I came
to an odd realization while reading the collected James Bond letters by author Ian Fleming (1908-1964), The Man With the Golden Typewriter,
edited by Fergus Fleming – and that was I really like Ian Fleming, the man.
Odd because
… well, are any self-respecting 21st century males supposed to like
someone like Fleming? A drinking,
smoking, sexist, politically incorrect dinosaur? Bosh to all that, we heartily reply. The Fleming that emerges from his letters is
a warm, intelligent, witty and engaging man, kind to a fault and capable of
deep and sincere friendships. If the Ian
Flemings of this world are dinosaurs, then, bring back the dinosaurs, we say.
This indispensable
look inside the mind of the man who created James Bond is neatly organized –
each group of letters is filed under the titles of his 14 Bond books. Interspersed between his thrillers, though, are
chapters that collect letters between Fleming and Geoffrey Boothroyd (who consulted with the writer on guns and weaponry
– and who makes a cameo in the novel Dr.
No), mystery great Raymond Chandler,
and Herman W. Liebert, librarian at
Yale University and Samuel Johnson scholar,
who worked with Fleming on mastering American slang for the US-based Bond
books.
But the
majority letters are between Fleming and Daniel
George and Michael Howard,
editors at Cape, the first publishers of James Bond, and William Plomer, South African-born poet who was Fleming’s friend
and literary mentor. These letters are a
revelation because they illustrate how tenuous the entire James Bond enterprise
was at its beginning, and how Fleming threw himself into thriller writing with
a dedication and seriousness often lacking in his more literary brethren.
These editors
did not always have the best judgement, we can now acknowledge with the gift of
hindsight. Editor Michael Howard did not
particularly care for From Russia, With
Love, now considered one of the two-or-three finest Bond novels. Fleming replies: Personally,
I think I shall get a good deal of readers criticism such as yours, but I do
think it is a good thing to produce a Bond book which is out of the ordinary
and which has, in my opinion, an ingenious and interesting plot. There is also the point that one simply can’t
go on writing the simple, bang-bang, kiss-kiss type of book. However hard one works at it, you
automatically become staler and staler and very quickly the staleness shows
through to the reader and then all is indeed lost.
Fleming
was not after realism – and he gleefully acknowledges that in these
letters. But he did want to get his
facts correct – if you read about something (anything – from deep sea diving to poisonous
fish to Fort Knox) in a Fleming novel, know that it was researched and checked,
and that Fleming strove to get it right.
It is also clear that Fleming attacked his work with complete conviction
– as if, in writing about the preposterous, he could make it more believable by
believing in it, himself. This lack of
irony is perhaps his greatest legacy as an author, and perhaps stamps him as
the last serious creator of escapist fiction.
But is
industry enough to make me … like
Fleming? No, it is the many kindnesses chronicled
throughout these letters. People who
provide information or help are often presented with thoughtful gifts, courtesy
of Cartier. When John Goodwin, founding
president of the James Bond Club, wrote Fleming, he found himself invited to the
set of From Russia, With Love. Fleming
entreats an editor friend to write about an ill, aging author ushering in her
80s, while signed books and sweet notes to fans are the order of the day.
Most telling,
Fleming sends note after note after heart-attacks and illnesses, putting on a
brave front, making jokes, and putting his friends at ease. Here is one letter, recounting advice he received
on recovering from heart attack: Am receiving the most extraordinary advices
from various genii. “Be more spiritual” (Noel Coward), “write the story of
Admiral Godfrey” (Admiral Godfrey), “Be sucked off gently every day (Evelyn
Waugh). Over to you.
In these
pages, we recently reviewed The Spy Who
Loved Me, one of the greatest of the Bond thrillers. Amazingly, this book was dismissed by many
reviewers at the time, who wanted ‘the mixture as before.’ These reviews hurt Fleming, who wrote with a
specific purpose in mind: I had become increasingly surprised to find
that my thrillers, which were designed for an adult audience, were being read
in the schools, and that young people were making a hero out of James Bond when
to my mind, and as I have often said in interviews, I do not regard James Bond
as a heroic figure but only as an efficient professional in his job … So it
crossed my mind to write a cautionary tale about Bond to put the record
straight in the minds particularly of young readers.
He can
also be needlessly self-deprecating, as he writes to Raymond Chandler:
Dear Ray,
Many thanks for the splendid
Chandleresque letter. Personally I loved
yor review and thought it was excellent as did my publishers, and as I say it
was really wonderful of you to have taken the trouble.
Probably the fault about my books is
that I don’t take them seriously enough and meekly accept having my head ragged
off about them in the family circle. If
one has a grain of intelligence it is difficult to go on being serious about a
character like James Bond. You after all
write ‘novels of suspense’ – whereas my books are straight pillow fantasies of
the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety.
But I have taken you advice to heart
and will see if I can’t order my life so as to put more feeling into my
typewriters.
Incidentally, have you read A Most
Contagious Game, by Samuel Grafton, published b Rupert Hart-Davis?
Sorry about lunch even without a
butler. I also know some girls andwill
dangle one in front of you one of these days.
I had no idea you were ill. If you are, please get well immediately. I’m extremely ill with sciatica.
Fleming
also mentions his many brother thriller writers, and clearly read deeply in the
field. He mentions Fu Manchu, Nero Wolfe, Richard Hannay, Mr. Moto and alludes to Simon
Templar. (He rather preferred
Marquand’s Moto books to his more serious novels.) This sense of continuity charming, and one
wonders what Fleming would have made of the scores of Bond imitators over the
years.
There
are some problems with the book: it could have used an additional edit (one
letter appears, verbatim, in two separate chapters), and the index is vague to
the point of useless. More amusing,
Fergus Fleming closes with a list of Bond novels and Bond films, which is as
pressing as telling Californians that they live on the West Coast. But despite these few missteps, The Man With
the Golden Typewriter is essential for Fleming devotees.
Readers interested in Bond are
referred to these wonderful sites: James
Bond Memes at: https://jamesbondmemes.blogspot.com/ and Artistic License Renewed at: https://literary007.com/.
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