Bond at the Source

So I return home from a pleasant family Thanksgiving celebration in Portland, Oregon, and what do I find? Still more James Bond-related stories! Sheesh! I thought the onslaught was over. But apparently not. Critics at both Salon and Britain’s The Guardian eschew the new film, Casino Royale, in favor of re-reading and analyzing the Ian Fleming novels that gave birth to Agent 007.

Salon contributor Allen Barra (Inventing Wyatt Earp) takes a more comprehensive approach, looking back at the Bond series in its entirety. “The reasons why Fleming became such a cult favorite aren’t easily discerned by those who want obvious ‘literary’ quality in their thrillers,” Barra opines. “He couldn’t begin to write dialogue as pungent as that of his friend and early supporter, Raymond Chandler, the darling of Brit critics; as Kingsley Amis wrote in his slim 1965 book, ‘The James Bond Dossier,’ Fleming’s ‘dialogue is serviceable and nothing more.’ (Then again, Fleming had many more diverse characters to write dialogue for than did Chandler.) He doesn’t begin to convey a sense of mise-en-scène as well as, say, Dashiell Hammett. (But then Fleming had far more diverse scenes to set than did Hammett.) ... Fleming’s genius, if it’s proper to apply the word to a writer of genre fiction, was to create a world of espionage more grotesque and dangerous than the actual one while maintaining close enough ties to reality to make it all seem credible. To my surprise, he rewarded not only careful reading but rereading.”

(Try to set aside the insult that Barra doubts the potential of genius in genre fiction, and appreciate the Salon piece for what is it: a primer on Bond that will stimulate readers to check out the series for themselves, or feel there’s no need, since Barra has done so wonderfully in boiling down the essential points to be made about Fleming’s spy novels.)

Meanwhile, Nicholas Lezard reconsiders the book Casino Royale (1953), recently reissued in paperback by Penguin to coincide with the film’s worldwide release. “You may wonder why anyone should be reading Bond novels nowadays, or why I should be recommending one of them,” Lezard writes. “After all, the films, however enjoyable, are rubbish. And weren’t the novels themselves denounced, even as they were appearing, as ‘sex, snobbery and sadism’ by (of all people) Paul Johnson in the New Statesman?” However, he concludes,

You should also read [Casino Royale] because, without doing so, you will never have a complete picture of the imaginative postwar life of this country [England]. It is odd to think that people watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II could take a break by reading the newly published hardback edition of this book. When [Philip] Larkin said that sexual intercourse began in 1963, you may think that he was exactly a decade out. And in his hugely enjoyable study of Bond, The Man Who Saved Britain, Simon Winder points out that the key moment in the novel is when Bond orders an avocado pear (“with french dressing”) for dessert. We forget how exotic and desirable the avocado was in 1953; and how hard it was to take money out of the country. When Bond is gambling with thousands of pounds at the baccarat table, British readers must have been boggle-eyed with envy.

(Hat tip to Euro Crime.)

READ MORE: “Is James Bond a Misogynist?” by Marshal Zeringue
(Spot-On).