I READ ALL 3000 PAGES OF IAN FLEMING\u2019S GROOVY 007 OEUVRE<\/h2>\n
by Seth Madej<\/span><\/a>,<\/span><\/strong> September 3, 2013<\/p>\n I\u2019d read two of Fleming\u2019s stories before \u2013\u00a0Casino Royale <\/em>12 or 13 years ago, and\u00a0Goldfinger<\/em> when I was a teenager, from which for some reason I\u2019ve always remembered the sentence, \u201cBond felt the skin-crawling tickle at the groin that dates from one\u2019s first game of hide and seek in the dark.\u201d \u2014 long enough ago that I didn\u2019t know what to expect in terms of quality, theme, character, or anything else.<\/p>\n As for the former, it\u2019s kind of remarkable how, as different as the Bond novels are from the movies, they parade over the same range of quality. A few are excellent; a few I can still smell on me. While none are true masterpieces, some are truly awful, or at least awful-adjacent. The first several books strangely alternate from great to lousy, one after another. This might be a sign of Fleming searching around for what works\/sells, or it might be an early indication of a phenomenon that becomes crystal clear in Fleming\u2019s later work: the reader can tell when Fleming\u2019s bored with the character and subjects of the series he\u2019s buried himself under, and his writing suffers. When he finds new ways to interest himself \u2014 short stories, pushing Bond out of the way as in\u00a0The Spy Who Loved Me<\/em>, or marrying him off in\u00a0On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service <\/em>\u2013 you can all but see the author sitting up in his chair and leaning into his typewriter with a forgotten cigarette burned down to its twigish holder.<\/p>\n When it comes to theme, character, and the rest, I can and should confirm what anyone with more than a passing interest in 007 has heard: with few exceptions, Fleming\u2019s novels have very little in common with the films they inspired, and some of the books and their cinematic counterparts share nothing but a title. Everything that the movies\u2019 devotees love about James Bond came from Fleming \u2014 his casual sophistication, his lady-parts-liking, and his both epicurean and gourmand tendencies1<\/a> \u2014 but the literary 007 psychologically most resembles the recent onscreen incarnation that longtime fans tend to complain about.<\/p>\n Ian Fleming\u2019s James Bond is cold. He is more angry than witty. He considers himself a paid murderer and broods intently about it. He floods that anguish, and his frequent boredom, with an inhuman alcohol intake, piles of food, and sex. He loves women as vessels to physically insert himself into, which occasionally evolves into some weird perversion of love, but otherwise he is unquestionably a misogynist. He hates homosexuals even more, though to be fair he considers himself to be superior to most everyone. He is fiercely loyal to the rest,<\/span>2<\/span><\/a><\/strong> and will die for them. He\u2019s a good guy to have on your side, but most anyone meeting him today would think he\u2019s a dick.<\/p>\n The author\u2019s tone starts out mirroring that character. Fleming\u2019s debut novel,\u00a0Casino Royale<\/em>, is blunt, ugly, and great. One of Fleming\u2019s greatest strengths was his ability to relate the extraordinary world of a secret agent as completely straightforward and unremarkable; the reader feels like the author\u2019s seen all of this chasing and killing and fucking before and has forgotten that some of it might seem exciting to us.<\/p>\n After a few books, Fleming\u2019s love of detail and his own strange personality combine with the sense of freedom brought on by his success and breed what becomes the greatest quality of his writing, the one that makes him unique among spinners of spy thrillers: Ian Fleming\u2019s stories are weird. Actually, that\u2019s not really true; his stories are usually pretty ordinary, but they\u2019re folded in with dark, lathery weirdness.\u00a0From Russia With Love\u2019s\u00a0Colonel Rosa Klebb makes an attempt to seduce Tatiana Romanova so grotesque that the girl runs screaming from the room.\u00a0Thunderball<\/em> devotes a chapter to transcribing the thoughts of a pilot while he betrays and murders his crew.\u00a0The villain of\u00a0You Only Live Twice<\/em> hides out in the center of a magnificent garden populated by hundreds of species of deadly plants, built as an invitation for any disconsolate locals to come kill themselves (which they do, by the hundreds). These kinds of monstrosities flesh out Fleming\u2019s work and, as much as anything else he did, inspired the characteristics of the James Bond movies that\u2019ve kept them going for 50 years.<\/p>\n So: should you read the books? If you\u2019re not a Bond fan, or just as a casual one, it\u2019s certainly worth\u00a0picking up\u00a0Thunderball<\/em> or\u00a0From Russia With Love<\/em> as a beach diversion or\u00a0even just as an exercise in cultural literacy. If you are a Bond fan,3<\/a> there\u2019s a great joy of discovery to be found in Fleming\u2019s work. I reveled in the bits of 007\u2032s life that never made it off the page, like the play-by-play of his Monday office routine in\u00a0Moonraker. <\/em>At the very least treat yourself to a few of the nine short stories in\u00a0For Your Eyes Only<\/em> and\u00a0Octopussy and The Living Daylights,<\/em> which feel like thumbing through a lost family photo album.<\/p>\n As for me, and I\u2019m not sure what comes next. I\u2019ll definitely read the first 007 novel not written by Fleming, Kingsley Amis\u2019s\u00a0Colonel Sun<\/em> (originally published under the pseudonym Robert Markham) and Amis\u2019s preceding analysis of the character,\u00a0The James Bond Dossier<\/em>. I\u2019m less excited to explore John Gardner\u2019s series that came along in the Eighties. I hear that, even though it numbers two more books than the original, it combined isn\u2019t worth one of Fleming\u2019s. That said, over the last two years I\u2019ve come to like having James Bond around as a foil to my extraordinarily ordinary life. It\u2019s inevitable that at some point I\u2019ll pick up the rest of the books as a way to ask him to come back and kick some shit around.<\/p>\n Now here are some lists, with links to some of my reviews for the exceptionally rapt.4<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n My Five Favorite Ian Fleming 007 Books (in order of preference)<\/strong><\/p>\n 1. <\/span>Thunderball<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong> The first half of\u00a0From Russia With Love<\/em> is the best thing Ian Fleming ever wrote and one of the few bits of the Bond canon that can be considered classic outside of its own world, but the novel falls apart by the end. It typifies the disappointment that lingers over Fleming\u2019s work: he was never able to write one perfect Bond novel.5<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n My Five Least Favorite Ian Fleming 007 Books (in no particular order)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2022 <\/span>Live and Let Die<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong> Ian Fleming had a strange relationship with race. A privileged white Englishman, he wrote all of the 007 books in newly independent Jamaica. He was a racist in so much that he stereotyped by race, but in a neutral way, without hate. It permeates much of his work, most notably his worst novel,\u00a0Live and Let Die<\/em>. That book\u2019s saturation with hackneyed ideas about African-American culture make it extremely unpleasant.<\/p>\n My Favorite First Edition 007 Cover<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This awesome literary endeavor\u00a0from my friend Seth Madej is worth reading even if you aren’t a James Bond fanaticbagger. When you’re done, you can read about PONIES. via sethmad.com I READ ALL 3000 PAGES OF IAN FLEMING\u2019S GROOVY 007 OEUVRE … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/ian_fleming-231x300.jpg\" "\\"A5322F\\"")
<\/a>In May of 2012, I finished a five-month stint of\u00a0watching all the James Bond movies<\/span><\/a> <\/strong>in order. When I was done, I somehow found myself no less unemployed than when I\u2019d started, so I opted to rectify that the only way I knew how: by\u00a0reading in order all of Ian Fleming\u2019s 007 books<\/span><\/a><\/strong> \u2013 12 novels and two short-story collections.\u00a0It took me over a year, a rate of about one book per month.<\/p>\n![\"1930](\"http:\/\/www.sethmad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/1930bentley-240x146.jpg\")
<\/a>The first car James Bond drives in Ian Fleming\u2019s novels, a 1930 Bentley 4.5-liter \u201cBlower.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"1953](\"http:\/\/www.sethmad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bentleymarkVi-240x118.jpg\")
<\/a>Bond\u2019s second car, a 1953 Bentley Mark VI. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Bentley](\"http:\/\/www.sethmad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/bentleymkii-240x164.jpg\")
<\/a>My approximation of Bond\u2019s third car, a \u201cBentley Mark II Continental.\u201d No such model actually existed, so it\u2019s assumed that Fleming is referring to a Bentley R-Type Continental. Bond\u2019s coupe has a custom body, shortening the cabin and removing the backseat. He also upgrades the engine to a supercharged 4.9-liter, against the protests of Rolls-Royce. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n 2. <\/span>From Russia With Love<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong>
\n 3. <\/span>Casino Royale<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong>
\n 4. <\/span>Octopussy and The Living Daylights<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong>
\n 5. <\/span>For Your Eyes Only<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\n \u2022 <\/span>Diamonds are Forever<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong>
\n \u2022 <\/span>Doctor No<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong>
\n \u2022 <\/span>You Only Live Twice<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong>
\n \u2022 <\/span>On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"First](\"http:\/\/www.sethmad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/youOnlyLiveTwice.jpg\")
<\/a>This was a tough choice, because most of Fleming\u2019s Bond books were given beautiful painted covers by\u00a0Richard Chopping<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, a Colchester artist who hung around with Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.6<\/span><\/a> <\/strong>Chopping was the\u00a0Maurice Binder<\/span><\/a> <\/strong>of literary Bond, and he returned 17 years after Fleming\u2019s death to illustrate the cover for John Gardner\u2019s first 007 novel,\u00a0Licence Renewed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n