Saturday, September 21, 2013

Man without qualities?

… The Inner Life of James Bond - James Parker - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Was James Bond—neck-snapper, escape artist, serial shagger—the last repudiation of his creator’s cultural pedigree? Take that, fancy books; take that, whiskered shrinks. I, Ian Fleming, give you a hero almost without psychology: a bleak circuit of appetites, sensations, and prejudices, driven by a mechanical imperative called “duty.” In Jungian-alchemical terms, 007 is like lead, the metal associated with the dark god Saturn, lying coldly at the bottom of the crucible and refusing transformation. Boil him, slash him, poison him, flog him with a carpet beater and shoot his woman—Bond will not be altered.

1 comment:

  1. I wonder if the author had read Ian Fleming lately, if at all.

    Bond was "altered" in the very first thriller, "Casino Royale," when a woman he has fallen in love with turned out to be a double agent and killed herself.

    Bond is crushed, but he forces himself to call headquarters and says something like "This is an open line, so I'll be quick, 30-30 was a double."

    "Yes, I said "was," damn it, the bitch is dead."

    He was "altered" again when his new wife was murdered by Blofeld in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." I could go on.

    It seems that every commentator on Fleming and/or James Bond uses the movie Bond character as a reference, rather than the Bond from Fleming's novels. The two characters are not the same.

    In the novels, Fleming's Bond is tough and skilled with a gun, knife and fists, and he fights crime and the Soviets for Queen and Country. He is a modern-day knight.

    Yes, Bond is a "womanizer," as his chief, "M," calls him with distain, but there is generally only one woman per novel and a novel is one year in Bond's life.

    Fleming saw Bond as a mere "blunt instrument" for the government and he based the character on commandos and secret agents he knew when he was a naval intelligence officer in WWII.

    But Fleming also gave Bond his own quirks, tastes and views of the world. That helped to flesh out the character in the novels.

    The films have sent readers of every generation since the 1950s to Fleming's novels. And once there, millions of readers have been suprised and pleased to discover that the novels are darker and more complex than the movies.

    You can read my column on Ian Fleming and James Bond via the below link:

    http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html

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