Thursday, June 05, 2008

Judge him by the books ...

... not the films: Underrated. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

4 comments:

  1. I am a lifelong reader of all kinds of popular and genre literature, especially crime, thriller, and spy novels. I defend the best of them as being worthy literature indeed. But I have read seven of Fleming's Bond novels, including the acclaimed first one, "Casino Royale," and I have to say they are pretty thin stuff. Not to say they're not fun to read, some of them, but they're a far cry from, say, Eric Ambler or Geoffrey Household.

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  2. I suppose that's why we have vanilla and chocolate ice cream.

    Have you read "From Russia With Love" lately?

    I think this is one of the best Cold War thrillers. Besides James Bond, his characters Darko Kerim, Red Grant, Rosa Glebb and Kronstein, the "Wizard of Ice," are first class.

    How about "Goldfinger?" Goldfinger and Oddjob, as well as Pussy Galore, are characters that great characters. These stories will be read, and reread, for years.

    I'm not so sure that "thin stuff" would stand this test of time.

    Paul Davis

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  3. I should have added that Raymond Chandler, Kingsley Amis and Anthony Burgess all thought Fleming's books were classic thrillers.

    Paul Davis
    daviswrite@aol.com

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  4. We’ll overlook the misogyny and plot absurdities, as these are common to the genres. (Though Ross Macdonald, I think, was a better writer in this regard than many of his crime/thriller/spy novel colleagues.) We can also overlook the violence, which is part of the stock in trade, though it is harder to overlook Fleming’s snobbery, which grew worse as the Bond series went along. What should not be overlooked is Fleming’s English, which is not always the king’s. “As a woman, he wanted to sleep with her,” Fleming writes in “Casino Royale,” dangling his modifier. And, “ ‘Shtop,’ had said the voice, quietly,” which a backward manner of writing is. I could find a plentitude of similar examples of wretched writing, but “Casino” is the only title I have to hand. As you can imagine from my comments, I have not preserved for my own enjoyment a shelf-full of the Fleming oeuvre.

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