‘I’m not sure that Bond is a spy... I think it’s a great mistake if one’s talking about espionage literature to include Bond in this category at all. It seems to me he’s more some kind of international gangster with, as it is said, a licence to kill.’
I’m a great admirer of John le Carré, but I don’t agree with this assessment. James Bond is an agent of British intelligence, and the books and films featuring him do not just deserve to be included in the canon of espionage fiction – they have been enormously influential within it. Fleming wrote very different books from le Carré, but both are landmark writers in the spy genre, just as Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle are in detective fiction. Fleming’s works were, for the most part, great fun – but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth giving a closer look.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be doing just that, analyzing the influence of Ian Fleming and James Bond on the espionage genre from several angles. 007 has been covered in countless books, articles and documentaries, but I hope to delve a little deeper into certain aspects than has been before, exploring rare and in some cases unknown articles about and interviews with Ian Fleming and other key players in the Bond story, as well as putting the character’s critical reception, influence and success into greater context. So please, grab your wetsuit and Champion harpoon gun and join me as I dive in to the world of James Bond...
I don't agree with Mr. le Carre's assessment of the James Bond character as a "gangster," but I do think he might be onto something otherwise. My personal feeling is that Ian Fleming's Bond novels are actually fairytales, or perhaps even high fantasy, disguised as "modern" spy fiction. Characters such as Dr. No, Mr. Big, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld can be viewed as magic-island-dwelling evil wizards, who 007 must -- at the behest of his queen -- do battle with and vanquish.
ReplyDeleteIn any rate, I look forward to your upcoming analyses!
Thanks for the comment! Yes, they are fairytales or fantasies, or contain elements of those, but they still revolve around the adventures of a British secret agent. I think Fleming used spy fiction to explore his imagination and, indeed, to have a hero who battled evil and vanquished, but I don't think that removes them from the genre. One could say that le Carre has used spy fiction to explore the psychological trauma of deception - but his work still belongs in the genre.
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoy the series. I hope that even for Bond connoisseurs like yourself, there will be a few surprises in store. My next post will be about an interview with Ian Fleming that I don't think has ever been discussed in print.
You hit the nail on the head with your Doyle Christie example Jeremy. Very well said. Looking forward to the coming posts, it will fit in nicely with my reading of the first Bulldog Drummond novel. Wasnt Fleming influenced by Sapper?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nicholas. Yes, Fleming was influenced by Sapper, particularly his villains, I think. He and his brother Peter read a lot of Bulldog Drummond at school - Peter even spoke in 'Drummond-ese' a lot of the time, and they had great fun with it. But I think the influence of Sapper was overplayed by both Kingsley Amis and O.F. Snelling, on account of the book Clubland Heroes.
ReplyDeleteI'll go into that a bit in some of these posts, but it's not all going to be literary. There will be interviews I suspect you won't have read with Sean Connery, for instance. I hope you enjoy it.
Wasn't Sapper highly racist, Jeremy? I remember reading an excerpt from The Female of the Species that left me feeling queasy, concerning Drummond in disguise as a black manservant... :-S
ReplyDeleteYes, Matthew, the racism in Sapper's work is very difficult to read today - the same applies to a lot of early thrillers.
ReplyDeleteJeremy, I would like to pose the thought that if it were NOT for Ian Fleming, and most definately the FILM-MAKERS of Borehamwood and Hollywood, etc, etc, then perhaps we would not have had the enormous interest shown over the last 4 decades or so in the spy genre. So all the brilliance of Le Carre, Deighton, even some of the exceptionally gifted Alistair MacLean's work, may never have become so popular as it is today.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, Chris - and thanks for the comment. I'll be exploring that very topic in this series. I think it's well understood that the Bond films shaped the spy genre, and a lot more besides, but I don't think it's as accepted that Fleming was a major influence in his own right, before Dr No premiered in 1962. I discuss that a bit in the article I've just posted, in which I quote from a radio interview Fleming did with his editor William Plomer, but I'll be looking at it more in the days to come. I'll also be looking at some of the writers who influenced Fleming, and how they did, as well as more of the critical reception he received, rare, forgotten and perhaps unknown interviews and articles, parodies, and so on. I hope you enjoy it!
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