FLEMING SIX

In his lifetime, Ian Fleming published twelve “James Bond” books, and another two were published posthumously after his lifestyle finally caught up with him and finished him off in 1964 at the grand old age of fifty-six.

Obviously, the character he created has long outlived him and, like many a chap my age, I have been aware of the character for most of my life and yet, whilst the cinematic “icon” has become more than familiar to us, I am not as well acquainted with the character as Fleming wrote him as I am with the character as seen in the many films.

I did read “Live and Let Die” when I was at school during one of those “book exchange” exercises which seemed so prevalent then, and I may have also read “The Man with the Golden Gun” at that time too, and I can well remember a friend of mine introducing me to the more salacious paragraphs from “Casino Royale” when I was at a most impressionable age, but, on the whole I read more of the John Gardner “relaunch” novels of the 1980s than I did of the original Fleming, as well as the Kingsley Amis (writing under the pseudonym of Robert Markham) “Colonel Sun” which I seem to remember finding quite diverting.

I did have all of the books, you see. All of them paperback editions which were mostly film “tie-in” editions which I picked up from various market stalls in the late 1970s and 1980s, but I never got around to reading any of the others, perhaps because they seemed too “different” from the films which I was enjoying watching so regularly on ITV, and perhaps because the idea that they were “full of” sadism, sexism and racism didn’t quite gel with the more “educated” version of myself that I grew into, the same person who would later also deny that they “quite enjoyed” such things when he was trying very hard to impress someone who loathed the entire “wretched” franchise.

Well, that didn’t work out, and yet, despite such antipathy, Bond prevailed, even if, in truth, my own interest did actually wane quite a lot once I’d acquired all of the DVDs and found that I never seemed to actually get around to watching any of them any more, and the “new, improved” films began to appear to general acclaim, even though I didn’t find them quite as enjoyable as quite a few people seemed to.

Recently, however, and due in no small part to a quirk of timing, I found myself in a remainder book shop when they were selling off an audiobook version of “Doctor No” quite cheaply and, because I had already toyed with buying one or two of them online, but decided that they were far too expensive for something that I wasn’t all that bothered about really, I thought that I would snap up this bargain just to see how well (or otherwise) they’d been done, and it’s always a lot easier to find the time to listen to those books which you’ve never got around to reading when you’ve got a daily commute to entertain yourself during, rather than chewing up your precious evenings and weekends with the actual books themselves, I find.

Anyway, having bought the one, I decided that I had, in fact, rather enjoyed it, especially if I was able to gloss over the snobbery, casual racism and sexism and put it down to being very much “of its time” in much the same way that Victorian adventure novels can be. Looking beyond those unfortunate and distasteful aspects (of which there were actually surprisingly few) there was actually a cracking little adventure yarn in there which was remarkably well written.

So I ordered myself another one and, after I had enjoyed that one so much, yet another. Oddly enough, I knew that my strange “completist” tendencies were unlikely to be triggered by this particular series, but there were definitely five (eventually becoming six) that I would really like to hear.

DOCTOR NO - Of course, I’d already listened to, and, even though it wouldn’t necessarily have made the cut if I’d been starting out from scratch, it turned out to be rather good and, more importantly, good enough to trigger my interest in all of the others.

ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE – My favourite of the films so it was obvious that I might like to finally find out how “different” it was from the film version. Later on, I would also justify it to myself still further because it’s the middle part of a loose trilogy of sorts, and you can’t really listen to a trilogy without hearing the middle bit, can you...?

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE – allegedly one of the very best of the books, and it certainly led to one of my favourites from the film series. It is, however, structurally very different, and “our hero” doesn’t actually turn up for quite a while within the narrative. It’s also the book in which Fleming first tried to end the life of his literary creation, finishing on the kind of cliffhanger which would have had you tearing the wrapper off the next book, “Doctor No” back in the 1950s when it first appeared, and might have had that effect on me too, if I hadn’t already listened to it and hadn’t had an entire lifetime to know that it turns out alright in the end.

MOONRAKER – Very, very different from the film, but the book had quite a reputation despite being one of the earlier books and shorter than any of the ones which I had so far listened to, and Hugo Drax really is the most terrible of adversaries for post-war Britain’s best secret agent to come up against. It had the added advantage of being read by Bill Nighy which possibly made it sound far more classy than it might otherwise have done.

THUNDERBALL – The opening of the so-called “Blofeld Trilogy” includes an utterly hilarious rant about “women drivers” which you really, really could not get away with today, but, on the whole, given that it was the source of all those lawsuits because it was based upon a film treatment, as a book it fairly rattles along, even though lots of it feel very familiar indeed.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE - Well, if you’re going to listen to parts one and two of a loose “trilogy”, you may as well get yourself the final part, I thought, and, even though this has always been described to me as being a rather “odd” book, it does at least bring the whole series to a rather satisfying conclusion of sorts, and, given that most of the rest of Fleming’s work was published posthumously, and some of it given a final polish by other hands, this could also be considered the “proper” end to the story of the literary James Bond. It’s also read by that stalwart of the audiobook world, Martin Jarvis, and I really could not resist that particular combination.

We should, I suppose, consider the ones which I chose not to buy, and, perhaps more importantly, why. Well, I say we should, but why should we...? The only reason that I can think of is that I don’t have a Book Group to go to so this is turning into my own substitute for a Book Group and so I suppose that I can say what I like about whatever books I choose to write to you about...

Anyway, my reasons, however fatuous they might appear to be to the aficionado, were as follows...

CASINO ROYALE - I don’t why I’m so averse to this one, actually, given that I’m usually a big fan of the origin story. After all, I’ve got myself “A Study In Scarlet” and I don’t think all that much of it as a novel either. Perhaps I had a dull experience of the novel - and the tiresomely long card game sequences in the film, too - so it just doesn’t appeal to me...

LIVE AND LET DIE – I really, really couldn’t bear the idea of a white actor trying to mimic all of those Harlem accents, no matter how well done they might be. I do remember both enjoying and being disappointed by the book as a teenager, so maybe those memories are just cut too deeply for me to be objective. Perhaps I'll revisit my paperback sometime and try to gloss over the worst bits...

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER - I don’t know, really, but this always struck me as being a “lesser work” somehow, perhaps because diamond smuggling and hearing about some gangsters called the Spang brothers really doesn’t appeal at all.

GOLDFINGER - Possibly one of the better known titles, and certainly one of the most fondly remembered of the films, but I think that this book’s reputation precedes it, and I really didn’t feel like listening to some of the more “controversial” of Fleming’s ideas being read out to me, especially as I’m told that the plot’s a bit “iffy” too.

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME - Hearing a book Fleming wrote from a “woman’s point of view” is likely to either be hysterically funny, or induce such sharp intakes of breath that I might swerve into a lamp-post, so I decided that it was probably best avoided despite reviews promising that Rosamund Pike’s voice is “silky smooth” to listen to.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN - Branagh reading the (mercifully short) first draft of Fleming’s final James Bond novel, what’s not to love? Only I just don’t fancy this one at all.

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - Short stories. After “The Hound of the Baskervilles” I thought that the Sherlock Holmes short stories might seem rather slight in comparison, but I’ve really been enjoying them. I’m not convinced that the same might be true of Fleming though, so I’m not even going to try, given that if I did actually like them, I’d also be suckered into getting the other short story collection, OCTOPUSSY and THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS too, and we really wouldn’t want that now, would we...?