Amph 60+ Years of James Bond 007

Those of us on the internet find it difficult to empathise with that type of character.

 

Goldfinger (1959)

About the book

As ever, Fleming drew his material from his own experiences, and drew lots of names from friends and sources he knew. Most notably, villain Auric Goldfinger's name was taken from architect Erno Goldfinger, whose work Fleming disliked and who was married to the cousin of one of Fleming's friends, who disliked Goldfinger personally. When Goldfinger, the real person, found out about the name, he threatened to sue; Fleming retaliated by threatening to change the character's name to Goldprick and put a note in the book explaining why. The matter was settled with an agreement to emphasize the different first name.

Plot

The book opens with Bond in Miami, reflecting on his last mission. Sent to put a stop to a heroin-smuggling operation in Mexico, Bond broke up the ring, but killed a man who was sent to assassinate him, and the suddenness of the death still bothers him. In the airport, with his flight delayed a day, he's approached by Junius Du Pont, one of the fellow gamblers from Casino Royale, to resolve a problem: Du Pont is sure that he's being cheated at canasta by Auric Goldfinger. Bond agrees to look into it, and figures out that Goldfinger has his secretary spying on Du Pont's hand from a distance with binoculars. Bond catches Goldfinger at it and forces him to pay back Du Pont, and gets a sex-filled train ride with Jill Masterton, the secretary, out of it.

Back at headquarters, M orders Bond to look into Goldfinger, whom the government suspects of gold smuggling, possibly on the Soviets' behalf. Having been told that Goldfinger was fond of golf in Miami, Bond goes out to Goldfinger's home course, where he manages to make it seem as if he casually bumped into him. He plays Goldfinger, knowing that Goldfinger cheats, with the goal of beating him, forcing Goldfinger to respect him and set up his cover as a potential asset to Goldfinger's operation. Bond manages to beat Goldfinger, but only by out-cheating him on the last hole.

Goldfinger then invites Bond to his house, where he leaves Bond alone while he takes care of business. Bond snoops around, finds nothing particularly incriminating, but does discover that he's being recorded. He barely manages to ruin the film and pin it on Goldfinger's cat before Goldfinger gets back. Bond isn't able to get in closer with Goldfinger, so he trails him on his trip to Switzerland. Bond runs into Tilly Masterton, Jill's sister, on the road, also following Goldfinger, and sees Goldfinger make a dead drop of a gold bar, confirming that he's a Soviet agent. At Goldfinger's factory in Switzerland, Bond figures out that Goldfinger is smuggling the gold via his car, which is supposedly armor-plated, but the armor is actually gold that's taken off, melted down, and recast for smuggling to India. Bond gets caught, however, when he tries to stop Tilly from killing Goldfinger in revenge for his murder of Jill over her perceived betrayal. Goldfinger tries to torture Bond into revealing what he's really doing by strapping him to a saw, but Bond sticks to his cover story and offers to work for him.

After passing out, Bond wakes up in New York, where Goldfinger has brought him and Tilly as prisoners. Goldfinger still doesn't trust them, but believes they can be useful by helping him organize his upcoming caper from within strict captivity. Bond serves as Goldfinger's assistant as Goldfinger brings together numerous criminal gangs to execute a heist at Fort Knox. The criminals are impressed by Goldfinger's meticulous planning and go in on it, including Pussy Galore, leader of a lesbian acrobat burglar gang, which I hope is a real thing, and with whom the lesbian Tilly is totally infatuated. Bond finally figures out a way to sneak out a message only days before the operation is set to go off, leaving a letter for Felix Leiter behind in a charter plane with a note promising a reward for delivery. When Bond and the gang get to Fort Knox, he finds out that the note did get to Felix and to the US government, who took it seriously, saving the life of everyone there. Goldfinger's forces are ambushed by the government, but Goldfinger and his henchman Oddjob escape, along with the gangster leaders. Tilly dies because she's a lesbian (no, seriously, she dies because she doesn't trust Bond, who's dragging her to safety, because he's a man, and runs away to find Pussy and gets killed by Oddjob).

Bond is about to get on a plane to go home when Goldfinger has him called to a counter, drugged, and brought aboard his escape plane for revenge. Bond realizes that Pussy, the only gang leader to survive Goldfinger, wants out, and with her aid he gets free and breaks a window, sucking Oddjob, whom he could never beat in a straight fight, out of the plane. Bond then kills Goldfinger hand-to-hand and forces the pilots, who can't make land, to ditch in the ocean near a Canadian weather ship. They get picked up and Bond has sex with Pussy -- converting her from lesbianism right before she goes to prison. Talk about bad timing.

Bond himself

Bond here, at least in the early part of the novel, returns to being a more psychological character -- morose, conflicted, and damaged by his job, living on thrills and risk, but also reflecting on some of the costs of that lifestyle.

How it fits into the series

Notably, Goldfinger introduces the Aston Martin DB Mark III as Bond's car, a choice which would have huge repercussions down the road. It's also modified by MI5 to include homing-beacon technology, hidden space, and a few other features, making it one of the first real gadgets of the series, in conjunction with the beacon Bond hides on Goldfinger's car to track him.

The stories also continue to trend toward the big and fantastic with Goldfinger's outsized criminal caper. If it's slightly less out-of-left-field, and Goldfinger himself slightly less outrageous, than Dr. No, it's also a flashier, more obviously fantastic event than No's Cold War missile sabotage.

Adaptation alteration

The roles of both Jill and Tilly were trimmed for the movie, while Pussy Galore's was expanded. The movie also played around with the story to make it more cinematic in general, condensing the first two-thirds of the book, the long canasta and golf sequences where Bond feels out Goldfinger (and cutting the visit to his home) in favor of emphasizing the finale action and Bond's captivity. Goldfinger's plan was altered from stealing the gold to the more logistically plausible irradiation of the gold to drive the value of his own stores up.

The biggest change was to Goldfinger's affiliations. With the movies so far inserting SPECTRE into their stories, it would have made sense to transition Goldfinger from treasurer of SMERSH to treasurer of SPECTRE, the same way the SMERSH plot was made a SPECTRE plot in FRWL. It would have been fairly seamless, but instead, the filmmakers chose to cut SMERSH entirely and not replace it with anything else, making Goldfinger a free agent acting on his own behalf.

Also worthy of a minor note, Goldfinger became the first Bond film to receive the addition of an unrelated pre-credits sequence tacked onto the movie, one which had no connection with the novel or, for that matter, with the movie.

Review

After the powerful, dark opening of Bond struggling with his job, the book unfortunately never quite finds its feet again. The canasta and golf sequences are great, yet more examples of Fleming's ability to infuse games with drama and communicate their excitement, but they don't accomplish much in terms of plot. The golf-and-home-visit sequence, especially, drags without really doing anything right at the point when the novel should be heating up. It takes until the last third to really heat up, and then it loses momentum again with Bond's capture, which is awkwardly integrated. Then in the gold-heist finale, Bond is essentially an onlooker as the big event fizzles out to nothing, and has to wait for the plane episode to tackle Goldfinger. The construction just feels a bit slapdash, like Fleming was writing from moment to moment without a real plan. It's especially apparent in Bond's plan to infiltrate Goldfinger's operations by winning his trust. Like in Diamonds Are Forever, Bond's undercover role is a big plot point that's the focus of a ton of the book, until it suddenly just fizzles out into nothing and Bond confronts the villain before he ever has a real chance to work his way inside. Even worse here, Bond ends up working inside Goldfinger's operations anyway -- but not because he conned his way in, but for the contrived reason that Goldfinger caught him spying but made him his prisoner-secretary anyway, for no real reason. Fleming builds up to something and fails to deliver, sabotaging his own plot momentum, and then compounds it by delivering a similar result through entirely inferior means.

It's a pity, because there are several memorable moments, and Goldfinger is a great villain, a blustery, vicious, hubristic tycoon. His plot is kind of silly (I think it would have come off better, had more weight and credibility within the setting, had Goldfinger just used his Soviet resources in an unabashed Cold War operation, rather than confusing the issue with the rather cartoonish mobster alliance), and it's introduced from left field late in the game again, but he's a great villain. But the core problem is that the construction of the novel is just too sloppy. It's a fun read, but like Fleming's weaker work, it struggles to live up to its potential due to some very basic problems in the craftsmanship that another draft could have fixed.

Rankings

1. From Russia, with Love
2. Live and Let Die
3. Casino Royale
4. Moonraker
5. Goldfinger
6. Dr. No
7. Diamonds Are Forever

 

One overall point to bring up is the extent to which Fleming is playing to end-of-the-Empire fantasies about British power. With Britain impoverished by World War II, losing the British Empire to decolonization, and completely overshadowed in the Cold War by the new superpowers, the world-spanning power of Britain was gone and things looked rather grim. Consistently, however, Fleming shows Britain as a critical player in the Cold War, projecting power across the globe. In Goldfinger, Bond is the one to save America's bacon, coming in and solving an American problem. He solves an American problem in Live and Let Die, too, as well as Diamonds Are Forever and Dr. No, and the basis of Moonraker is Britain's desperation to feel equal and in control of its destiny in the atomic age, to escape dependency on America's nuclear umbrella. But Goldfinger is probably the biggest example of Bond facing a threat that's directed at America and being the one to sniff it out and fix it. The US would have been pretty embarrassed and damaged to have Fort Knox ripped off, but Bond saves the Americans.

In Fleming's universe, the Americans have the money and technology and manpower -- it's not a total fantasyland -- but Britain has the ingenuity, the spirit and courage and intelligence that's needed to make that American muscle effective. The theme is made explicit in From Russia, with Love, when the Soviet intelligence apparatus has to choose which nation to target for its big gesture. The continental Europeans are all dismissed as not important or effective enough, and the Americans are stated not to be as big a threat to Russian intelligence operations as Britain -- because the Americans just throw money at anybody who claims to come with information, and are easy to manipulate, whereas the Brits are great at the intelligence game and are determined and resolute and effective with limited resources.

It's not hostility, because Fleming also makes it clear that he appreciates the Atlantic partnership, but there is a certain pro-British snobbery and a great deal of wish-fulfillment where Britain is still the center of the world, maybe not the biggest world power anymore, but still the greatest.

 

Sorry Ramza old bean, I missed your update over the weekend or would have responded earlier.

You are correct about the England/American relationship, but to an extent much of it was true. The Brits have always excelled in field craft, especially relative to the Cousins - le Carre even carried this theme on, and his work was intentionally anti-Bond.

The theme of Bond as a pseudo-American hero continues to be present in the novels, but I think part of what's crucial here is that Fleming genuinely liked Americans and so Bond's role is more as willing and able partner than a proxy. It's not that the Yanks can't do it; it's that Bond's the best man for the job and Britain and America are united against a common enemy. Bond probably couldn't do it in those "capers" if not for his American friends, either (you'll see more of this when you get to Thunderball)

Back to Goldfinger, aside from dubious sexual politics I enjoyed this novel. The Aston Martin DB Mk III was and still is a beautiful car and it was selected because it fit the cover Bond was projecting. I believe there were a few options on offer - a Jag E-Type and maybe some sort of Jensen?

 

Casino Royale is being serialised on BBC Radio 4 Extra here.

I've not listened to the first part yet, but if you're in the UK I would imagine it's worth a listen - the Beeb usually do decent radio adaptations.

 

Roger Deakins will not be working on Bond 24

 

Damn it! And Skyfall looked sooo gorgeous.

What about Christopher Doyle?

 

So I've watched 3 of the 4 Fleming episodes. It's... It's not especially a good casting choice, in Dominic Cooper. And I feel it's been dirtied up a bit to make him more Bond like.

 

I'm quite impressed you made it past the first episode.

 

That's a big disappointment, losing Deakins. I'd have rather had him back than Mendes.

 

For Your Eyes Only (1960)

About the book

Ian Fleming entered the sixties with a departure: instead of a new Bond novel this year, he produced a collection of Bond short stories. Fleming was, as he often was with unused ideas, being practical by recycling four plots for episodes of a James Bond television series that failed to get off the ground with CBS, plus an additional short story.

Due to the unusual format of the book, I'll be departing from my usual format in order to tackle the short stories one at a time, and making some overall review comments on the book and delivering the ranking at the end. We'll start with From a View to a Kill.

From a View to a Kill

About the story

One of the adapted television episodes, From a View to a Kill started as an attempt to tell Hugo Drax's backstory -- the World War II saboteur bombing episode related in Moonraker. In the process of adapting the ideas to a short story, Fleming took the idea of the motorcycle-riding saboteur and moved it up to a fifties setting in which the espionage was against NATO, and put Bond to work against the villain.

Plot

A motorcycle-riding assassin disguised as a NATO dispatch rider kills an actual NATO dispatch rider carrying reports from NATO headquarters to an MI6 station. Bond, taking a break in Paris, is called in to investigate (and finds himself quite attracted to the young woman from the local station sent to pick him up, Mary Ann Russell). The case seems to be a dead end, with little evidence and the assassin long gone, and Bond doesn't get along with his NATO liaison. Bond plugs away without expecting to get anywhere, but latches onto one stray fact that seems like the only possible clue: a band of gypsies that had stayed the winter near the rural road where the killing took place cleared out around the same time. Bond goes to the clearing where they stayed and finds marks that look as if a motorcycle was brought through the woods. He comes back in camouflage gear and stakes the clearing out, witnessing the motorcycle assassin leaving a hidden underground bunker with the help of two assistants to go cruising for another possible catch. Bond sets up a plan to get inside the bunker before the assistants can destroy whatever they have inside. He rides the dispatch route, disguised as the dispatch rider, and manages to kill the assassin just before the Soviet can kill him. He then goes back to the clearing, where he has backup hidden, disguised as the assassin, and signals for the bad guys to open up. They come out, but fight when they realize it's a trap. One gets on top of Bond and almost kills him, but he's killed just in time -- by Mary Ann Russell, who came along despite Bond not wanting her to. They go off to have some sex.

Bond himself

Here we get to see Bond on a fairly routine, small-scale sort of mission -- something more like what we're supposed to believe is his usual fare. We also see Bond in his downtime, reflecting on Paris and his habits in it. He's solitary, a creature of routine, cynical about the pleasures of Paris but seeking them anyway. There's a bit of a romantic in Bond, buried under the cynicism and rigidity.

How it fits into the series

From a View to a Kill is a fairly good example of the more ordinary adventures we're told Bond goes on, showing us a relatively grounded, small-scale Cold War espionage tale. The series has had a tendency to lose focus on the Cold War with stuff like Goldfinger and Dr. No that, even when theoretically grounded in the Cold War, really wrap the action around Chinese island gangster and criminals heisting gold and such. Here, we've just got a straightforward hidden cell of Soviet spies trying to steal NATO intelligence.

Adaptation alteration

The title, with "From" dropped, was used for a movie that had absolutely nothing to do with the story -- and not in the "heavily rewritten" way of Moonraker or Diamonds Are Forever. Absolutely no elements from the story were used in the film, not even character names, and they haven't been used in any other films. The story obviously isn't complex or cinematic enough to be the basis of an entire movie, but it hasn't even been adapted into an episode within a movie, a pre-credits sequence, the jumping-off point for a movie plot, anything. And it's self-contained and low-key enough that it's probably never going to be worth the trouble of trying to adapt it, and there's nothing particularly distinctive to be worth picking out piecemeal.

Review

I really enjoyed the story. Bond works extremely well in the short story format, since it allows Fleming to tell simple stories based around one idea rather than trying to spin it out to novel length and get lost in flights of fancy or compromise the narrative structure. Here, the core concept of the story works very well, with Bond positioned very much as the traditional detective, effectively having to solve a murder. Bond gets action, he gets to think, and he also gets to display a little humanity in Paris. The story is simple, direct, and well-constructed, rather than getting sloppy the way Fleming's novel-length plots can tend to. It's good, concentrated Bond fun with few frills and good character work, and if it doesn't have any real standout moments, it's never weak, either.

Rankings

1. From a View to a Kill

Since it's not quite fair to rank short stories against novels, I'll be ranking the short stories against each other and only ranking the book as a whole against the other books.

 

Great summary Havac. This and Risico are my favourite of the short stories (though Quantum of Solace tries to be something new and somewhat succeeds).

You are right that as a plot element, it would have worked nicely in a Bond film though I feel with all the techno-wizardry of modern gadgets the hidden bunker would be harder to justify. Though not impossible.

The title was originally "the Rough with the Smooth". Thank god they changed it.

 

Yeah, and that was almost the title of the whole book, too.

For Your Eyes Only

About the story

For Your Eyes Only is another adapted TV episode. Fleming used Vermont as a setting for the story, knowing the area by virtue of spending vacations at his friend Ivar Bryce's farm there. The other half of the story is set in Jamaica, which Fleming of course knew. Much moreso than the globetrotting movies, which are always looking for new exotic locations to take Bond, Fleming's books tend to keep coming back to the same locations Fleming knew well and could thus write convincingly -- London and England in general, Paris and the Channel coast, New York City and upstate New York (of which Vermont is just a variation), Jamaica. Fleming will usually add a new location to each book that he's familiarized himself with, but he keeps returning to the old standbys for the rest of the globetrotting.

Plot

The book opens with Colonel and Mrs. Havelock enjoying their large Jamaican estate, where their family is well-established, and remarking on the influx of Cubans into the Jamaican property market -- members of Batista's regime seeking someplace safe to park their money in the face of the Cuban revolution. And who should approach them but a Major Gonzales, who seeks to buy the estate for his superior. When the Havelocks refuse to sell, he and his two thugs kill them and leave, planning to pressure their daughter to sell once she inherits.

Bond is called into M's office, where he finds M upset -- M was good friends with the Havelocks, and has learned that Gonzales was the hitman and was working for von Hammerstein, an ex-Gestapo Nazi who became part of Batista's counterintelligence apparatus. Von Hammerstein has gotten out of Cuba and is living on an estate in Vermont near the Canadian border, and still pressuring Judy Havelock to sell. There's not enough evidence to get von Hammerstein via the legal system, however, and M is deeply conflicted about using the Service for a personal vendetta. He wants Bond to help him make the decision, and Bond essentially volunteers himself by stating that von Hammerstein needs to be stopped and deserves to die.

Bond is sent to Canada, where one of M's men in the Mounties sets him up to cross the border, reach the estate, and kill von Hammerstein. Bond hikes to Echo Lake, the estate, and is getting into position to snipe von Hammerstein when he runs across Judy Havelock, who ran down von Hammerstein's identity and is determined to kill him with a bow and arrow -- the only thing she could get a hunting license for. Bond tries to convince her to let him kill von Hammerstein and not muck the whole thing up with her amateurism, but she's hysterical with the prospect of revenge and goes off to take a shot at von Hammerstein early. Bond can only wait to support her, and after she successfully assassinates von Hammerstein, Bond takes out Gonzales's two thugs and then gets in a gun battle with Gonzales that he wins. Bond then smuggles the wounded Judy, who realizes how reckless she was, back to Canada, with the implication that they'll be hooking up before he takes her back to meet M.

Bond himself

The story offers a nice look at Bond in his harder-edged mode. One of the softer traits Fleming gives his professional assassin is an unwillingness to kill in cold blood, and here we see him psyching himself up to assassinate a guy in cold blood, while staying firm in the conviction that there's a place for justice outside the law. Bond's at his best as a character when he's got something to think about, a way for readers to really get inside his head, and that happens here. We also see his mixed relationship with women -- hating the presence of a hysterical, amateur blunderer, but also feeling attraction and protectiveness and admiration for her spirit. There's also a good moment for the Bond-M relationship, when Bond perceives M's distress and acts to support him and take the burden of the decision off his shoulders. You can see his loyalty and admiration there.

How it fits into the series

Not much going on as it affects the larger picture. Most of what the story is doing has also been done elsewhere in the series.

Adaptation alteration

The story lent its name to a film, but unlike From a View to a Kill, the film did adapt the story. It placed it in a larger context by turning the Havelocks into marine archaeologists recovering the nuclear control McGuffin that drives the film's plot, which made Bond's pursuit of their assassin, Gonzales, not a personal revenge mission but a state investigation. And M couldn't have had a role anyway, due to Bernard Lee's death keeping M out of the movie. Von Hammerstein was cut, but the concept of the estate attack was kept, with the daughter (renamed Melina for the movie) killing Gonzales with a crossbow at his Spanish villa while Bond investigated. That became the launchpad for the rest of the story, which borrowed from another story from this collection, Risico, for the rest of the movie's structure.

The shift in setting from Jamaica to the Mediterranean is understandable diversification of location for the films, but moving the finale from Canada and Vermont to Spain leaves that setting still unused. Generally speaking, America and Canada aren't exciting locations for Bond, but I think there could be potential in seeing Bond in that sort of rugged, forested countryside for a sequence of a film. It's photogenic, interesting terrain, and it hasn't really been exploited before in the series. I think there's also something in the idea of Bond having to operate in the wilderness. The movies have tended either to put Bond in urban settings, or to sort of ignore the nature in the process of getting Bond to some isolated spot, rather than exploit the idea of Bond trekking somewhere remote, having a shootout in the woods, that sort of thing.

Review

I really enjoyed this short story. It sits at a sort of midpoint; two of the stories are relatively experimental, featuring Bond off a mission and serving mostly as character pieces. The other two stories are fairly straightforward "Bond on a mission" stories that are just shorter than the average book. For Your Eyes Only has Bond on a mission, but it's got a twist that's used to give the story a strong emphasis on the characters and make it a little more of an unusual event. I thought the character work was strong and the mission was satisfying, putting Bond in a fresh situation and leading up to a climax that was small-scale but still tense and exciting. There was a lot of process in getting Bond to Echo Lake, which gave us a nice glimpse of Bond at work in the less glamorous periods of the job. Bond works extremely well in these short story chunks, where Fleming gets to take a great concept and just play it out without having to turn it into anything bigger. The short story format has always been excellent for these kinds of stories -- pulp action-thrillers and the detective story tradition -- and it's a pity Fleming didn't write more. They suit his style very well.

Rankings

1. For Your Eyes Only
2. From a View to a Kill

 

I'm not sure I want to see Bond against the American wilderness. As a general rule, I don't like Bond in English speaking countries. Exceptions can be made - for example, the sequence in Miami in Licence to Kill, the mid-point scenes in England in Skyfall - but for the most part Bond works for me juxtaposed against a background where he's not culturally "at home".

The story is great, and it formed the basis of what is my favourite Moore film (and his own good one, in my view). You're right about the short stories really working; Bond's a character who can simply bear witness to events, or influence them, and still be interesting.

You may however change your view on short stories when you get to Quantum of Solace...

 

For Your Eyes Only is one of the better Moore flicks (although I like The Spy Who Loved Me a bit more) mainly because it's so down to earth and follows the source material.

 

Well, I'm not as absolutist as you about English-language settings. I'm concerned more that the feel of the setting be exotic and fresh -- visually exciting, having a distinct sense of place, not feeling generic or overexposed, and putting Bond in a glamorous or exciting light. The Mediterranean and Caribbean have always been very reliable for that, whereas America hasn't tended to work out, but I think the culture matters a lot less out in the wilderness. I'm just thinking that, with all the setpieces we've had, something like Bond sneaking up on a remote cabin or vacation home in a photogenic forest, having to operate stealthily in nature before hitting a remote location, would be a solid setpiece the next time he needs to capture an informant or something, as a change from all the urban setpieces we've had.

For the record, I think the most promising underused locations for the Bond films are sub-Saharan Africa and south and southeast Asia. There's a lot of story potential in those parts of the world, the Bond films have done very little there, and they're exotic, underused locations in general.

And I'm actually well ahead of what I'm posting; I have to post slower than I read to give enough time to discussion. I took a week off to read the Discourses on Livy just to give myself enough breathing space, but I'm still well ahead. Reading On Her Majesty's Secret Service now.

Quantum of Solace

About the story

This is the one story from the collection that isn't an adapted TV episode. Rather, it's Fleming's attempt at the style of W. Somerset Maugham, in which Bond is simply a receiver of a tale of domestic drama. It's the most experimental of the stories, not a spy or detective story at all, and is essentially just Fleming trying his hand at a different genre and using Bond as a way to get it out there. Fleming based the story on a real-life couple's story related to him by his Jamaican neighbor and mistress, Blanche Blackwell.

The story was published in advance of the collection, appearing in a magazine. Short story publication, and its sister phenomenon, serialization of longer stories, was a common way for writers at the time to make additional money on their work. The magazine in this case was Modern Women's Magazine. It's hard to think of a worse fit for Fleming, but the fact that the story seems to fit should tell you what a departure it is.

Plot

Bond is in Nassau, having completed a mission to cut off arms smuggling to the Communist rebels in Cuba by bombing the smuggler ships, and finishing up a dinner party he was invited to by the colonial governor. Bond attended only out of necessity, was bored by the other guests, the Millers, before they left, and now is stuck making small talk with the governor for the rest of the evening. A chance remark by Bond causes the governor to recollect a story of a man he knew, which he relates to Bond, finally gaining his interest.

The governor was friends at school with a Masters, who was lonely and awkward with women, and went into the Colonial Service. While flying home from his previous posting in Africa, he met a stewardess, Rhoda, who took an interest in him and found his work exciting and exotic-seeming. They got married before he was stationed in Bermuda, where the governor was also posted as a fellow junior Colonial Service official. Masters and Rhoda were happy for the first few months, but the relationship deteriorated when she got bored of his routine, non-exotic life. She took up with a young playboy heir, flaunting the affair pretty openly, which sent Masters into depression. To save his career, his friends and superiors had him sent to America for a lengthy conference, where he could get out from under the stress. The heir's parents, meanwhile, finally succeeded in pressuring him to dump Rhoda. She resolved to be a better wife and make a second try at the marriage, only for Masters to come back absolutely determined to be done with the marriage. He dictated terms to her: they would split the house, with neither allowed in the other's rooms; the only shared room would be the bathroom. She would only be allowed to communicate with him by leaving notes in the bathroom. In public or with company, they would play the role of the happy couple, but they were going to get a divorce as soon as his tour of duty on Bermuda was done. Masters did divorce her, leaving her with next to nothing. She begged him for the car and radio-gramophone, which he gave her, only for her to find out that he owed payments on them, and she was barely able to get out from under them. Rhoda was reduced to playing the mistress for a descending spiral of men until she ran out of men in the small community, at which point the wife of one of Masters' co-workers got her a job as a hotel receptionist in Jamaica. There, she caught the eye of a vacationing Canadian millionaire and married him -- making the woman whose life Bond has found so extraordinary and moving one half of the couple he found extraordinarily dull at dinner.

Bond finds himself absorbed by the domestic human drama, the plight of the woman, and the cruelty of Masters and Rhoda to each other -- with the governor theorizing that Masters could only be so cold because Rhoda had extinguished the "quantum of solace," the minimum basis of respect and human dignity necessary for a relationship -- to the point of finding his own career rather less exciting in comparison.

Bond himself

Well, it's certainly a different situation for Bond. Here we see Bond, the man of action and adrenaline, bored by the dull routine of pleasantries with people he doesn't care about, give way to a Bond caught up in a good story, ultimately so engrossed by the drama within the humdrum lives he had previously found so dull that he finds his exploits less thrilling. It's Bond showing a little more sympathy and curiosity than we're used to, but the ending ties in with the occasional ennui and disenchantment Bond feels about the nature of his job. Usually, he's more focused on the soul-destroying harshness and danger, but this offers an alternate route to Bond's disenchantment, by making the routine life he despises even more than his job look dramatic and compelling.

How it fits into the series

Well, it's notable mostly for not fitting into the series. It's a deliberate glaring aberration created to let Fleming tinker in an entirely unrelated genre.

Adaptation alteration

After 1987's The Living Daylights, Bond movies ceased using Fleming's titles. They left on the shelf several short story titles presumably considered unusuable as film names; among them was Quantum of Solace. For two decades, Quantum of Solace remained on the shelf, until it became the first and, so far, only one of the titles to be dusted off and used. The filmmakers justified their choice by linking the concept behind the title to Bond's loss of solace in the wake of Vesper's death, but the main attraction was that it was Fleming and it let the graphic designers reuse the O-O-7(gun) device they had invented for Casino Royale's posters.

The substance of the story, obviously unsuitable for a Bond movie, has never been used, and it would be a desperate day that it is ever touched.

Review

As a minor little story, it's not terrible. It's certainly not exciting or special, and the extent to which the governor relates the story in sparkling, third-person omniscient prose is distracting, but it's functional as a little story about a dysfunctional relationship. I was at least curious about where the relationship was going to go as I read it, so it can draw you in. The downside is that there's not much a payoff narratively -- the "she was the woman who just left" device is such an obvious short story ending gimmick that it doesn't have much punch -- and it doesn't do much to justify its existence as a Bond story. I also found Bond's whole, "Wow, my life is boring next to this fascinating domestic drama!" routine to be a bit silly. He can be struck by it, but "international espionage pales in comparison to screwing over your ex-wife!" is a little over the top. It's not a story that does much of anything for me.

Rankings

1. For Your Eyes Only
2. From a View to a Kill
3. Quantum of Solace

 

Interesting, thanks... I had wondered about this.

 

You forgot "... and that part where Bond is with Sheriff Buford..."

 

When did that happen?

 

Er, sorry, Sheriff Pepper.

 

In a sense, they did borrow from the story insofar as transporting the Master's lack of quantum of solace to Bond's lack with Vesper, given her death. The process of forgiving her - so crucial to Mathis' peace of mind - was lifted from the short story's concept.

 

Risico

About the story

Another adapted TV episode, with the Venice setting inspired by a trip Fleming took with his wife.

Plot

The story opens with Bond in a restaurant in Venice, meeting his contact, Kristatos. Bond has been sent to Italy to root out a ring smuggling narcotics to Britain, and has been put on to Kristatos, a CIA informant, as the man to help him find the culprits. Kristatos tells Bond that the man behind the operation is Colombo, whose restaurant they are in; what Bond has not noticed is that Colombo has arranged to eavesdrop on their conversation. Kristatos wants Bond to promise to kill Colombo; Bond only says that he'll kill him if he has to, and agrees to pay Kristatos for the information. As Bond leaves the restaurant, he picks up Lisl Baum, Colombo's girlfriend who had a staged argument with him in the restaurant. Bond asks her about drug smuggling as they share a cab, pretending he's an author looking to do research, and she agrees to tell him about Colombo's operations if he'll meet her on a mostly-deserted beach on the Lido.

Bond goes to the beach to meet Lisl, but is ambushed by men working for Colombo and captured. He wakes up aboard Colombo's yacht, where Colombo explains that Kristatos is the drug kingpin Bond wants; like most confidential informants, he's just manipulating the authorities to wipe out his rival, Colombo, who does not deal in narcotics and knows too much about Kristatos's operations. Bond believes Colombo and agrees to accompany him in a raid on Kristatos's warehouse, where there will be proof of his opium smuggling. The raid results in a big shootout between the rival gangs, in which Bond plays the key role in shooting their way forward. When Bond feels like the warehouse, which is indeed full of opium, feels too much like a trap, he waves off Colombo's men and goes around, where he finds Kristatos in the back, waiting to blow it. He shoots at Kristatos, misses, Kristatos blows the warehouse, and as Kristatos drives off in his getaway car, Bond manages to shoot him just before he's out of range. Colombo then explains that Kristatos was working for the Commies, trying to weaken the Brits by getting the youth hooked on drugs, and "gives" Lisl to Bond, because she's into him, he's grateful, and he's got a lot of girlfriends and he's a Mediterranean barbarian. Nobody ever accused Ian Fleming of being progressive.

Bond himself

We don't get a ton of character detail on Bond here; it's mostly a routine Bond-on-a-mission story, with the main hook of the short story the twist that Bond is being played. The most notable aspect is Fleming's continuation of Bond's association with rough-and-tumble allies. It's a pattern we see repeated that Bond's allies fall into two rough patterns: from "sophisticated" ally countries, we the competent, friendly, fundamentally Bondlike allies like Leiter and Mathis, people who are direct counterparts to Bond. From "unsophisticated" countries, we see allies who are extremely effective, who abound with joie de vivre and boistrous spirit that attracts Bond, but who are in some way semi-barbaric -- crude, extremely misogynistic in their treatment of women, prone to vendetta. Bond ultimately finds himself so attracted to them by their grandness of spirit and stoutness as comrades that he overlooks their cruder aspects as natural consequences of their nationality. There's also often some element of mixed heritage to grant them a greater element of nobility or sophistication. There's Quarrel, who talks in island dialect and speaks crudely about women, but is brave and capable in his element and fun to be around, and has his mixed descent from English colonists repeatedly emphasized. Then there's Darko Kerim, whose approach to women is chauvinist at absolute best, who talks bluntly about sex, who engages in vendetta, but is friendly and competent and magnetic in personality -- and who has an English mother and looks down on his fellow Turks. Now we get the crude Mediterraneans Kristatos and Colombo, who eat crudely, talk crudely, and Colombo especially acts a bit slobbish and is quite retrograde about women, but Bond likes both of them when he considers them allies because of their competence and exuberant, comradely personalities, Colombo especially. We'll later see the pattern continue with Draco, and, though I haven't gotten that far yet, I'd be surprised if Tiger Tanaka doesn't fall into that pattern.

It's obviously a pattern of thinking about "foreigners" that's rooted in a probably-unconsciously racist way of looking at the world. By which I mean that Fleming isn't malicious -- he does end up, after all, writing all these guys as great, supremely capable allies and personable characters Bond likes very much, and their ebullience makes them some of his strongest supporting characters -- but he's internalized a lot of racialized stereotypes that were simply taken as common wisdom among Brits in older days, whether it be "Germans are efficient and cold," or "Mediterraneans are slovenly chauvinists with vendettas," or "Caribbean islanders are friendly and not very bright." And it certainly informs the way he writes Bond's allies; what's most interesting, in terms of our perspective on Bond, is how warmly Bond always responds to these characters, how charmed he is by unpretentious, disarmingly blunt, boys-will-be-boys sort of jovial comradeship coming from someone whose skills he respects. Here, it's in some respects his weakness, as he falls for Kristatos's act, but it also helps him connect with Colombo's story as he perceives the man's honesty.

How it fits into the series

Risico is a relatively straightforward Bond adventure, not breaking any new ground. It continues to illustrate Fleming's tendencies in Bond's allies, as I've already pointed out.

Adaptation alteration

The substance of Risico was added to For Your Eyes Only to make the movie with that name. The events of For Your Eyes Only were adapted to help start the movie in motion, while, adapted to suit the ATAC McGuffin as the driving plot device rather than an opium ring, Risico provided the general outline of the movie's conflict, with Bond working with Kristatos as a contact to gain information; Kristatos puts Bond onto Colombo at which point the short story basically plays out, with Lisl killed on the beach by Kristatos's assassins (killing the secondary Bond girl, while an occurrence in Goldfinger, is not a habit Fleming has gotten into so far, and likely never will; in fact, secondary Bond girls aren't even a distinct habit -- both traits are more definitive of the film series) after a night with Bond, rather than Lisl being the Bond girl at the end (that role now taken by Melina Havelock), but at the warehouse raid, it is the new assassin Locque, inserted as part of the connective tissue, that Bond kills, saving Kristatos for an all-new climax.

The title, taken from the way Fleming writes Kristatos's pronunciation of "risk" -- I'm still struggling to figure out how he arrived at that -- has never yet been used, being one of the few remaining short story titles available to the film producers. It's probably the only one left that's remotely suitable as a "Bond movie" title, though it would have to find a new explanation, likely assigned as a proper noun to someone or something plot-relevant.

Review

I found the story excellent. It's the only story in the collection that isn't really doing anything new -- it's not experimental, it's not constructed in such a limited way that it's obviously purely a short story scenario. Rather, it feels very much like a usual Bond novel, just in condensed form. It's the one story that gives the feel that Fleming could have spun the concepts out into a full-length novel and just didn't. Not that that's a bad thing -- the short story format works so well for Bond that Fleming is probably better off not stretching the concept and distorting it by blowing it up -- but it does give the story a distinct feel of being a routine Bond adventure. That works in its favor, making it pack a good punch as a straightforward adventure, exactly the Bond red meat you want, but it does work against it a little by keeping the story from being perfectly suited to the short story medium. Without the character focus, without the tight short-story construction, without the sense of being anything new, it doesn't feel like it's doing as much to justify its existence. It lacks the crackle of, "Wow, that's something new! That's something I didn't expect, haven't gotten before, couldn't get from a novel!" Even if does feel a little by-the-numbers, though, it's still solid Bond, with a good plot hook and exciting action. I definitely enjoyed it, and it's a worthwhile addition to the collection, providing some nice counterweight to the more experimental stories.

Rankings

1. For Your Eyes Only
2. Risico
3. From a View to a Kill
4. Quantum of Solace

 

The Hildebrand Rarity

About the story

Yet again, it's an adapted TV episode. In a rarity for Fleming, the story does not take place in Europe, America, or the Caribbean, but rather in the Seychelles, which Fleming had visited as a reporter to cover a dud treasure hunt. For the events of the story, Fleming was influenced by having seen scientists collect samples in the Caribbean using poison. This story was also published in advance of the book, appearing in Playboy shortly before the book came out.

Plot

Bond is on a mission that's more vacation than anything else, sent to evaluate the Seychelles in case the Royal Navy base in the Maldives might have to move due to Commie saboteurs based out of then-Ceylon. With nothing much to do before he's scheduled to ship out, after hunting and killing a stingray while diving, he's approached by his local guide and friend Fidele, whose family basically runs the Seychelles, to go along on an expedition. Milton Krest, an American millionaire with an incredibly luxurious yacht, the Wavekrest, is going to a distant island that's little more than a bump in the sea to collect a rare fish, Fidele is his guide, and Fidele wants Bond for his diving expertise, plus it's something to do. Bond goes along, but is immediately put off by the rude, crude, domineering Krest, who constantly insults his guests, shows off, and intimidates his wife, a beautiful, kind, young Brit. In fact, Bond finds out that he beats her with a stingray tail, a particularly painful punishment, and he's not ashamed to admit it. Krest avoids taxes and covers his expenses by running a foundation that uses his yacht and other travels to collect scientific specimens for museums; he just goes in, buys up whatever he's told to find, and continues on to his next vacation spot. Bond quickly finds Krest unbearable, but enjoys the company of Liz, his wife.

At the island, Bond and Fidele go diving to search for the Hildebrand Rarity, a unique type of fish only seen before in that location. They don't find one, but Krest eventually does, sending Bond out to watch for it as it darts around, while Krest prepares to pour a bucket of poison onto the reef that will kill everything there in an attempt to get the one fish. Bond is repulsed, and ends up attempting to sabotage Krest by giving the signal at the wrong time, just to spite him. Despite his best efforts, the Rarity wanders into the poison and is killed.

That night, Krest gets even drunker and meaner than usual, insulting Bond and Fidele and making it clear he's going to beat his wife for some comment she made a long time ago, because he's an abusive *******. Bond finally has enough, insults him a few times, and goes out on the stern deck, where he's been sleeping the whole time to get away from Krest. Liz comes out and talks to him, and Krest comes out just in time to see her hold his hand. He insults Bond so more, so Bond is about to let him have the beating he's cruising for when Krest shows a whistle he can use to summon his crew of Germans, and threatens to have Bond killed and dumped overboard. Bond stands down, the Krests leave, and Bond hears him beating her again. He wants to help, but doesn't see a point in intervening in a marriage that she's not acting to get out of. He goes to sleep and wakes up during the night to hear Krest snoring in his hammock on an elevated deck amidships, then a crash and choking sounds. He goes up and finds Krest dead, choked to death by the specimen Rarity. Not wanting to be involved in an inquest where he would be a suspect, too, Bond cleans up the scene to make it look like the frayed hammock snapped and Krest rolled off the side of the ship, and throws the body overboard, Rarity included. He suspects that either Liz, finally driven to revenge, or Fidele, if Krest dished out too much after Bond left, and counting on his family's ability to cover the issue up, could be the killer. He goes back to sleep, wakes up, and gets no clues when nobody seems to notice that Krest isn't aboard. Bond points it out, and still has no clues by the time they arrive back in the Seychelles. Liz, taken with how helpful Bond has been, invites him to sail with her aboard the yacht for Mombasa rather than waiting for the Navy. Bond is tempted, but worried about getting involved with a killer woman; he agrees, though. Fidele points out the responsibility of getting the Hildebrand Rarity specimen to the Smithsonian, suggesting he doesn't know the real method of death, and Liz seems to sweat a little but says that she's decided to give the Rarity to the British Museum . . . and on that note of possible but unresolved implication, the story ends.

Bond himself

Bond struggles here between his white-knight inclinations to save this poor, beautiful girl -- motivations that are complicated by the presence of lust for her and hatred of her husband -- and a reluctance to get involved in domestic problems, and a slightly cynical, slightly realist belief that he can't do any actual long-term good unless the woman gets out of the abusive relationship, and it's on her to do so, not him to sweep in and fix things for one night. Fleming seems to be examining Bond's heroism, casting him as something more complex than a pure storybook good guy, the way he can sometimes come off when Fleming's in a more heroic mood. Bond is much darker here than usual, from killing a stingray because it "looks evil" at the beginning of the story to seething against Krest the whole time and coldly, professionally covering up his death just to avoid a little trouble, and because he doesn't like the guy, and then, it's pointed out, going right back to sleep, clearly untroubled by conscience. One way or the other, Bond is letting somebody get away with murder because he thinks the guy had it coming, and there's no trace of moral compunction. On the other hand, we do see moral compunction in Bond's reaction against the ugly way of catching the specimen; he finds the indiscriminate, selfish taking of innocent and beautiful sea life objectionable -- again, contrast his willingness to hunt down and kill the stingray more or less on a whim at the beginning, because he doesn't like the way it looks. Bond the white knight, throughout the story, exists in a sort of complementary tension with Bond, the cold-blooded, lecherous killer. It's a good example of the way Bond is a man of standards, a man with a code, but it's idiosyncratic and highly personal, and in some ways subject to his thoughts and feelings at any given time.

How it fits into the series

Like Quantum of Solace, this story is in some respects experimental, showing Bond in an unusual situation; it's not a story about a Bond mission, but rather about Bond stumbling into an interesting situation in his personal time. Fleming, usually a very expository author who clearly explains what's going on in his stories, is also experimenting here by introducing a strong element of ambiguity. Maybe Liz is the killer or maybe Fidele is; you can read the evidence one way or the other, but we, like Bond, are left unable to be certain of the truth. Fleming's clearly stretching himself in that regard to pursue a more ambiguous and artistic ending while focusing on the complexity of Bond's character.

The Hildebrand Rarity is also notable in introducing the femme fatale. We've become accustomed to seeing the type in connection with Bond by the movies, but the books so far have largely avoided the type. Bond's girls have all been allies, sweet and innocent bystanders, or dupes of the villains whom Bond rescues. The closest would be Tiffany Case or Pussy Galore, but while Tiffany's a criminal, she's not really a "dangerous" woman in the way the femme fatale must be -- she's just used by the villains, and is Bond's ally throughout the story -- and Pussy is likewise never really dangerous for Bond. Liz Krest, though, by the end of the story is definitely in the femme fatale camp, a sexually alluring woman attempting to draw Bond in, but causing Bond to hesitate due to his fears that under the innocent surface, she may be a murderess who has revealed inner reserves of strength, duplicity, and dangerousness he didn't expect.

Adaptation alteration

The title has never been used, nor has the plot. Neither is likely to be found suitable for a Bond movie. That hasn't stopped elements from being used, however. Licence to Kill fit Milton Krest and the Wavekrest into the role of the operator of a commercial aquatic life capture business that doubled as a smuggling ring and his business/smuggling ship that were already established, with less distinct personality, in the segment of Live and Let Die that the movie was adapting. The movie's overall villain, Sanchez, was given Krest's habit of whipping his girlfriend.

Review

This is an excellent story. It's rich in character, it has a great exotic setting, and the plot leaves you guessing where it's going until it gives you a great ambiguous mystery. It's very well-written on Fleming's part and makes the most of the short story format to do something new and exciting with the character that still feels perfectly suitable as a James Bond story. It's one of the most complex and intelligent character studies of Bond that Fleming gets up to, and it's handled with subtlety and concision.

Rankings

1. For Your Eyes Only
2. The Hildebrand Rarity
3. Risico
4. From a View to a Kill
5. Quantum of Solace

Now, to wrap up, we'll move back to consideration of For Your Eyes Only overall.

How it fits into the series

Fleming has never been a formulaic author. He's experimented with format, with subject matter, with story beats. This is firmly in Fleming's tradition of experimentation, and it's certainly the biggest departure so far, replacing the novel format entirely with a short story collection. It lets Fleming devote more time to studying Bond's character, as well as releasing him from the necessity, which sometimes interferes with the quality of his product, of drawing out concepts to novel length. Instead, we get compact, effective, perfectly-constructed short stories allowing us to see aspects of Bond, and kinds of Bond stories, we've never seen before. It's also notable that the short story format keeps the stories relatively constrained and grounded; there isn't the room to fly off into grandiose threats and action sequences, to develop extraordinary plots. Instead, what we get is very much more day-in-the-life-of-a-secret-agent kind of stuff for Bond, simple missions and lower-key stories.

Review

I'd say For Your Eyes Only is a smashing success. The short story format works so much in Fleming's favor, complementing his skills as a writer better than the novel form. The quality of the stories, aside from Quantum of Solace, is high, and together they're even greater than the sum of their parts by virtue of providing a rich and varied Bond experience, a kaleidoscope of fantastic new Bond stories that feel fresh and unique. The stories are some of Fleming's best writing, and the anthology format is one I've always enjoyed, but it's especially well-deployed here. It's a pity Fleming didn't write a few more collections like this.

Rankings

1. From Russia, with Love
2. For Your Eyes Only
3. Live and Let Die
4. Casino Royale
5. Moonraker
6. Goldfinger
7. Dr. No
8. Diamonds Are Forever

 

Great reviews, Havac - glad to see you enjoying these stories. I remember loving the Rarity, just because of the way the story unfolds. Fleming, I would dare say, met a real life Milton Krest or two; everything he wrote had some basis in fact, be it a personality or a name or similar. So Bond's distaste for him, his desire to intervene as a white knight versus his pragmatism - Krest was a boor whom Fleming wished he could have acted upon. In fact with this story in particular, I get the impression Fleming and either Anne or his lover, Blanche, sailed with someone unpleasant and he juiced up the story to make Bond his mouthpiece.

I'll be very keen to hear your thoughts on Octopussy and the Living Daylights. A few years ago, Penguin put out a short story collection called "Quantum of Solace: The Short Stories of Ian Fleming". It was 2008, so of course they chose that title. But it has all the FYEO stories plus those two and (I think) 007 in New York.

 

I would not be surprised at all if that was true. The story certainly has the ring of authenticity in Bond's building, miserable frustration with being cooped up with the loutish, obnoxious Krest.