I'm only part way through, but the book is so full of ideas I thought I'd post a few while they're still fresh in my mind. I may post more when I make it to the exciting conclusion.
This isn't so much about James Bond or Ian Fleming as it is about explaining the historic context to properly understand the Fleming books and the films of the 1960s.
He's got a good "philosophy of history" thing going in the first chapters, analyzing the flawed subjective nature of any accepted rearview of history. Written by the victors of course. Different for the little people than those at the top. The losers make excuses and wallow in nostalgia. And those of us watching the sequels 65 years later have literally no idea what Flemings books meant to their audience when they first came out.
He suggests Britain had a too-easy time, coasting through the 1800s without real rivals, generations assuming they naturally ruled the world by birthright. Then came in for a shock when the Germans caught up industrially, the Americans and Soviets ending up in a better position following the aftermath of WWII, and Britain resorting to what he calls Socialism. His tone is a bit snarky, he doesn't seem to actually like anything, but it may make good satire. (I did get outraged when he had a go at Dick van Dyke, the portrayer of my namesake. How dare he go there?)
There's some very good bits about the nostalgia for Britains role in WWII in the decades following, as far as when he grew up in the 1970s. Romance for the glory days, while postwar generations were struggling to get by on rations, kids still playing with their model replicas of WWII fighter planes. And reading Biggles. (as a Pink Floyd fan, I'm familiar with all this from Roger Waters' imagery).
Also the notion of "plucky individualism" as a recurring theme in the popular stories Britain liked to tell about itself. He argues WWII was won through industrial might and organisation, but Brits liked to believe it was due to brave acts of freethinking individuals, sometimes in defiance of stodgy old orders (this does sound like a Hollywood myth as much as a British myth). And therefor James Bond comes out of this tradition of the heroic individualist.
Also he presents Fleming as an idle toff, who never had to actually interview for a job in his life (yet did work as a banker, a journalist, and in naval intelligence). He suggests Fleming's peculiar position, as the entitled heir to an obsolete ruling class, is a large part of the books appeal, largely to a mass audience whose ancestors never came anywhere close to such insider status.
After about 50 pages he finally starts getting specific about what Fleming wrote. This is some good stuff. He actually uses the word "consumerism" when explaining the appeal of the Bond fantasy to postwar Brits. (and I thought I was being clever when I used that word a while back). Most readers didn't even own a car, let alone a Bentley and an Aston for business trips!
And of course the travel. In the very first book, Fleming starts the exoticism small, with a trip across the Channel. So he can build up to the tropics, and eventually Japan, in the followup volumes. But the author argues this trip in itself was unimaginable to the average reader in 1953. He claims there were restrictions on travel outside the country for all but the wealthiest until the 1970s. (I cant believe this, does anybody who has read the book know what he means?)
Also, specifically, that at one point Bond eats an avocado, a fruit at that time was unseen by most Brits, expensive if imported at all and frequently excluded altogether by trade restrictions.
There's a great bit here where he reminds us Fleming, an upper class insider, is lounging away in Jamaica every winter writing this stuff, taunting his reader with the image of the exotic unobtainable avocado!! I just got extra guacamole for free on my veggie burger at a local fastfood place last night, I cannot possibly put myself in the place of the intended audience of Fleming's first book in 1953.
I know we've had some good chats before about the context needed to fully understand the fantasy, Plane travel in 1962 is frequently mentioned. But a trip across the channel being undreamable in 1953? and no free guacamole on veggie burgers? maybe I've been misreading these stories all my life
2006, while we were still awaiting the release of Craig's version of Casino Royale.
In which CraigBond does a lot of fiddling with his cel-phone, and shows off his gym-toned bod, but that could describe every last condo-dwelling yuppie today.
I don't think the recent film even satisfies modern day wish fulfillment, let alone conveys the extent Fleming's book did so at the time of its release.
...His tone is a bit snarky, he doesn't seem to actually like anything, but it may make good satire.
That's one of the reasons I dislike Winder's book. I found it condescending in a rather cowardly way, as if he was ashamed of his subject. Neither did I appreciate his stolid, unadventurous taste (witnessed in the gratuitous attacks on The Spy Who Loved Me). Nor are Winder's points that original--his insights are cribbed from or inspired by David Cannadine's influential article "James Bond and the Decline of England" (http://www.unz.com/print/Encounter-1979sep-00046/).
Also he presents Fleming as an idle toff, who never had to actually interview for a job in his life (yet did work as a banker, a journalist, and in naval intelligence).
And yet that idle toff ended up doing more to serve his country (and defend the world against fascism) than Winder ever will!
I finally finished slogging through The Man Who Saved Britain
Maybe I shoulda listened to you guys, of the 300 pgs there's maybe 20 in total actually about Bond or Fleming, and theyre pretty random and subjective ... and very sarcastic.
Same really with the history lessons that make up the other 280pgs of the book. Really it's a history book about the end of the British Empire, but if he stripped out the meagre Fleming/Bond content, and repackaged the book to reflect what it's really about, it wouldn't be a proper history book either since it's really got no structure and the tone is so unprofessional. Yet he is a proper historian, so is this supposed to be some sideproject that will sell a few more copies than his usual work?
At one point, maybe 3/4 in, he admits the books and films are so popular that the straw-man stereotype he has been steadily building up as the supposed target market cannot possibly account for more than a fraction of the Bond audience. File that under "oops".
I wonder about the guy ... he seems to feel some tremendous collective guilt about the sins of the British Empire. Yet he tells us he saw Live and Let Die in the theatre when he was 10, so he's four years older than me, i.e. born 1962 ... he wasn't alive for WWII, the decolonization of India, or the Suez Crisis, the three events that make up so much of the book. Why should he feel guilty? He's a unique individual responsible for his actions, not the heir to some sort of tribal curse.
But it seems he connects his favourite childhood movies with this collective responsibility for someone else's past actions, and thus must go on for 300 pages insulting the films, and Fleming, previous British governments and his elders and neighbours in general to somehow cleanse himself for these inherited sins.
Like I know many people who don't care about history at all, and I argue they should. But maybe there's a danger in reading too much history, you end up only seeing your own life as part of some process beyond your control?
Anyway I don't recommend this book.
I just started reading Moonraker for the first time, as part of Ian Flemming's original series in order. I've never seen the movie that borrows the book's name and the name of characters out of it. So far so good, it's interesting to see what a normal day for JB is when he's not on one of the tough special assignments that are the focus of the movies; and get a sense of his mentality regarding his overall career trajectory.
I'm finding it easier to jump into each book now, having grouped the series into smaller mini-series within the whole sequence. Makes for smaller, more attainable goals. The first five books (CR, LaLD, MR, DAF, FRWL) I'm thinking of as James Bond's first life, if that makes any sense. The book that follows, Dr. No seems like a perfect starting point for a next era for Bond, being the start of his second life, in a sense, but also reinforced by the fact that DN sees Bond paired with the Walther, and given how it kind of heralds the coming of the film series (in my mind).
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,656MI6 Agent
Bored of the usual music I listen to while showering, I decided to switch it up with a little with an audio book. So I picked TLD read by David Rintoul, which I then finished off after getting dressed. I plan to do that again with Risico.
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
Late comer to the library and currently knee deep in LALD. Loving this one for sure.
At first was only concerned with Fleming's work however while shopping today caught out of the corner of my eye Trigger Mortis in the clearance rack for $3. Figured "What have I got to lose?", however I am intrigued by Horowitz's upcoming release.
Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica (2014)
by Matthew Parker
a partial biography of Fleming, specifically relating to his famous house, his time in Jamaica and the people he knew, and the history and then-current events in Jamaica. And how all this is reflected in his books, especially the several that are set in Jamaica, but also a bit of history and analysis for all of them.
Awesome stuff, highly recommended, and much much better than the last book I read that claimed it would set Fleming in context.
Now I've never been to Jamaica and don't know much about it beyond Reggae music, ganja, and rotis. So I learned a heck of a lot. The book paints a picture of changing society, as the British imperial influence declines, Hollywood jetsetters discover the island, locals begin to promote the tourist industry year round to all, Independence and the changes in society and the economy. Fleming was witness to some interesting times.
Lots of focus on his difficult marriage, on his best Jamaica buddy Noël Coward, and on his ladyfriend Blanche Blackwell and her son Chris. Much of this stuff was not covered in the Pearson biography, which I understand was maybe because Anne and Caspar and others were still alive and wished their secrets kept.
The info on Chris Blackwell helps me better appreciate the Dr No soundtrack as an album! It was he who got Byron Lee and the Dragonaires the gig, and the album can be seen as an early export of Jamaican music to the West. So just because that one's not John Barry does not mean it's not an interesting album in and of itself!
And its amazing to learn how close buddies he was with Noël Coward, considering how outrageously straight Fleming was, and how barely closeted Coward seems to have been. The book describes him living openly with his partner, and there actually being a whole scene along the north Jamaican coast in the 1950s of wealthy homosexuals living their lives loud and proud. Fleming knew, and at one point is quoted as saying "I am surrounded by buggers!". Fleming and Coward and Coward's partner had lots of adventures together, exploring the island, rafting on the rivers, and doing a lot of serious partying. In fact at times the book is as much about Coward as it is about Fleming, quoting several of his plays which reflected Jamaican life at the time, and which even included characters blatantly based on Fleming and Anne, and Blanche.
in terms of literary influence: despite the changing politics being played out all around him, Fleming saw the island and the rest of the Caribbean as the romanticized playground of Elizabethan pirates, all lawlessness and swashbuckling and buried treasures. His Caribbean set stories actually reflect this fantasy world as much as they do the contemporary real-world politics. Also he was influenced by a certain type of Gothic thriller popular in Jamaica, focussing on the ghosts inhabiting the decaying Colonial manor houses.
The Pearson book I found somewhat frustrating as it began to move very fast once Casino Royale was published, and didn't give much detail about how Fleming wrote the later books, or how involved he really was in the first two films. That is all covered here.
Consider: Dr No was being filmed on location in Jamaica in 1962, and those locations were sites Fleming knew well. Many locals were involved on Fleming's recommendation, particularly his ladyfriend's son Chris Blackwell.
At the same time the film is being shot, he is busy writing OHMSS in Goldeneye, giving Ursula Andress a cameo as a character within the story, and updating James Bond to be of Scottish ancestry. I always thought Fleming really upped his game with that book, now it makes so much more sense: he could practically look out his own window and watch Andress filming that beach scene, no wonder he was inspired. Context! (whereas Pearson I think did not mention any of that).
Then just a few months later Fleming made an extra trip to Goldeneye that year and wrote the morbid Octopussy. He knew he was dying and his marriage was falling apart, even though with the new film in production everything should have been going so right for him. Again, context, knowing this helps to better understand those two stories.
in conclusion: this one gets the Caractacus Potts Seal of Approval.
I am still looking for copies of the Lycett biography and The Man With the Golden Typewriter.
Excellent review Caractacus, you described exactly what makes the book valuable. Parker also made use of the complete transcripts of the interviews Pearson conducted for his biography. These are stored with Fleming's manuscripts at the University of Indiana, Bloomington.
Lyctt's biography is pretty much definitive, and Parker also relies on it. There's a bit too much non-Bondian detail, but that's the price of comprehensiveness. The Man With the Golden Typewriter is a delightful read and presents a far more charming Fleming than the hardboiled narrator of the Bond novels.
thanks Revelator. It was while looking for those other two books I stumbled across this one, which I'd never heard of. Considering how little I got out of that last one I read, I was skeptical but I'm glad I took the chance.
And I always say, I like a story that gives a good sense of landscape, which this book really succeeds at.
I was just thinking: Goldeneye was much like what we now call a man-cave, except at a much much vaster scale! The house came first, then the wife. To get some space from the wife, he flew off to Goldeneye once a year and got in the habit of cranking out a couple chapters each morning, indulging in fantasy world to keep the reality of marriage away, for a couple of hours, a couple of months a year.
A man-cave for someone who could afford property in the tropics, airfare when only the elite got to fly, and two months vacation every year. Nice for some. But the purpose was the same!
Here the pitch of the comic(3 books): What if, during the war, when he himself was a spy for the British crown, Ian Fleming had met an extraordinary spy...The most intrepid, cynical and ferocious one of all... What if this spy was a woman?!
Without pretending to be the best Comic, the drawing is nice and the story really fun. It's a quickly read and full of references.
So do not hesitate of you find it! :007)
I'm currently on London Match. The third in the Len Deighton trilogy of Bernard Samson novels (yes,I know there are nine of them). So good and the previous two. A must read for any Bond literary fans
Finished the audio book of Fergus Fleming's collection of his uncle Ian's Bond-related letters, The Man with the Golden Typewriter. The final chapter is desperately sad, as Fleming's unfailing politeness finally cracks - a letter refusing an interview request by the BBC's Alan Whicker is, compared to his previous correspondence, spectacularly rude.
A voracious reader almost to the end, his later letters from hospital or convalescence in Brighton are dictated as he becomes overwhelmed by ill-health and the final, heartbreaking missive is from his secretary describes the lonely, dying Fleming looking out of his hospital window, smoking. He was so young and fate (plus booze, cigarettes and overwork) was cruel to take such a vital, physical man when he should have had decades left.
James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Me
Christopher Wood
the novelization of the Roger Moore film, by its screenplay writer.
the best kept secret in the Bond bibliography?
this was the first Bond novel I ever read. When the film came out, the proper Fleming book was out of print, and I just assumed this was Fleming: note the real author's name is very small on the cover, almost as small as the catalog number.
Wood rewrites the most unFleming of all films in the style of Fleming. He gets the sentences right, but also Bond's interior monologs, and the lengthy digressions into character background and technobabble. He also makes many small changes, not affecting the plot structure, but just about every scene has small details that play out differently.
Biggest change is the emphasis. The film of course had an A-plot (Stromberg's evil scheme) and a B-plot (Anya's vow of vengeance). Wood's book makes Anya the centre of the story, and we learn a lot more about her, which is genuinely what Fleming would have done. All the stuff with Atlantis and the tanker swallowing subs, even the stuff with Jaws, is minimised so we may not notice how fantastickal it all is. So many small details are changed, I wonder if it was not so much based on an earlier draft, as deliberately rewritten to give the illusion of having been genuine source material.
Anya works for SMERSH. We see her zapiska (top secret file). She has just returned from a practical course called "Sex as a Weapon", in which electrodes were attached to the student's bodies to measure "degree of response". She has been graded "E sensual", which means she makes love very well and enjoys it. It was here she met Sergei and broke the rules by falling in love.
Anya's boss is not Gogol, he is Colonel Nikitin, from Fleming's FRWL, and he is pervy. He has been reviewing films of her made during the course. He makes a crude pass at her, much as Rosa did to Tatiana, and she avoids his hands by reminding him there is yet another hidden microphone in his office. It is Nikitin who attends the meeting in Cairo, not Gogol, and when he sees the way Bond looks at Anya he decides to send Anya the report on who killed Sergei, only once they have determined who has been stealing the subs. That's why she gets the note at the hotel when she does, her boss planned it that way, out of jealousy because he's a creep, and also because SMERSH has been trying to get Bond for decades. He specifically recalls women have twice almost been his downfall in previous SMERSH schemes (presumably Vesper and Tatiana) so third time might be lucky.
Wood plays a very persuasive trick with this book, while at the same time having a lot of fun with typical Flemingisms. Too bad the book design is so cheap looking. Its from Panther, not PAN who'd been publishing the books for twenty years. I think they're the same ones who would put out the generic looking girls-on-guns set a couple of years later? but even those looked better. The PANs that were still on store shelves when this book came out were the messy desk editions. Imagine if they'd made the effort to mock up a messy desk cover for this book, to match the current series? those covers featured a variety of objects related to the adventure. So which objects should they choose for this one? the microfilm, that's one. keys to the Lotus. what else?
the messy desk editions also had three quotes on each back cover, representing Bond, the villain, and the "girl". The "girl" quote would usually be the sexiest line from the entire book. I know precisely which line from Wood's book should represent Anya, if there were to be a messy desk edition.
They were good breasts, there was no escaping the fact. They were firm and ripe, and they stood rather than hung. The aureoles of the nipples were a rich, chocolate brown and the nipples themselves jutted out expectantly like plump, juicy antennae.
pg 104
Plump, juicy antennae! Bet that would have sold a few more copies had it been on the cover.
Too bad the book design is so cheap looking. Its from Panther, not PAN who'd been publishing the books for twenty years. I think they're the same ones who would put out the generic looking girls-on-guns set a couple of years later? but even those looked better. The PANs that were still on store shelves when this book came out were the messy desk editions. Imagine if they'd made the effort to mock up a messy desk cover for this book, to match the current series? those covers featured a variety of objects related to the adventure. So which objects should they choose for this one? the microfilm, that's one. keys to the Lotus. what else?
the messy desk editions also had three quotes on each back cover, representing Bond, the villain, and the "girl". The "girl" quote would usually be the sexiest line from the entire book. I know precisely which line from Wood's book should represent Anya, if there were to be a messy desk edition.
Cape did publish hardcover versions of both the above and Wood's James Bond and Moonraker- they're pretty expensive to pick up!
Wood plays a very persuasive trick with this book, while at the same time having a lot of fun with typical Flemingisms. Too bad the book design is so cheap looking. Its from Panther, not PAN who'd been publishing the books for twenty years. I think they're the same ones who would put out the generic looking girls-on-guns set a couple of years later? but even those looked better. The PANs that were still on store shelves when this book came out were the messy desk editions. Imagine if they'd made the effort to mock up a messy desk cover for this book, to match the current series? those covers featured a variety of objects related to the adventure. So which objects should they choose for this one? the microfilm, that's one. keys to the Lotus. what else?
I don't mind the cover, as I suppose its job is to scream "Hey, look, Roger Moore" at the potential reader, but the typography and layout of Wood's text inside the book makes it a real trial to read.
Cape did publish hardcover versions of both the above and Wood's James Bond and Moonraker- they're pretty expensive to pick up!
woah, those are beauts! not consistent with the Chopping style, but still very classy looking, and Christopher Wood's name is prominent like it oughta be!
I especially like the Moonraker image, its a bit like an old sci-fi pulp magazine cover.
But the ...Spy... cover, why is it a woman with a rose? maybe because Anya receives roses at the hotel, with a note enclosed from her boss telling her who killed her lover! the key moment in the plot, the way Wood tells the story in this version.
as these are Cape editions, this means superado is going to need to look for both those to add to his symmetrical bookshelf!
Maybe a separate shelf for Apocrypha?
Messy desk for JB, TSWLM: a ski pole, a pic of Anya, Lotus keys, microfilm, a set of steel dentures, plane tickets to Egypt, two Swiss bank books in the names of Bechman and Markovitz stamped "cancelled", a bowl of sheep's eyes and dates, and a Pterois volitans (handsome but deadly).
Comments
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Cool, thanks. I plan on doing a ranking list once I finish all the books.
It didn’t do anything for me, I thought it the worst of the latter continuation novels...here is a topic about it... -{
A good book that has a new, non-Eurocentric, take on history. Not briliant, but well worth reading.
Simon Winder
I'm only part way through, but the book is so full of ideas I thought I'd post a few while they're still fresh in my mind. I may post more when I make it to the exciting conclusion.
This isn't so much about James Bond or Ian Fleming as it is about explaining the historic context to properly understand the Fleming books and the films of the 1960s.
He's got a good "philosophy of history" thing going in the first chapters, analyzing the flawed subjective nature of any accepted rearview of history. Written by the victors of course. Different for the little people than those at the top. The losers make excuses and wallow in nostalgia. And those of us watching the sequels 65 years later have literally no idea what Flemings books meant to their audience when they first came out.
He suggests Britain had a too-easy time, coasting through the 1800s without real rivals, generations assuming they naturally ruled the world by birthright. Then came in for a shock when the Germans caught up industrially, the Americans and Soviets ending up in a better position following the aftermath of WWII, and Britain resorting to what he calls Socialism. His tone is a bit snarky, he doesn't seem to actually like anything, but it may make good satire. (I did get outraged when he had a go at Dick van Dyke, the portrayer of my namesake. How dare he go there?)
There's some very good bits about the nostalgia for Britains role in WWII in the decades following, as far as when he grew up in the 1970s. Romance for the glory days, while postwar generations were struggling to get by on rations, kids still playing with their model replicas of WWII fighter planes. And reading Biggles. (as a Pink Floyd fan, I'm familiar with all this from Roger Waters' imagery).
Also the notion of "plucky individualism" as a recurring theme in the popular stories Britain liked to tell about itself. He argues WWII was won through industrial might and organisation, but Brits liked to believe it was due to brave acts of freethinking individuals, sometimes in defiance of stodgy old orders (this does sound like a Hollywood myth as much as a British myth). And therefor James Bond comes out of this tradition of the heroic individualist.
Also he presents Fleming as an idle toff, who never had to actually interview for a job in his life (yet did work as a banker, a journalist, and in naval intelligence). He suggests Fleming's peculiar position, as the entitled heir to an obsolete ruling class, is a large part of the books appeal, largely to a mass audience whose ancestors never came anywhere close to such insider status.
After about 50 pages he finally starts getting specific about what Fleming wrote. This is some good stuff. He actually uses the word "consumerism" when explaining the appeal of the Bond fantasy to postwar Brits. (and I thought I was being clever when I used that word a while back). Most readers didn't even own a car, let alone a Bentley and an Aston for business trips!
And of course the travel. In the very first book, Fleming starts the exoticism small, with a trip across the Channel. So he can build up to the tropics, and eventually Japan, in the followup volumes. But the author argues this trip in itself was unimaginable to the average reader in 1953. He claims there were restrictions on travel outside the country for all but the wealthiest until the 1970s. (I cant believe this, does anybody who has read the book know what he means?)
Also, specifically, that at one point Bond eats an avocado, a fruit at that time was unseen by most Brits, expensive if imported at all and frequently excluded altogether by trade restrictions.
There's a great bit here where he reminds us Fleming, an upper class insider, is lounging away in Jamaica every winter writing this stuff, taunting his reader with the image of the exotic unobtainable avocado!! I just got extra guacamole for free on my veggie burger at a local fastfood place last night, I cannot possibly put myself in the place of the intended audience of Fleming's first book in 1953.
I know we've had some good chats before about the context needed to fully understand the fantasy, Plane travel in 1962 is frequently mentioned. But a trip across the channel being undreamable in 1953? and no free guacamole on veggie burgers? maybe I've been misreading these stories all my life
M: "Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors . . . the list is endless."
In which CraigBond does a lot of fiddling with his cel-phone, and shows off his gym-toned bod, but that could describe every last condo-dwelling yuppie today.
I don't think the recent film even satisfies modern day wish fulfillment, let alone conveys the extent Fleming's book did so at the time of its release.
That's one of the reasons I dislike Winder's book. I found it condescending in a rather cowardly way, as if he was ashamed of his subject. Neither did I appreciate his stolid, unadventurous taste (witnessed in the gratuitous attacks on The Spy Who Loved Me). Nor are Winder's points that original--his insights are cribbed from or inspired by David Cannadine's influential article "James Bond and the Decline of England" (http://www.unz.com/print/Encounter-1979sep-00046/).
And yet that idle toff ended up doing more to serve his country (and defend the world against fascism) than Winder ever will!
Maybe I shoulda listened to you guys, of the 300 pgs there's maybe 20 in total actually about Bond or Fleming, and theyre pretty random and subjective ... and very sarcastic.
Same really with the history lessons that make up the other 280pgs of the book. Really it's a history book about the end of the British Empire, but if he stripped out the meagre Fleming/Bond content, and repackaged the book to reflect what it's really about, it wouldn't be a proper history book either since it's really got no structure and the tone is so unprofessional. Yet he is a proper historian, so is this supposed to be some sideproject that will sell a few more copies than his usual work?
At one point, maybe 3/4 in, he admits the books and films are so popular that the straw-man stereotype he has been steadily building up as the supposed target market cannot possibly account for more than a fraction of the Bond audience. File that under "oops".
I wonder about the guy ... he seems to feel some tremendous collective guilt about the sins of the British Empire. Yet he tells us he saw Live and Let Die in the theatre when he was 10, so he's four years older than me, i.e. born 1962 ... he wasn't alive for WWII, the decolonization of India, or the Suez Crisis, the three events that make up so much of the book. Why should he feel guilty? He's a unique individual responsible for his actions, not the heir to some sort of tribal curse.
But it seems he connects his favourite childhood movies with this collective responsibility for someone else's past actions, and thus must go on for 300 pages insulting the films, and Fleming, previous British governments and his elders and neighbours in general to somehow cleanse himself for these inherited sins.
Like I know many people who don't care about history at all, and I argue they should. But maybe there's a danger in reading too much history, you end up only seeing your own life as part of some process beyond your control?
Anyway I don't recommend this book.
I'm finding it easier to jump into each book now, having grouped the series into smaller mini-series within the whole sequence. Makes for smaller, more attainable goals. The first five books (CR, LaLD, MR, DAF, FRWL) I'm thinking of as James Bond's first life, if that makes any sense. The book that follows, Dr. No seems like a perfect starting point for a next era for Bond, being the start of his second life, in a sense, but also reinforced by the fact that DN sees Bond paired with the Walther, and given how it kind of heralds the coming of the film series (in my mind).
At first was only concerned with Fleming's work however while shopping today caught out of the corner of my eye Trigger Mortis in the clearance rack for $3. Figured "What have I got to lose?", however I am intrigued by Horowitz's upcoming release.
by Matthew Parker
a partial biography of Fleming, specifically relating to his famous house, his time in Jamaica and the people he knew, and the history and then-current events in Jamaica. And how all this is reflected in his books, especially the several that are set in Jamaica, but also a bit of history and analysis for all of them.
Awesome stuff, highly recommended, and much much better than the last book I read that claimed it would set Fleming in context.
Now I've never been to Jamaica and don't know much about it beyond Reggae music, ganja, and rotis. So I learned a heck of a lot. The book paints a picture of changing society, as the British imperial influence declines, Hollywood jetsetters discover the island, locals begin to promote the tourist industry year round to all, Independence and the changes in society and the economy. Fleming was witness to some interesting times.
Lots of focus on his difficult marriage, on his best Jamaica buddy Noël Coward, and on his ladyfriend Blanche Blackwell and her son Chris. Much of this stuff was not covered in the Pearson biography, which I understand was maybe because Anne and Caspar and others were still alive and wished their secrets kept.
The info on Chris Blackwell helps me better appreciate the Dr No soundtrack as an album! It was he who got Byron Lee and the Dragonaires the gig, and the album can be seen as an early export of Jamaican music to the West. So just because that one's not John Barry does not mean it's not an interesting album in and of itself!
And its amazing to learn how close buddies he was with Noël Coward, considering how outrageously straight Fleming was, and how barely closeted Coward seems to have been. The book describes him living openly with his partner, and there actually being a whole scene along the north Jamaican coast in the 1950s of wealthy homosexuals living their lives loud and proud. Fleming knew, and at one point is quoted as saying "I am surrounded by buggers!". Fleming and Coward and Coward's partner had lots of adventures together, exploring the island, rafting on the rivers, and doing a lot of serious partying. In fact at times the book is as much about Coward as it is about Fleming, quoting several of his plays which reflected Jamaican life at the time, and which even included characters blatantly based on Fleming and Anne, and Blanche.
in terms of literary influence: despite the changing politics being played out all around him, Fleming saw the island and the rest of the Caribbean as the romanticized playground of Elizabethan pirates, all lawlessness and swashbuckling and buried treasures. His Caribbean set stories actually reflect this fantasy world as much as they do the contemporary real-world politics. Also he was influenced by a certain type of Gothic thriller popular in Jamaica, focussing on the ghosts inhabiting the decaying Colonial manor houses.
The Pearson book I found somewhat frustrating as it began to move very fast once Casino Royale was published, and didn't give much detail about how Fleming wrote the later books, or how involved he really was in the first two films. That is all covered here.
Consider: Dr No was being filmed on location in Jamaica in 1962, and those locations were sites Fleming knew well. Many locals were involved on Fleming's recommendation, particularly his ladyfriend's son Chris Blackwell.
At the same time the film is being shot, he is busy writing OHMSS in Goldeneye, giving Ursula Andress a cameo as a character within the story, and updating James Bond to be of Scottish ancestry. I always thought Fleming really upped his game with that book, now it makes so much more sense: he could practically look out his own window and watch Andress filming that beach scene, no wonder he was inspired. Context! (whereas Pearson I think did not mention any of that).
Then just a few months later Fleming made an extra trip to Goldeneye that year and wrote the morbid Octopussy. He knew he was dying and his marriage was falling apart, even though with the new film in production everything should have been going so right for him. Again, context, knowing this helps to better understand those two stories.
in conclusion: this one gets the Caractacus Potts Seal of Approval.
I am still looking for copies of the Lycett biography and The Man With the Golden Typewriter.
Lyctt's biography is pretty much definitive, and Parker also relies on it. There's a bit too much non-Bondian detail, but that's the price of comprehensiveness.
The Man With the Golden Typewriter is a delightful read and presents a far more charming Fleming than the hardboiled narrator of the Bond novels.
And I always say, I like a story that gives a good sense of landscape, which this book really succeeds at.
I was just thinking: Goldeneye was much like what we now call a man-cave, except at a much much vaster scale! The house came first, then the wife. To get some space from the wife, he flew off to Goldeneye once a year and got in the habit of cranking out a couple chapters each morning, indulging in fantasy world to keep the reality of marriage away, for a couple of hours, a couple of months a year.
A man-cave for someone who could afford property in the tropics, airfare when only the elite got to fly, and two months vacation every year. Nice for some. But the purpose was the same!
Here the pitch of the comic(3 books):
What if, during the war, when he himself was a spy for the British crown, Ian Fleming had met an extraordinary spy...The most intrepid, cynical and ferocious one of all... What if this spy was a woman?!
Without pretending to be the best Comic, the drawing is nice and the story really fun. It's a quickly read and full of references.
So do not hesitate of you find it! :007)
7.GF 8.TLD 9.TND 10.SF
"Where’s Fekkesh?” “Pyramids.” *thwap* “AHHHHHHH!”
Maybe it was drawn by a Daniel Craig fan?
A voracious reader almost to the end, his later letters from hospital or convalescence in Brighton are dictated as he becomes overwhelmed by ill-health and the final, heartbreaking missive is from his secretary describes the lonely, dying Fleming looking out of his hospital window, smoking. He was so young and fate (plus booze, cigarettes and overwork) was cruel to take such a vital, physical man when he should have had decades left.
I notice something new each time I read them, so all viewpoints are valuable
did you read them in order or randomly?
Christopher Wood
the novelization of the Roger Moore film, by its screenplay writer.
the best kept secret in the Bond bibliography?
this was the first Bond novel I ever read. When the film came out, the proper Fleming book was out of print, and I just assumed this was Fleming: note the real author's name is very small on the cover, almost as small as the catalog number.
Wood rewrites the most unFleming of all films in the style of Fleming. He gets the sentences right, but also Bond's interior monologs, and the lengthy digressions into character background and technobabble. He also makes many small changes, not affecting the plot structure, but just about every scene has small details that play out differently.
Biggest change is the emphasis. The film of course had an A-plot (Stromberg's evil scheme) and a B-plot (Anya's vow of vengeance). Wood's book makes Anya the centre of the story, and we learn a lot more about her, which is genuinely what Fleming would have done. All the stuff with Atlantis and the tanker swallowing subs, even the stuff with Jaws, is minimised so we may not notice how fantastickal it all is. So many small details are changed, I wonder if it was not so much based on an earlier draft, as deliberately rewritten to give the illusion of having been genuine source material.
Anya works for SMERSH. We see her zapiska (top secret file). She has just returned from a practical course called "Sex as a Weapon", in which electrodes were attached to the student's bodies to measure "degree of response". She has been graded "E sensual", which means she makes love very well and enjoys it. It was here she met Sergei and broke the rules by falling in love.
Anya's boss is not Gogol, he is Colonel Nikitin, from Fleming's FRWL, and he is pervy. He has been reviewing films of her made during the course. He makes a crude pass at her, much as Rosa did to Tatiana, and she avoids his hands by reminding him there is yet another hidden microphone in his office. It is Nikitin who attends the meeting in Cairo, not Gogol, and when he sees the way Bond looks at Anya he decides to send Anya the report on who killed Sergei, only once they have determined who has been stealing the subs. That's why she gets the note at the hotel when she does, her boss planned it that way, out of jealousy because he's a creep, and also because SMERSH has been trying to get Bond for decades. He specifically recalls women have twice almost been his downfall in previous SMERSH schemes (presumably Vesper and Tatiana) so third time might be lucky.
Wood plays a very persuasive trick with this book, while at the same time having a lot of fun with typical Flemingisms. Too bad the book design is so cheap looking. Its from Panther, not PAN who'd been publishing the books for twenty years. I think they're the same ones who would put out the generic looking girls-on-guns set a couple of years later? but even those looked better. The PANs that were still on store shelves when this book came out were the messy desk editions. Imagine if they'd made the effort to mock up a messy desk cover for this book, to match the current series? those covers featured a variety of objects related to the adventure. So which objects should they choose for this one? the microfilm, that's one. keys to the Lotus. what else?
the messy desk editions also had three quotes on each back cover, representing Bond, the villain, and the "girl". The "girl" quote would usually be the sexiest line from the entire book. I know precisely which line from Wood's book should represent Anya, if there were to be a messy desk edition. Plump, juicy antennae! Bet that would have sold a few more copies had it been on the cover.
Cape did publish hardcover versions of both the above and Wood's James Bond and Moonraker- they're pretty expensive to pick up!
I don't mind the cover, as I suppose its job is to scream "Hey, look, Roger Moore" at the potential reader, but the typography and layout of Wood's text inside the book makes it a real trial to read.
I especially like the Moonraker image, its a bit like an old sci-fi pulp magazine cover.
But the ...Spy... cover, why is it a woman with a rose? maybe because Anya receives roses at the hotel, with a note enclosed from her boss telling her who killed her lover! the key moment in the plot, the way Wood tells the story in this version.
as these are Cape editions, this means superado is going to need to look for both those to add to his symmetrical bookshelf!
Maybe a separate shelf for Apocrypha?
No idea!