
Though I'm fuzzy on when I first learned of the author, I remember clearly when I first started reading his novels. It was the early 1980s: I was in high school, and License Renewed had just been published. To tie in with this, Berkeley publishing brought out new paperback editions of Fleming's Bond novels, and I toyed with the idea of reading the books. I had recently seen Dr. No on TV and I loved it; not knowing the order of the novels, I picked up Dr. No and resolved to read them all in the order the films came out. And in that way a Fleming reader was born.
around the time of Tommorow Never Dies I would run around the playground at school pretending to be james Bond, aiming sticks like guns and pretending I was in the villian's liar trying to save the world.
Then, Several years later, I was still a relatively casual Bond fan, gnerally watching the bond films whenever they were shown on TV. (something I now hate doing due to the amount of stuff that gets cut out.)But then Die another Day came and went and I waited a few years for a new Bond film. with the new Star Wars Trilogy and the Lord of the Rings films taking Bond's place as my must see films. Then in 2005, and the speculation started to hot up as to who would be the new Bond. by this point I knew of the novels and of Ian Fleming but had never read any of them. during this speculation process and the casting of Daniel Craig I kept hearing the phrase "Fleming's James Bond" and, wanting to know really what people meant by "Fleming's James Bond" I decided when I was in Boarders one day to by the Penguin Classics paperback copy of Casino Royale, Live & Let Die and Moonraker.
Now I am a very fast reader. I go on Holiday to a place in Spain for 6 weeks in the summer and have to take something close to 30 books to keep myself busy because I finish them so quickly. because of that I was far ahead of my expected reading age. having suppassed the books aimed at teenagers by my 9th Birthday I didn't find Fleming's prose a challenge to read. because of that I devoured the content of the novels, creating my own image of James Bond in my head.
I had finished that penguin book of 3 novels in about a week and could not get enough of Fleming's writing. I hadn't been this enthralled in a book series since I'd started the Lord of the Rings at the age of 9. I went straight to my local library and placed an order for the rest of Fleming's Bond novels. they could only get some of them so I then went back to Boarders and bought the ones I couldn't get hold of. my copies of CR,LALD,MR and Goldfinger are now so damaged the paperback back covers on them have fallen off.
Because of reading Fleming's novels I then became a true Bond fan, purchasing the DVD box set of movies and joining places like here so I could be part of the Bond conciousness.
so thank you Ian Fleming, Thank you for creating something that has taken over my life.
Later in the summer we were on holiday in Dartmouth,Devon and in a bookshop bought paperbacks depending on pocket money. The books were 4 shillings/20pence then. I probably read YOLT and then went on to OHMSS when the next film with the New James Bond came out.(Lazenby)
As my income increased I bought and read the books in a muddled order, and then started buying the music soundtracks from OHMSS onward up to the present with Casino Royale and they got me interested in John Barry other film music.
It's a pity we don't get "Books of the Film" lately as there's no current author.
De Bleuchamp.
"You 3 keep going".
Of course in the 1960s cinema you could stay in as long as you liked! So sometimes you'd watch 2 and a half films over about 4 or 5 hours!
I must've seen Goldfinger about 30 times in the cinema as video hadn't been invented until the late 1970s. I was surprised when in about 1976 they let a Bond film be shown on British TV as they were "special" films.
I've collected most of the books about Bond and the films coverage, but don't bother buying all the films as they're now shown frequently on TV.
The Odeon cinema chain was always the one to have the Bond film trailers of the next one.
One thing which I miss is at the end of the film when it said "James Bond will return in ..."
I've read the biographies on Ian Fleming and it seems he had a priveleged upbringing-going skiing in Austria etc. and seems to have wandered into writing the books as he didn't know what career to follow.
It's a pity he only lived up until the production of the Goldfinger film. By today he'd be richer than George Lucas !
De Bleuchamp.
But as time has progressed and I read them over and over, they really have not lost any of the charm and fun of that first reading.
And with books such as John Griswold's Annotated Bond .... the novels really get even better.
One thing about IF, while he wrote for the average person riding a train or stuck in an airport - he never wrote "down".
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
Well...I can tell you that my oldest son, Ian, is quite aware of what influenced his mother and I* to give him that name...
It wss ironic that, although the first book I owned was Moonraker, the first one I actually read was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, at the age of about 14. I bought the Signet paperback edition at a thrift store called "The Pink Shutter." It remains my favourite novel to this day...
* Actually, it was pretty much all me...and my wife liked the name, so she gave in
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Although I was a member of the local (and the school) library, being a kid I was restricted as to what I could borrow, and at some stage I started to read the books in my father's bookcase, which included one Sherlock Holmes novel and a couple of James Bond thrillers.
This was some time in the early 60s that I ventured into the Bond novels of my father, these were Casino Royale and From Russia, With Love (both 1st edition Pans) - and much like Scaramanaga1, barbel & darenhat, I too "acquired" these for my own collection, although the CR disappeared somewhere along the way. I also "acquired" his later purchase of the Pan Dr No (spider web).
Having enjoyed the books (and as they were in the "grown ups" section - "adult section" makes me think of something else) I tried my local library to see if they would allow me to borrow the rest of the books (telling them that I had aleady read a couple of them), I was told to come back the following week whilst they checked to see if they were suitable for a minor - I was 10 or 11 at the time (1962/3). They allowed me to borrow them, with one exception, I had to wait until I started buying my own books before I found out why they wouldn't allow me to borrow TSWLM.
It wasn't until the build up to Goldfinger (although my parents had seen the first two - without telling me, and which my mother wasn't keen on) that I became aware of the films. When Goldfinger was released, I persuaded my dad to take me and my best friend to see it (an 'A' certificate required minors to be accompanied by an adult in those days). After that first film I was well and truly hooked on 007.
To keep a long story short, after Goldeneye, one by one I watched all of the Bond films, in the order that I bought them.
I've always been a fan of the films. However, I couldn't even tell you when I first learned of Bond's creator Ian Fleming, or the series of novels he wrote. Not being a fan of reading, for years I wrote them off in favor of their cinematic counterparts.
It wasn't until the summer before the release of Casino Royale (2006) that I finally picked up an Ian Fleming novel. It was of course his first. I figured it would serve as a nice compliment to the upcoming film.
I enjoyed the novel immensely. Since then, I have begun reading the rest of Fleming's Bond thrillers in order. I'm glad I've done so as there is a bit of continuity.
So far I've read Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, and Moonraker. I plan to begin reading Diamonds Are Forever at the end of this semester when I have more free time.
Ian Fleming is a great writer and his Bond thrillers are quite the page-turners. I've enjoyed the first three, and I look forward to finishing them all. Ian Fleming has made a reader out of me.
Without Ian Fleming we simply would not have James Bond. Therefore, no Bond fan is complete until he/she has read all of Fleming's novels, gaining the knowledge of Bond's literary world. I am enthusiastically working up to that point.
To you Mr. Fleming... -{ {[]
-Roger Moore
To this day these rather neglected entries in the Fleming pantheon remain sentimental favorites. (neglected by the mainstream not by us fanatics) Short stories had always been favorite past times with me and while I symphatized with Dexter Smythe, who as a Fleming villain is unique since he wasn't an "ugly foreigner", my admiration for the literary and original James Bond character leaped forward giant notches; due to his noble gesture of leaving the Major to devise his own way out rather then endure a shameful end.
As a side note, I had never read any pastiche until AJB came a knocking. And Colonel Sun, she was the first. (and she was the best!!) {[]
So I started asking questions about those books.
One of my favorite English teachers(a woman in her late 20s) described Fleming's novels as comic books for adults-but she wasn't being derisive when she said this.Quite the contrary,by her own admission,she'd read nearly all of the Bonds then available in paperback and enjoyed them.She said they were good stories written by a talented man--and if I liked Fleming,she said,I'd probably also like John Buchan.Not long afterwards,I entered Ian Fleming's inimitable universe.
The first book I read was From Russia With Love, and I was immediately struck by how different the tone and style of the story was from what I'd seen, while also noting that the movie nevertheless retained(for the most part)Fleming's suspenseful storyline.After this book I read all of the other novels-often out of order--later rereading them in their proper chronological order.
It's interesting to see that Fleming managed to touch on pretty much every kind of plot within the course of the Bond novels.There's the "perfect crime" story(Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever),terrorist plots(Moonraker and Thunderball),a thriller in the Eric Ambler tradition(From Russia With Love),an action-packed adventure H.C.McNeile probably would've approved of(On Her Majesty's Secret Service),even a few semi-homages to Sax Rohmer(Dr.No and You Only Live Twice).Fleming obviously enjoyed the pulp fiction of his youth, and he shared this enthusiasm with his readers.Ian Fleming's novels not only interested me in spy fiction in general, but he also indirectly turned me onto many of the authors who had been his influences.
Overall,what impresses me most about Fleming's writing is the way he can make even the most outlandish concepts and grotesque characters seem real-at least within the context of a particular story.For example,if Fleming says Dr.No looks like a giant slug, and is also one of those rare individuals with a heart on the opposite side of his chest,I'm inclined to believe it.If Hugo Drax is a red-bearded monster so evil that he even cheats at cards-that's just fine.It's the conviction Fleming brings to his best work that gives his characters life.
Of course,I learned much more about James Bond through Ian Fleming's books than I ever could have from 007's cinematic alter ego.The Bond of the novels is a much darker character than the one we usually see on the screen.He's not an outgoing individual, nor does he have a quip for all occasions-and he smokes like a freight train.And he's an executioner who never takes his job lightly-the man even worries and occasionally gets scared.Although only a few of the actors Eon have cast as James Bond really physically resemble the 007 Fleming describes(most notably in From Russia With Love and The Spy Who Loved Me),they've all done him justice through their different interpretations, despite the shifts in style and content oftheir movies.In my opinion something of Ian Fleming's creation always makes it to the screen,and that,I think,is because what Fleming created is simply too fascinating-too potent to ignore.
Hubba hubba, ...a teacher in her late 20's and a reader of Bond novels, which in that decade were kind of like DH Lawrence... :x :x :x, involuntarily I would have brought her an apple in my pocket every day! ;%
Don't think I didn't consider doing exactly that-although since we're talking about Bond-perhaps those apples should come from the Garden of Hesperides.
Looking back I can't recall many of the English teachers I had at that time being overly dismissive of Fleming or his books.This was 1965 and the world was changing-"the British Invasion" was in full swing with The Beatles and Rolling Stones and Herman's Hermits arriving on the scene.Plus fashion was undergoing noticable alterations as well:female (and male)hair was getting longer,while hemlines were getting shorter.At that time the James Bond movies were annual events,Connery was one of the most popular actors on the planet, and all of Fleming's novels were selling like those proverbial hotcakes.
This particular teacher happened to really enjoy mystery and suspense fiction.007's success gave her the opportunity to suggest several of Fleming's predecessors and contemporaries to those of us who were obviously interested in reading more espionage novels.I'll always be grateful to her for that.
Having been educated in the same period of time, the only female teachers in my schools were white haired old ladies with rules glued into there hands and other students moms!!!!
Never saw anything like a 20 year old teacher until college, when all the Professors had "Assistants".
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
I do remember DN making quite an impression with Dr. No's obstacle course, and of course Grant in FRWL was terrifying. As was Blofeld walking around in Japanese armor in YOLT, tossing people to his piranhas! And the interrogation chamber...I think more than the character of Bond, I really appreciated Fleming's amazing imagination, and the way he could blend borderline fantasy elements with plain old real life.
I have to thank my parents who let a young teenage boy read books that had scantily clad women on the cover.
I was pretty influential in naming my kids, really going for etymology, romance and all of that, but my wife drew the line at "Jochen" and "Umberto"
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of Loeffelholz and I sitting in our living room in the 70's and watching the network television broadcasts of the Bond films. This was before the VCR, so the Bond Movie On TV was a HUGE event in our lives.
Bond to me consisted of those t.v. broadcasts(where I learned all things Connery), and when a new one would come to the Lincoln Cinema.( The Moore era.) Loeffelholz and I would walk to the theatre from our house, excited out of our minds to see the "New Bond Movie". As excited as we were before seeing each movie, we were even more excited afterwards. We talked Bond for hours on end. And role played James Bond. Usually I had to be the hinchman who was sent to kill Loeffelholz/Bond with a rubber knife. B-) As he was 8 years my elder, he usually disposed of me almost as handily as either Connery or Moore did with their screen adversaries.
And then much later, some time around my 7th or 8th grade of school, Loeffelholz, who at that time must of been quite tired of explaining to me the differences between cinematic and literary Bond, loaned me his old paperback copy of Casino Royale and told me to "Start Here." I did indeed. And never looked back. Over the years, I have read and love them all. I cannot tell you how Mr. Fleming and his Character have enriched my life. Endless entertainment. Endless.
Recently Loeffelholz gave me that same dogeared copy of Casino Royale that he had loaned me in the early 80's. As he said in his earlier post - the book itself still smells like adventure. This time he gave it to me to keep.
Thanks Loeffelholz/Bond (Perhaps some day we will have a rubber knife re-match :v )
And...here's to 100 years Ian Fleming {[] -{
What a great "guide" you had into the world of oo7!
My best friend and his brother, shared many "Bond" moments in the same "vein" ... terrific times!
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond