No, I didn't mean the TMWTGG comments, rather the CS rumours. The "Letters" is a massive tome (over a thousand pages, not about to flick through it right now!) and I do recall Amis saying that CS was all his own work... though it might have been elsewhere since it's been years since I read it!
Oh, sorry, I wasn't sure as this thread of mine has covered a few different strands of Amis Bondology. I have the Letters and clearly need to have a look over them again.
Yes, I have found a source where Amis confirms that Colonel Sun is all his own work.
I'm in the process of writing an article on the Fleming manuscript rumour for my blog and I'm trying to get all of the sources together so I can make it as complete as is humanly possible!
Thank you for reading the TBB Guest Article by Hank Reineke. I was honoured to have that written for my blog. I hope to get more articles published in 2017 as things have been very dormant over the last year on the blog. Hopefully that is all about to change...
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Yes, that was very interesting (and illuminating)- thanks!
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,656MI6 Agent
edited October 2017
I saw that last night, but I'm still confused because of the lack of details. However, below is what got my attention, the last part of the article, with my emphasis:
"In correspondence with Tom Maschler (managing director of Fleming's publisher, Jonathan Cape) in October 1964, Amis noted numerous errors that "could easily be spotted by a competent reader". Amis also critiqued Fleming's story, noting that Scaramanga was too thin and insipid a character compared to past villains, and analysed plot flaws revolving around Bond being hired as a security man — despite Scaramanga's lack of knowledge of him and 007's own sense of a trap. Amis concluded that the only way the plot could have worked was if Fleming had intended Scaramanga to be sexually attracted to Bond. Although he suggested that he could perform a "re-jig", Amis was opposed to making substantial changes to Fleming's work.
The Man With The Golden Gun - Ian Fleming's Author Corrected Typescript
Maschler responded, shooting down his theories on Scaramanga, but Amis would continue to speculate, later noting that "the promising hints of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism in him left undeveloped". It is long been believed that none of his recommendations or edits were used, though Amis received 25 guineas for his efforts. This author's corrected typescript shows, for the first time, the corrections on the original proof by Amis that were adopted in the final manuscript."
If that is stating what I think it is, I can assume that members in another Bond board have their delicate undergarments clenched in a severe bunch! I'm sure we'll be reading new elaborate d to explain away this newest threat to their sacred cow of Fleming not allowing even death to have anyone else contribute even a single word to any of his books. )
Thanks, btw to MI6 for posting this article, but not surprisingly, it has not yet been picked up in that other forum I alluded to, despite their self-important and ostentatious dedication to the literary Bond!
"...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.....
This author's corrected typescript shows, for the first time, the corrections on the original proof by Amis that were adopted in the final manuscript."
If that is stating what I think it is, I can assume that members in another Bond board have their delicate undergarments clenched in a severe bunch! I'm sure we'll be reading new elaborate d to explain away this newest threat to their sacred cow of Fleming not allowing even death to have anyone else contribute even a single word to any of his books.
I don't know what the board in question is and have no wish to speak for it, but there's no explaining away the fact that Amis suggested minor corrections that were adopted--the proof is in the photo of Amis's "single sheet of suggested (later adopted) corrections" that's included in the MI6 article (a terrific find!). That photo is also further proof that Amis did not rewrite or make substantial changes to TMWTGG, which is the larger issue. Amis's corrections turn out to be precisely that: minor stylistic changes. I doubt the majority of Fleming fans mind that Amis helped edit the book to prepare it for publication--that's something I've never doubted. But there are still people who think Amis "finished" or rewrote the book. The new evidence shows that he did nothing of the sort.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
This author's corrected typescript shows, for the first time, the corrections on the original proof by Amis that were adopted in the final manuscript."
If that is stating what I think it is, I can assume that members in another Bond board have their delicate undergarments clenched in a severe bunch! I'm sure we'll be reading new elaborate d to explain away this newest threat to their sacred cow of Fleming not allowing even death to have anyone else contribute even a single word to any of his books.
I don't know what the board in question is and have no wish to speak for it, but there's no explaining away the fact that Amis suggested minor corrections that were adopted--the proof is in the photo of Amis's "single sheet of suggested (later adopted) corrections" that's included in the MI6 article (a terrific find!). That photo is also further proof that Amis did not rewrite or make substantial changes to TMWTGG, which is the larger issue. Amis's corrections turn out to be precisely that: minor stylistic changes. I doubt the majority of Fleming fans mind that Amis helped edit the book to prepare it for publication--that's something I've never doubted. But there are still people who think Amis "finished" or rewrote the book. The new evidence shows that he did nothing of the sort.
superado is referring to CBn there.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
I have to agree with Revelator here, based on what has been shown. Amis only made minor adjustments to the MS, nothing substantial.
That's what I've long believed too. Great to have it finally confirmed. This manuscript and its assorted memos is a real find and I hope it does not just disappear into some inaccessible private collection.
But then I agree with Revelator on most things.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Amis was very critical of ...Golden Gun in his James Bond Dossier book. From memory he says Scaramanga and Goodnight "barely qualify" as villain and bondgirl, respectively. I'm sure if he had the chance to make it a better book he would have changed some things more substantial than grammatical errors. At least fleshed out those two characters, to make them more interesting. Obviously he did not, or else he would not have included that criticism in his own book.
But no need to infer further, we now have concrete evidence he added no new content to what Fleming had left behind.
EDIT: I guess the remaining question is why did Amis not make deeper changes? did he choose to leave Fleming's plot and characters as is, even though he thought they were inferior? or did Fleming's heirs tell him he didn't need to make any changes beyond grammar and typos? I suspect the "hints of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism" may not have gone over well?
I guess the remaining question is why did Amis not make deeper changes? did he choose to leave Fleming's plot and characters as is, even though he thought they were inferior? or did Fleming's heirs tell him he didn't need to make any changes beyond grammar and typos? I suspect the "hints of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism" may not have gone over well?
I think it would help to approach the question from the viewpoint of an already successful novelist. As the article notes, "Although he suggested that he could perform a 're-jig', Amis was opposed to making substantial changes to Fleming's work." Had he made such changes, it would have no longer been Fleming's work. And when Amis wrote a Bond novel, it was entirely his own. Had Fleming left behind just a fragment, perhaps completing it would have been more enticing, just as Robert B. Parker completed Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs. But Fleming left behind a complete work, and the sort of improvements Amis mentioned would have required a process more intricate than mere continuation and less creative than simply writing a novel from scratch. Additionally, Amis was a busy novelist and had his own books to write--he was already in the middle of one when he agreed to look over Fleming's typescript. Amis's theories about homosexuality were his attempt to explain the feebleness he found in TMWTGG. He didn't intend them as guidelines for rewriting the book, which would have taken him away from his own novels, and would have been less appealing than writing a Bond novel of his own.
Amis was very critical of ...Golden Gun in his James Bond Dossier book. From memory he says Scaramanga and Goodnight "barely qualify" as villain and bondgirl, respectively. I'm sure if he had the chance to make it a better book he would have changed some things more substantial than grammatical errors. At least fleshed out those two characters, to make them more interesting. Obviously he did not, or else he would not have included that criticism in his own book.
But no need to infer further, we now have concrete evidence he added no new content to what Fleming had left behind.
EDIT: I guess the remaining question is why did Amis not make deeper changes? did he choose to leave Fleming's plot and characters as is, even though he thought they were inferior? or did Fleming's heirs tell him he didn't need to make any changes beyond grammar and typos? I suspect the "hints of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism" may not have gone over well?
I almost wished that someone had improved the book.
It could've resulted a better movie.
I almost wished that someone had improved the book.
It could've resulted a better movie.
Even if the book had been better the filmmakers would have probably tossed most of it aside--look at what happened with Moonraker and Live and Let Die.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
I almost wished that someone had improved the book.
It could've resulted a better movie.
Even if the book had been better the filmmakers would have probably tossed most of it aside--look at what happened with Moonraker and Live and Let Die.
Well, that's certainly true.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
I enjoy reading TMWTGG, as it shows how Fleming worked. This is the obvious core of a story. Which Fleming
Would have added some of his extra descriptive passages, if he could have, but what's there is still extremely
Well written. The meeting of Bond and Scaramanga in the Jamaican bar. The tension, the heat and sense of
Danger are all there.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I enjoy reading TMWTGG, as it shows how Fleming worked. This is the obvious core of a story. Which Fleming would have added some of his extra descriptive passages, if he could have, but what's there is still extremely well written. The meeting of Bond and Scaramanga in the Jamaican bar. The tension, the heat and sense of danger are all there.
I think its a brothel, not just a bar.
While Bond is chatting with the bartender/madame, Scaramanga is upstairs with one of the working girls.
You're right, that is a good scene, unique, and for some reason I usually forget about it ... its another bit of source material they could be using for future films instead of remaking Logan or Goldmember or whatever they have in store for Bond25.
When Scaramanga comes downstairs he feels the need to show off to Bond how tuff he is, so he shoots the bartenders pet mynah birds just to be a jerk.
But I'm never sure why Bond even stops there aside from chance.
He has seen an ad in the paper about land for sale and acts as if that's a clue, yet I never see how that ad relates to his search for Scaramanga, or what happens after they meet.
After reading the paper, Bond secretly opens a message to Scaramanga telling him to go to the address mentioned in that article. Bond therefore knows Scaramanga will be at that address at a certain time.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
It was a bar downstairs and a brothel upstairs. One has to be discreet about these things I suppose.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
For anyone who hasn't read the entire thing, here's the influential review of The Man With the Golden Gun by Kingsley Amis, which ran in the New Statesman's April 2, 1965 issue.
***
M for Murder
We left James Bond in Japan, an amnesia victim after a head wound sustained while escaping by balloon from the castle he had destroyed by blocking-up the mud geyser on which it was built. He was under the impression that he was a local fisherman, and Kissy Suzuki, at that time what the newspapers call his friend, did nothing to put him right, at least not mentally. At the end of You Only Live Twice he was taking off for Vladivostok, because it was part of a country that, he sensed, he had had a lot to do with in the past. This was a promising situation. One could hardly wait for the follow-up: inevitable capture by the KGB, questionings and torturings and brainwashings, break out (aided probably by some beautiful firm-breasted female major of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate), the slaying of Colonel-General Grubozaboyschikov of SMERSH, and perhaps of Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky of RUMID for good measure, in revenge for what happened on the Orient Express in 1957, and final escape over the Wall.
Nothing of this order takes place in Bond’s latest and last exploit. He’s back in England right at the start, telephoning the Ministry of Defence and apparently set on getting his old job back. It soon emerges that he has indeed been brainwashed, and that the commission allotted him by his Russian controllers is nothing less than the assassination of M. Despite the forebodings pf Miss Moneypenny in the outer office Bond is admitted to the presence, chats briefly about the necessity of working for peace and then whips out a cyanide pistol. But M presses a button which lowers a sheet of armour-plate glass from the ceiling, and the jet of viscous brown fluid splashes harmlessly into its centre.
I lament this outcome of the attentat very much, and not only because it helps to make everything that follows seem rather small-scale. M has always seemed to me about as sinister as Captain Nash (the moon-maniac who tried to shoot Bond with a specially designed copy of War and Peace) and considerably less amiable than Dr No. The depth of Bond’s devotion to M’s keen, lined sailor’s face and clear blue sailor’s eyes remains something of a mystery. Perhaps the pitch of the old monster’s depravity is reached in the title story of For Your Eyes Only. Here he manoeuvres Bond into volunteering to murder an ex-Nazi in Vermont as a personal favour, and says absolutely nothing when Bond departs to carry out this arduous, dangerous, difficult assignment. Even Mr. Deighton’s pair of boors, Colonel Ross and Major Dalby, might in such circumstances have gone as far as to wish Bond luck or thank him. A faceful of cyanide would have done M a world of good.
He survives, however, and goes off to luncheon at Blades, just a grilled sole and a spoonful of Stilton. He used to be much greedier than this, cheerfully doing himself harm by guzzling a marrow-bone after his caviar and devilled kidneys and fresh strawberries. In the old days, too, he would go for 20-year-old clarets; he washes down his grilled sole with a bottle of Algerian red too bad to be allowed on the wine-list. We know now why Bond stepped down from broiled lobsters with melted butter in 1953 to cold roast beef and potato salad in 1963. As always, he was following M’s lead.
After luncheon, M decides to send Bond off to the West Indies to kill a certain Scaramanga, the golden-gun-toter of the title and a free-lance assassin often used by the KGB or Castro. He may well perish in the attempt, for Scaramanga is the best shot in the Caribbean, but that’s all right—to fall on the battlefield would be better than doing 20 years for having tried to kill the head of the Secret Service. Having had a bit of shock treatment at the hands of Sir James Molony, the famous neurologist, and some intensive gun practice at the Maidstone police range. Bond is judged fit for the assignment and in due course noses out Scaramanga in Jamaica. What follows is soon told. Scaramanga hires Bond as his security and trigger-man and takes him off to a half-built hotel on the coast where a ‘business conference’ is to be held. Ostensibly its subject is tourist development. Bond’s identity becomes known and Scaramanga arranges to knock him off during a small-gauge-railway excursion as a piece of light entertainment for the conferrers. But…We last see Bond refusing a knighthood: to accept one would be to aspire inadmissibly to M’s level.
It’s a sadly empty tale, empty of the interests and effects that for better or worse, Ian Fleming had made his own. Violence is at a minimum. Sex too: an old chum of Bond’s called Mary Goodnight appears two or three times, and on her first appearance puts an arm smelling of Chanel No 5 round his neck, but he gets no more out of her later than an invitation to convalesce at her bungalow. And there’s no gambling, no gadgets or machinery to speak of, no undersea stuff, none of those lavish and complicated eats and drinks, hardly even a brand-name apart from Bond’s Hofffitz safety razor arid the odd bottle of Walker’s de luxe Bourbon. The main plot, in the sense of the scheme proposed by the villain’s, is likewise thin. Smuggling marijuana and getting protection-money out of oil companies disappoint expectation aroused by what some of these people’s predecessors planned: a nuclear attack on Miami, the dissemination throughout Britain of crop and livestock pests, the burgling of Fort Knox. The rank-and-file villains, too, have been reduced in scale.
In most of the Bond books it was the central villain on whom interest in character was fixed. Moonraker, for instance, is filled with the physical presence of Huger Drax with his red hair and scarred face, bustling about, puffing cigars, playing the genial host when he isn’t working on his scheme to obliterate London. Scaramanga is just a dandy with a special (and ineffective) gun, a stock of outdated American slang and a third nipple on his left breast. We hear a lot about him early on in the 10-page dossier M consults, including mentions of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism, but these aren’t followed up anywhere. Why not?
It may be relevant to consider at this point an outstandingly clumsy turn in the narrative. Bond has always, been good at ingratiating, himself with his enemies, notably with Goldfinger, who took him on as his personal assistant for the Fort Knox project. Goldfinger, however, had fairly good reason to believe Bond to be a clever and experienced operator on the wrong side of the law. Scaramanga hires him after a few minutes’ conversation in the bar of a brothel. (At this stage he has no idea that there’s a British agent within a hundred miles, so he can’t be hiring him to keep him under his eye.) Bond wonders what Scaramanga wants with him: “it was odd, to say the least of it…the strong smell of a trap.” This hefty hint of a concealed motive on Scaramanga’s part is never taken up. Why not?
I strongly suspect—on deduction alone, let it be said—that these unanswered questions represent traces of an earlier draft, perhaps never committed to paper, wherein Scaramanga hires Bond because he’s sexually interested in him. A supposition of this kind would also take care of other difficulties or deficiencies in the book as it stands, the insubstantiality of the character of Scaramanga, just referred to, and the feeling of suppressed emotion, or at any rate the build-up to and the space for some kind of climax of emotion, in the final confrontation of the two men. But of course Ian Fleming wouldn’t have dared complete the story along those lines. Imagine what the critics would have said!
To read some of their extant efforts, one would think that Bond’s creator was a sort of psychological Ernst Stavro Blofeld, bent on poisoning British morality. An article in this journal in 1958 helped to initiate a whole series of attacks on the supposed “sex, snobbery and sadism” of the books, as if sex were bad per se, and as if snobbery resided in a few glossy-magazine descriptions of Blades and references to Aston Martin cars and Pinaud shampoos and what-not, and as if sadism could be attributed to a character who never wantonly inflicts pain. (Contrast Bulldog Drummond and Spillane’s Mike Hammer.)
These are matters that can’t be argued through in this review. But it seems clear that Ian Fleming took such charges seriously. Violent and bloody action, the infliction of pain in general, was very much scaled down in what he wrote after 1958. Many will regard this as a negative gain, though others may feel that a secret-agent story without violence would be like, say, a naval story without battles. As regards ‘sex’ and ‘snobbery’ and the memorable meals and the high-level gambling, these, however unedifying, were part of the unique Fleming world, and the denaturing of that world in the present novel and parts of its immediate forerunners is a loss. Nobody can write at his best with part of his attention on puritanical readers over his shoulder.
Ian Fleming was a good writer, occasionally a brilliant one, as the gypsy-encampment scene in From Russia, With Love (however sadistic) and the bridge-game in Moonraker (however snobbish) will suggest. His gifts for sustaining and varying action, and for holding down the wildest fantasies with cleverly synthesized pseudo-facts, give him a place beside long defunct entertainer-virtuosos like Jules Verne and Conan Doyle, though he was more fully master of his material than either of these. When shall we see another?
damn Revelator that's awesome, thanks for posting that!
It gives us a whole lotta clues what Amis would have added to, or changed, in ...Golden Gun, had he chosen to do more than fix punctuation.
It also gives us some more insight into what Amis gets out of Fleming, to sit alongside his ...Dossier.
I'm currently rereading Colonel Sun, and am tempted to dig out my copy of the Dossier. I'm realising this is not really a book Fleming would have written. It's an exercise in practically demonstrating what Amis gets out of another man's writing. He breaks it down into various formulaic elements in his ...Dossier, then puts it into practice in Colonel Sun.
But that's just what Amis gets out of Fleming. Each and every one of us gets something different out of Fleming, and if we had the creative writing chops we could each write our own adventure that would reveal a completely unique interpretation of what Fleming did.
In the ...Dossier he does go on about the Bond girls' breasts, for example, more than I actually ever noticed Fleming doing. And he manages to do so again in this essay. And true to his own interpretation of the formula, Ariadne Alexandrou's "overdeveloped bust" is referenced repeatedly.
And of course we know he likes M, I think he said M was his favourite character, and so M gets his biggest role ever in Amis's own Bond book. His descriptions of M in this particular essay are classic. He thinks M makes the villains look likable in comparison! ...and Amis lets Bond eat some very good meals Colonel Sun, perhaps to make up for the inadequate food he felt was served in ...Golden Gun.
Amis's version of TMWTGG would certainly have been an interesting book. I don't think Fleming consciously thought Scaramanga was sexually attracted to Bond, but it would have made a great plot twist (one can imagine something like the Silva-Bond relationship in Skyfall) and would have made good on the high expectations raised by Scaramanga's dossier. Ironically the otherwise lousy film of TMWTGG did a better job of showing Scaramanga's pistol fetishism, in the scene where he strokes Andrea's face with his pistol.
I also liked Amis's alternative version of Bond in Russia, complete with torture, dramatic escape ("aided probably by some beautiful firm-breasted female major of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate") and the slaying of General G, followed by a leap over the Berlin Wall. Could have been a hell of a story.
I'm currently rereading Colonel Sun, and am tempted to dig out my copy of the Dossier. I'm realising this is not really a book Fleming would have written. It's an exercise in practically demonstrating what Amis gets out of another man's writing. He breaks it down into various formulaic elements in his ...Dossier, then puts it into practice in Colonel Sun.
That's a good way of putting it, and a good way to write any continuation novel. Amis gained encyclopedic knowledge of Fleming's themes, interests, and recurring subjects, and he drew on what he liked best of these to shape his own Bond novel. By filtering his own interests through Fleming's, he was able to avoid writing a mere pastiche. Instead of trying to write like Fleming, he wrote his own story using elements found in Fleming. He treated Fleming's writing as a sort of sub-genre in itself.
In the ...Dossier he does go on about the Bond girls' breasts, for example, more than I actually ever noticed Fleming doing.
Hmmm, you might be right! I do remember that Fleming quite liked his breasts, but also had some notorious bits about women's bottoms...
His descriptions of M in this particular essay are classic. He thinks M makes the villains look likable in comparison!
Yes, it's funny how Amis is so revolted by M, yet made him a central character in his own Bond novel, giving him a role bigger than anything in Fleming.
...and Amis lets Bond eat some very good meals Colonel Sun, perhaps to make up for the inadequate food he felt was served in ...Golden Gun.
No complaints from me there! TMWTGG does feel like a "back to basics" that goes a little too far back.
Revelator, one of the reasons I finally got around to registering to join this forum is so I could thank you for posting that Amis review of TMWTGG! I love reading Amis's thoughts on Fleming and Bond...in fact, I hate to admit this here, but sometimes I find Amis's writing about Bond more enjoyable than the Bond novels themselves! The Dossier was one of the most entertaining, enjoyable books I've read in recent years, filled with enthusiasm and fresh insight. Did Amis review other Bond novels for the newspapers of the day -- and are any of them found online or elsewhere?
Revelator, one of the reasons I finally got around to registering to join this forum is so I could thank you for posting that Amis review of TMWTGG! I love reading Amis's thoughts on Fleming and Bond...in fact, I hate to admit this here, but sometimes I find Amis's writing about Bond more enjoyable than the Bond novels themselves! The Dossier was one of the most entertaining, enjoyable books I've read in recent years, filled with enthusiasm and fresh insight. Did Amis review other Bond novels for the newspapers of the day -- and are any of them found online or elsewhere?
You're very welcome, and I've been enjoying the Bond reviews on your blog (though I hope you enjoy the later novels more than the early ones!). As far as I know, Amis didn't review the other Fleming Bond novels, but he did review one of Gardner's and one of Christopher Wood's (they can be read here: https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/40204/two-james-bond-novel-reviews-from-kingsley-amis-1977-1982/).
But Amis did write about Fleming for The Dictionary of National Biography (which can be read here: https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/43161/kingsley-amiss-last-words-on-fleming/).
Also worth seeking out is "A New James Bond," his essay on writing Colonel Sun (originally printed in his book of essays What Became of Jane Austen? and reprinted in some editions of Col. Sun--I might post it here if there's demand for it). Lastly, Amis was interviewed by Raymond Benson for the magazine Bondage--I recently acquired a copy and might transcribe it if anyone's interested.
I notice that you own The Book Of Bond: or Every Man His Own Bond, which I heartily recommend, though it's less of a critical study than a warped self-help manual for aspiring Double-Os!
Thanks for the nice words on my reviews! I'm really looking forward to getting to the Bond novels I read back in the day. I still remember being so caught up in YOLT, reading it over the summer of '86 (I think it was) -- same goes for OHMSS and Dr. No. But the first 4 I never got to read back then.
Thanks for those links to the other Amis reviews, and yes, I'd LOVE to read "A New James Bond" and the Benson interview -- but if you decide not to post them, thanks for letting us know where to find them.
Speaking of "A New James Bond," I think it was a big mistake for Gildrose not to go forward with their "Robert Markham" house name and release a new series of Bond novels...the mid to late '60s was THE era for series spy fiction, and they could've capitalized on it for sure with the most famous "spy" of all (though as we know from Amis's study, he isn't really a spy per se...).
That Book of Bond wasn't easy to get, either -- at least at a reasonable price. I'm not sure, but I don't think it was even published here in the US. I had the same experience years ago when I tracked down Adam Diment's "Think Inc.," which also never came out here.
Speaking of "A New James Bond," I think it was a big mistake for Gildrose not to go forward with their "Robert Markham" house name and release a new series of Bond novels...
I agree. From what I remember, Colonel Sun didn't sell as well as expected, which might account for Glidrose not continuing the series. Perhaps the pseudonym hurt sales?
That Book of Bond wasn't easy to get, either -- at least at a reasonable price.
I know what you mean--I took me ages to find an affordable copy. It really ought to reprinted, perhaps in a combined edition with the Dossier and any other writings on Bond.
Comments
Oh, sorry, I wasn't sure as this thread of mine has covered a few different strands of Amis Bondology. I have the Letters and clearly need to have a look over them again.
Yes, I have found a source where Amis confirms that Colonel Sun is all his own work.
I'm in the process of writing an article on the Fleming manuscript rumour for my blog and I'm trying to get all of the sources together so I can make it as complete as is humanly possible!
Thank you for reading the TBB Guest Article by Hank Reineke. I was honoured to have that written for my blog. I hope to get more articles published in 2017 as things have been very dormant over the last year on the blog. Hopefully that is all about to change...
https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/literary-tmwtgg-authors-corrected-typescript
"In correspondence with Tom Maschler (managing director of Fleming's publisher, Jonathan Cape) in October 1964, Amis noted numerous errors that "could easily be spotted by a competent reader". Amis also critiqued Fleming's story, noting that Scaramanga was too thin and insipid a character compared to past villains, and analysed plot flaws revolving around Bond being hired as a security man — despite Scaramanga's lack of knowledge of him and 007's own sense of a trap. Amis concluded that the only way the plot could have worked was if Fleming had intended Scaramanga to be sexually attracted to Bond. Although he suggested that he could perform a "re-jig", Amis was opposed to making substantial changes to Fleming's work.
The Man With The Golden Gun - Ian Fleming's Author Corrected Typescript
Maschler responded, shooting down his theories on Scaramanga, but Amis would continue to speculate, later noting that "the promising hints of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism in him left undeveloped". It is long been believed that none of his recommendations or edits were used, though Amis received 25 guineas for his efforts. This author's corrected typescript shows, for the first time, the corrections on the original proof by Amis that were adopted in the final manuscript."
If that is stating what I think it is, I can assume that members in another Bond board have their delicate undergarments clenched in a severe bunch! I'm sure we'll be reading new elaborate d to explain away this newest threat to their sacred cow of Fleming not allowing even death to have anyone else contribute even a single word to any of his books.
Thanks, btw to MI6 for posting this article, but not surprisingly, it has not yet been picked up in that other forum I alluded to, despite their self-important and ostentatious dedication to the literary Bond!
I don't know what the board in question is and have no wish to speak for it, but there's no explaining away the fact that Amis suggested minor corrections that were adopted--the proof is in the photo of Amis's "single sheet of suggested (later adopted) corrections" that's included in the MI6 article (a terrific find!). That photo is also further proof that Amis did not rewrite or make substantial changes to TMWTGG, which is the larger issue. Amis's corrections turn out to be precisely that: minor stylistic changes. I doubt the majority of Fleming fans mind that Amis helped edit the book to prepare it for publication--that's something I've never doubted. But there are still people who think Amis "finished" or rewrote the book. The new evidence shows that he did nothing of the sort.
superado is referring to CBn there.
That's what I've long believed too. Great to have it finally confirmed. This manuscript and its assorted memos is a real find and I hope it does not just disappear into some inaccessible private collection.
But then I agree with Revelator on most things.
But no need to infer further, we now have concrete evidence he added no new content to what Fleming had left behind.
EDIT: I guess the remaining question is why did Amis not make deeper changes? did he choose to leave Fleming's plot and characters as is, even though he thought they were inferior? or did Fleming's heirs tell him he didn't need to make any changes beyond grammar and typos? I suspect the "hints of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism" may not have gone over well?
I think it would help to approach the question from the viewpoint of an already successful novelist. As the article notes, "Although he suggested that he could perform a 're-jig', Amis was opposed to making substantial changes to Fleming's work." Had he made such changes, it would have no longer been Fleming's work. And when Amis wrote a Bond novel, it was entirely his own. Had Fleming left behind just a fragment, perhaps completing it would have been more enticing, just as Robert B. Parker completed Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs. But Fleming left behind a complete work, and the sort of improvements Amis mentioned would have required a process more intricate than mere continuation and less creative than simply writing a novel from scratch. Additionally, Amis was a busy novelist and had his own books to write--he was already in the middle of one when he agreed to look over Fleming's typescript. Amis's theories about homosexuality were his attempt to explain the feebleness he found in TMWTGG. He didn't intend them as guidelines for rewriting the book, which would have taken him away from his own novels, and would have been less appealing than writing a Bond novel of his own.
It could've resulted a better movie.
Even if the book had been better the filmmakers would have probably tossed most of it aside--look at what happened with Moonraker and Live and Let Die.
Well, that's certainly true.
Would have added some of his extra descriptive passages, if he could have, but what's there is still extremely
Well written. The meeting of Bond and Scaramanga in the Jamaican bar. The tension, the heat and sense of
Danger are all there.
While Bond is chatting with the bartender/madame, Scaramanga is upstairs with one of the working girls.
You're right, that is a good scene, unique, and for some reason I usually forget about it ... its another bit of source material they could be using for future films instead of remaking Logan or Goldmember or whatever they have in store for Bond25.
When Scaramanga comes downstairs he feels the need to show off to Bond how tuff he is, so he shoots the bartenders pet mynah birds just to be a jerk.
But I'm never sure why Bond even stops there aside from chance.
He has seen an ad in the paper about land for sale and acts as if that's a clue, yet I never see how that ad relates to his search for Scaramanga, or what happens after they meet.
Yes, I have The Knowledge! :007)
***
M for Murder
We left James Bond in Japan, an amnesia victim after a head wound sustained while escaping by balloon from the castle he had destroyed by blocking-up the mud geyser on which it was built. He was under the impression that he was a local fisherman, and Kissy Suzuki, at that time what the newspapers call his friend, did nothing to put him right, at least not mentally. At the end of You Only Live Twice he was taking off for Vladivostok, because it was part of a country that, he sensed, he had had a lot to do with in the past. This was a promising situation. One could hardly wait for the follow-up: inevitable capture by the KGB, questionings and torturings and brainwashings, break out (aided probably by some beautiful firm-breasted female major of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate), the slaying of Colonel-General Grubozaboyschikov of SMERSH, and perhaps of Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky of RUMID for good measure, in revenge for what happened on the Orient Express in 1957, and final escape over the Wall.
Nothing of this order takes place in Bond’s latest and last exploit. He’s back in England right at the start, telephoning the Ministry of Defence and apparently set on getting his old job back. It soon emerges that he has indeed been brainwashed, and that the commission allotted him by his Russian controllers is nothing less than the assassination of M. Despite the forebodings pf Miss Moneypenny in the outer office Bond is admitted to the presence, chats briefly about the necessity of working for peace and then whips out a cyanide pistol. But M presses a button which lowers a sheet of armour-plate glass from the ceiling, and the jet of viscous brown fluid splashes harmlessly into its centre.
I lament this outcome of the attentat very much, and not only because it helps to make everything that follows seem rather small-scale. M has always seemed to me about as sinister as Captain Nash (the moon-maniac who tried to shoot Bond with a specially designed copy of War and Peace) and considerably less amiable than Dr No. The depth of Bond’s devotion to M’s keen, lined sailor’s face and clear blue sailor’s eyes remains something of a mystery. Perhaps the pitch of the old monster’s depravity is reached in the title story of For Your Eyes Only. Here he manoeuvres Bond into volunteering to murder an ex-Nazi in Vermont as a personal favour, and says absolutely nothing when Bond departs to carry out this arduous, dangerous, difficult assignment. Even Mr. Deighton’s pair of boors, Colonel Ross and Major Dalby, might in such circumstances have gone as far as to wish Bond luck or thank him. A faceful of cyanide would have done M a world of good.
He survives, however, and goes off to luncheon at Blades, just a grilled sole and a spoonful of Stilton. He used to be much greedier than this, cheerfully doing himself harm by guzzling a marrow-bone after his caviar and devilled kidneys and fresh strawberries. In the old days, too, he would go for 20-year-old clarets; he washes down his grilled sole with a bottle of Algerian red too bad to be allowed on the wine-list. We know now why Bond stepped down from broiled lobsters with melted butter in 1953 to cold roast beef and potato salad in 1963. As always, he was following M’s lead.
After luncheon, M decides to send Bond off to the West Indies to kill a certain Scaramanga, the golden-gun-toter of the title and a free-lance assassin often used by the KGB or Castro. He may well perish in the attempt, for Scaramanga is the best shot in the Caribbean, but that’s all right—to fall on the battlefield would be better than doing 20 years for having tried to kill the head of the Secret Service. Having had a bit of shock treatment at the hands of Sir James Molony, the famous neurologist, and some intensive gun practice at the Maidstone police range. Bond is judged fit for the assignment and in due course noses out Scaramanga in Jamaica. What follows is soon told. Scaramanga hires Bond as his security and trigger-man and takes him off to a half-built hotel on the coast where a ‘business conference’ is to be held. Ostensibly its subject is tourist development. Bond’s identity becomes known and Scaramanga arranges to knock him off during a small-gauge-railway excursion as a piece of light entertainment for the conferrers. But…We last see Bond refusing a knighthood: to accept one would be to aspire inadmissibly to M’s level.
It’s a sadly empty tale, empty of the interests and effects that for better or worse, Ian Fleming had made his own. Violence is at a minimum. Sex too: an old chum of Bond’s called Mary Goodnight appears two or three times, and on her first appearance puts an arm smelling of Chanel No 5 round his neck, but he gets no more out of her later than an invitation to convalesce at her bungalow. And there’s no gambling, no gadgets or machinery to speak of, no undersea stuff, none of those lavish and complicated eats and drinks, hardly even a brand-name apart from Bond’s Hofffitz safety razor arid the odd bottle of Walker’s de luxe Bourbon. The main plot, in the sense of the scheme proposed by the villain’s, is likewise thin. Smuggling marijuana and getting protection-money out of oil companies disappoint expectation aroused by what some of these people’s predecessors planned: a nuclear attack on Miami, the dissemination throughout Britain of crop and livestock pests, the burgling of Fort Knox. The rank-and-file villains, too, have been reduced in scale.
In most of the Bond books it was the central villain on whom interest in character was fixed. Moonraker, for instance, is filled with the physical presence of Huger Drax with his red hair and scarred face, bustling about, puffing cigars, playing the genial host when he isn’t working on his scheme to obliterate London. Scaramanga is just a dandy with a special (and ineffective) gun, a stock of outdated American slang and a third nipple on his left breast. We hear a lot about him early on in the 10-page dossier M consults, including mentions of homosexuality and pistol-fetishism, but these aren’t followed up anywhere. Why not?
It may be relevant to consider at this point an outstandingly clumsy turn in the narrative. Bond has always, been good at ingratiating, himself with his enemies, notably with Goldfinger, who took him on as his personal assistant for the Fort Knox project. Goldfinger, however, had fairly good reason to believe Bond to be a clever and experienced operator on the wrong side of the law. Scaramanga hires him after a few minutes’ conversation in the bar of a brothel. (At this stage he has no idea that there’s a British agent within a hundred miles, so he can’t be hiring him to keep him under his eye.) Bond wonders what Scaramanga wants with him: “it was odd, to say the least of it…the strong smell of a trap.” This hefty hint of a concealed motive on Scaramanga’s part is never taken up. Why not?
I strongly suspect—on deduction alone, let it be said—that these unanswered questions represent traces of an earlier draft, perhaps never committed to paper, wherein Scaramanga hires Bond because he’s sexually interested in him. A supposition of this kind would also take care of other difficulties or deficiencies in the book as it stands, the insubstantiality of the character of Scaramanga, just referred to, and the feeling of suppressed emotion, or at any rate the build-up to and the space for some kind of climax of emotion, in the final confrontation of the two men. But of course Ian Fleming wouldn’t have dared complete the story along those lines. Imagine what the critics would have said!
To read some of their extant efforts, one would think that Bond’s creator was a sort of psychological Ernst Stavro Blofeld, bent on poisoning British morality. An article in this journal in 1958 helped to initiate a whole series of attacks on the supposed “sex, snobbery and sadism” of the books, as if sex were bad per se, and as if snobbery resided in a few glossy-magazine descriptions of Blades and references to Aston Martin cars and Pinaud shampoos and what-not, and as if sadism could be attributed to a character who never wantonly inflicts pain. (Contrast Bulldog Drummond and Spillane’s Mike Hammer.)
These are matters that can’t be argued through in this review. But it seems clear that Ian Fleming took such charges seriously. Violent and bloody action, the infliction of pain in general, was very much scaled down in what he wrote after 1958. Many will regard this as a negative gain, though others may feel that a secret-agent story without violence would be like, say, a naval story without battles. As regards ‘sex’ and ‘snobbery’ and the memorable meals and the high-level gambling, these, however unedifying, were part of the unique Fleming world, and the denaturing of that world in the present novel and parts of its immediate forerunners is a loss. Nobody can write at his best with part of his attention on puritanical readers over his shoulder.
Ian Fleming was a good writer, occasionally a brilliant one, as the gypsy-encampment scene in From Russia, With Love (however sadistic) and the bridge-game in Moonraker (however snobbish) will suggest. His gifts for sustaining and varying action, and for holding down the wildest fantasies with cleverly synthesized pseudo-facts, give him a place beside long defunct entertainer-virtuosos like Jules Verne and Conan Doyle, though he was more fully master of his material than either of these. When shall we see another?
It gives us a whole lotta clues what Amis would have added to, or changed, in ...Golden Gun, had he chosen to do more than fix punctuation.
It also gives us some more insight into what Amis gets out of Fleming, to sit alongside his ...Dossier.
I'm currently rereading Colonel Sun, and am tempted to dig out my copy of the Dossier. I'm realising this is not really a book Fleming would have written. It's an exercise in practically demonstrating what Amis gets out of another man's writing. He breaks it down into various formulaic elements in his ...Dossier, then puts it into practice in Colonel Sun.
But that's just what Amis gets out of Fleming. Each and every one of us gets something different out of Fleming, and if we had the creative writing chops we could each write our own adventure that would reveal a completely unique interpretation of what Fleming did.
In the ...Dossier he does go on about the Bond girls' breasts, for example, more than I actually ever noticed Fleming doing. And he manages to do so again in this essay. And true to his own interpretation of the formula, Ariadne Alexandrou's "overdeveloped bust" is referenced repeatedly.
And of course we know he likes M, I think he said M was his favourite character, and so M gets his biggest role ever in Amis's own Bond book. His descriptions of M in this particular essay are classic. He thinks M makes the villains look likable in comparison!
...and Amis lets Bond eat some very good meals Colonel Sun, perhaps to make up for the inadequate food he felt was served in ...Golden Gun.
Amis's version of TMWTGG would certainly have been an interesting book. I don't think Fleming consciously thought Scaramanga was sexually attracted to Bond, but it would have made a great plot twist (one can imagine something like the Silva-Bond relationship in Skyfall) and would have made good on the high expectations raised by Scaramanga's dossier. Ironically the otherwise lousy film of TMWTGG did a better job of showing Scaramanga's pistol fetishism, in the scene where he strokes Andrea's face with his pistol.
I also liked Amis's alternative version of Bond in Russia, complete with torture, dramatic escape ("aided probably by some beautiful firm-breasted female major of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate") and the slaying of General G, followed by a leap over the Berlin Wall. Could have been a hell of a story.
That's a good way of putting it, and a good way to write any continuation novel. Amis gained encyclopedic knowledge of Fleming's themes, interests, and recurring subjects, and he drew on what he liked best of these to shape his own Bond novel. By filtering his own interests through Fleming's, he was able to avoid writing a mere pastiche. Instead of trying to write like Fleming, he wrote his own story using elements found in Fleming. He treated Fleming's writing as a sort of sub-genre in itself.
Hmmm, you might be right! I do remember that Fleming quite liked his breasts, but also had some notorious bits about women's bottoms...
Yes, it's funny how Amis is so revolted by M, yet made him a central character in his own Bond novel, giving him a role bigger than anything in Fleming.
No complaints from me there! TMWTGG does feel like a "back to basics" that goes a little too far back.
You're very welcome, and I've been enjoying the Bond reviews on your blog (though I hope you enjoy the later novels more than the early ones!). As far as I know, Amis didn't review the other Fleming Bond novels, but he did review one of Gardner's and one of Christopher Wood's (they can be read here: https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/40204/two-james-bond-novel-reviews-from-kingsley-amis-1977-1982/).
But Amis did write about Fleming for The Dictionary of National Biography (which can be read here: https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/43161/kingsley-amiss-last-words-on-fleming/).
Also worth seeking out is "A New James Bond," his essay on writing Colonel Sun (originally printed in his book of essays What Became of Jane Austen? and reprinted in some editions of Col. Sun--I might post it here if there's demand for it). Lastly, Amis was interviewed by Raymond Benson for the magazine Bondage--I recently acquired a copy and might transcribe it if anyone's interested.
I notice that you own The Book Of Bond: or Every Man His Own Bond, which I heartily recommend, though it's less of a critical study than a warped self-help manual for aspiring Double-Os!
Thanks for those links to the other Amis reviews, and yes, I'd LOVE to read "A New James Bond" and the Benson interview -- but if you decide not to post them, thanks for letting us know where to find them.
Speaking of "A New James Bond," I think it was a big mistake for Gildrose not to go forward with their "Robert Markham" house name and release a new series of Bond novels...the mid to late '60s was THE era for series spy fiction, and they could've capitalized on it for sure with the most famous "spy" of all (though as we know from Amis's study, he isn't really a spy per se...).
That Book of Bond wasn't easy to get, either -- at least at a reasonable price. I'm not sure, but I don't think it was even published here in the US. I had the same experience years ago when I tracked down Adam Diment's "Think Inc.," which also never came out here.
Your wish is my command--the Amis-Benson interview is now online: https://www.ajb007.co.uk/post/912987/#p912987
"A New James Bond" will be uploaded in a couple of weeks.
I agree. From what I remember, Colonel Sun didn't sell as well as expected, which might account for Glidrose not continuing the series. Perhaps the pseudonym hurt sales?
I know what you mean--I took me ages to find an affordable copy. It really ought to reprinted, perhaps in a combined edition with the Dossier and any other writings on Bond.
I've just found out that Amis reviewed You Only Live Twice for the New Statesman (in the issue dated March 20, 1964). I hope to obtain the piece soon.
Thank you. I'm looking forward to Amis' thoughts on the YOLT novel immensely! Good work! -{
That's awesome! Thanks so much for letting us know about this. I hope you are able to get it!