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No idea if Fleming was familiar with the character or Karl May.
What critics used to call a "return to form," though I enjoyed off-form Fleming too. OHMSS is definitely an attempt to go back to the original essence of Bond, but the attempt is colored by the melancholy of passing time. The return to Vesper's grave is an example--a reminder of the very first adventure, but looked back on with poignancy rather than the anger Bond originally felt at her passing. This Bond has been kicked around by the decade since Casino Royale.
True, though the book does have one stylistic flaw--the excessive use of quotation marks, which some critics called "girlish"!
Ms. Rigg is without doubt the greatest Bond girl of them all in my book. Fleming's Tracy I'm less sure about. She has a terrific introduction and presence in the first section, and the reader wants to help her as much as Bond does. She's also the first and only woman to tell Bond "You're a lousy goddam lover. Get out!" But Fleming skips over her recovery with little more than a sentence about her seeing doctors, and Bond has little do with her recovery. She's neurotic and suicidal in the beginning, disappears in the middle, and in the last third reappears as mentally healthy. Perhaps we didn't truly need to see her at the shrink's, but something is missing. The movie brilliantly solved this problem by inventing the scene of Draco's birthday party, where Bond has to prove his commitment to Tracy and show her she's more than a bargaining chip. Making her sure of Bond's love gives her something to live for, which is the ultimate cure.
Indeed. And my vote for the most suspenseful passage in all of Fleming is the scene between Campbell's interrogation and Bond's escape from Piz Gloria. I was jittery with suspense, despite knowing exactly what would happen.
Yes--many people regard OHMSS as one of the closest adaptations, but it makes several large but subtle changes. Almost all of these are for the best. Bond's literary thoughts of resigning become a full blown confrontation with M, with both men saved from male ego-induced disaster by Moneypenny's wisdom (the scene where Bond and M take turns thanking her is one of the sweetest in any Bond film). The briefing between Bond, M, and the experts becomes another confrontation scene, this time between Bond and Blofeld. It's great to see Blofeld with his "mask" off--in the novel we never that, but the films amps up the hatred between him and Bond. That sort of emotional conflict is important in driving a story. The film however, does miss out in underplaying the theme of snobbery--Fleming's scene of Blofeld cringingly offering a bribe for his title is delicious.
Most importantly, the film has Tracy being captured by Blofeld, which unifies the novel's otherwise separate story arcs. The jihad against Blofeld is now directly tied to Bond's romance with Tracy, so Bond's attack on Piz Gloria becomes doubly important. Had Fleming lived to see the film, he might have said "why didn't I think of that?" The film also gives us the scene of Tracy distracting Blofeld by reciting a James Elroy Flecker poem ("Thy dawn, O Master of the World, thy dawn"); as she recites the last line, "For thee the poet of beguilement sings," Hunt cuts to Bond in Draco's helicopter, silhouetted against the blood-red sun and cradling his machine-gun. Barry's music rises over the stunning visual in a flourish of irony and impending violence (for thee Blofeld, the poet really sings of destruction and apocalypse). Visual and verbal poetry fuse in one of the most brilliant and evocative moments in any Bond film. Aside from Goldfinger, OHMSS is the only Bond film I regard as superior to its source novel.
Edition I read: 1967 Pan paperback. Looks like I’ve got a paperback first edition here, and in good condition, too. Well done, me!
Where I read it: In bed.
James Bond
Bond doesn’t appear until two-thirds of the way through the book, but he makes an impressive entrance. No wonder the section is entitled simply ‘Him’.
We already know that he’s the kind of man who makes an impression; he’s good-looking and he has presence. He’s rather frightening until he smiles, which is a nice detail.
He still objects to girly-smelling bath products, just as he did back in CR.
We’ve seen Bond in the sack before, but not from the woman’s point of view, and I’ll admit I found this pretty…interesting. OK, also enjoyable.
The thing I always like about these scenes is that they’re as much about companionship as passion. Here we see Bond doing some nude housekeeping, and enjoying a spot of spooning when he’s done with the semi-rape. It’s pretty sweet.
We’ve seen before - when he helps M with Drax’s cheating, and does the same for a casual acquaintance in Goldfinger - that Bond is willing to use his skills to help out, even when he’s off duty. This time, he’s not averse to risking his life. Good man.
The villain
I started off thinking ‘oh dear, more American gangsters, Fleming really can’t write them’, but this pair felt genuinely menacing. Maybe it’s because James Bond is more than capable of dealing with Wints, Kidds, Sluggsies et al, but Viv isn’t, and seeing them through her eyes makes them more frightening.
The language they use is over the top as usual - but I don’t think I grasped until this reading quite how awful it is to refer to women using words like ‘slot’ and ‘gash’, so that shook me a bit too. (I note ‘bimbo’ has lost its potency, though.)
Sluggsy's alopecia is a scary detail, as well as educational. And I’m amused that one of the hoods shares his name with the literary-Bond author incumbent.
The girl
It’s funny how your perspective changes. The first time I read the novel I was still at school, and Viv seemed very grown-up, worldly and sophisticated. Re-reading now, I see her as young and innocent. (She even got me thinking a bit about first love, and summers, and parks, and bridges, and good grief how is all this suddenly 20 years ago??)
I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting the verdict of an actual woman on Fleming writing as a woman, and while my views obviously do not represent those of an entire gender, I think he takes a jolly good crack at it.
It’s not too surprising. He’s good at characterisation and point of view, and, really, I don’t think men and woman are all that different. (Most civilian men would be just as helpless and scared as Viv if they were trapped by thugs in a motel, for instance, but convention means that would make a less appealing story.)
She's very full of herself in some ways and hard on herself in others; she loves her independence but is grateful for a companion. Yeah, I can relate.
He’s got inside the heads of his female characters before, giving them lengthy monologues - see Domino’s about her hero - but this is his longest effort and, in my opinion, his best.
It’s worth mentioning that there’s none of this sort of thing:
(I’m not sure many young women - or men of Viv’s generation, come to that - look at the autumn colours of the maple leaves and think ‘ah, shrapnel bursts’, but it’s a nice simile so I’ll give Fleming that one.)
Other cast
"She had got a job with the Foreign Office in something called ‘Communications', about which she was very secretive" Is…is her flatmate a spy!?
Both the boyfriends are well-portrayed. We’ve seen in the short stories that Fleming enjoys a good character study, and here are two more examples.
Derek is certainly a recognisable type, and the issue of the man who desperately wants to and the women who isn’t quite sure is a staple of literature from around the start of the sexual revolution; it’s the central dilemma of Kingsley Amis’s Take A Girl Like You, for example.
And I was laughing at Kurt right up until he unexpectedly turned out to be a bit of a Nazi.
Did someone order an ironic name? The abortion doctor's translates as Dr Sweetchild.
“I guess he’s got a fix in with the FBI.” Or a Felix?
I like the police captain and the fatherly interest he takes in Viv (who, of course, pays no attention to his views on Bond!).
The plot
It’s a book of three parts, and they’re very different, but they work together. The first, autobiographical section is a huge departure for Fleming - literary, a character study, little action - and he must have been confident he could hold his readership through it. The action ramps up in the second part, which reads like a straight crime novel. Finally, Bond arrives and we get a much more conventional adventure along the usual trajectory.
Bond’s mission in Canada reveals a lot about his character as well as showing us another of the unpleasant tasks Double Os have to carry out; his grief and anger at the death of the Mountie is obvious.
We get a nice little bit of journalism tradecraft courtesy of Viv’s job (Fleming’s job, once), and instructions on how to make a convincing dummy. (The book was published in 1962, also the year the film of Dr No was released; interesting they should both feature Bond putting a dummy in his bed to fool the bad guys.)
The location
Unusually for a full-length Bond, the present-day action all takes place in the enclosed space of the Dreamy Pines and its surroundings. The motel goes from cosy and secure to isolated, claustrophobic and terrifying in an extremely effective way.
As I mentioned during LALD, I’m very much in love with ‘50s and ‘60s Americana, road trips and motels - I blame reading Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent at an impressionable age - so I enjoyed all this.
We also get a glimpse of a London just starting to swing, and of Windsor and Eton. I go to Windsor pretty often, as a friend lives there; I doubt the cinema still exists but now I’ll have to check!
Food & drink
Lots of scrambled eggs and coffee, as documented by @Some_Kind_Of_Hero.
Perhaps the nicest thing Bond does is ensure the police bring Viv some breakfast.
Miscellany
Now, I’m not saying that reading TSWLM at an impressionable age is what made me so dead set on getting a scooter (specifically, rather than a motorcycle) of my own as soon as I was able, or the reason my second scooter, and several subsequent ones, were Vespas, but…OK, it was. And if I hadn’t got into scooters, I’d have missed out on a lot of experiences, places and friends. Thanks, Ian.
I have yet to do a big solo trip across the US and Canada (or even Europe), but it’s on the wishlist.
200 miles is still a reasonable day's run on two wheels, by the way, when you’re sticking to the more interesting roads. And even in this day and age, a female motorcyclist still attracts a fair bit of notice.
The novel’s never been a favourite, but I got a lot more out of it this time round, perhaps because I recently had a scary encounter of my own.
Some of you already know that last week I was chased down on my scooter by two youths on another one, who forced me over to the side of the road, pushed me off my bike and stole it.
I started TSWLM that night, as I wasn’t doing much sleeping, and it turned out to be a great pick: a cathartic experience, and a comfort that, at least in fiction, innocent victims get rescued and bad guys get their comeuppance.
“And don’t have nightmares. These sort of things don’t often happen.”
Thanks, James.
They were after the microfilm in her glove compartment.
I didn't know scooters had glove compartments. You learn something new every day...
They do in Norway...special model there.
Thundy speaks the truth, Dr Kananga.
Yes, I've seen that myself. A little old lady drives one to my place of work.
Assassins Asociated?
The Assassination Bureau Ltd. We're listed on the web. The Dark Web.
I was. I am not having a super great time at the moment but I'm gradually telling people what happened and it helps (I've just been laughing a lot at all these glovebox comments). Hoping to get a new one sorted soon and put it all behind me.
I've moved on to bigger things now but I had three of those little guys (not all at the same time). They're lovely.
Or killed. Right, @Dragonpol?
Yes, usually puts a stop to this sort of thing I find.
I too read You Only Live Twice before its predecessor—and saw the film first (at an age when its true emotional power was largely lost on me)—and so never really got to experience the shock of Tracy dying. I also, unfortunately, never really got to experience the catharsis of Bond exacting his revenge upon Blofeld for the first time. I envy anyone who did.
I agree with your assessment that Fleming momentarily broke character with his narrator and "bled" a bit of his own sexual fantasies onto the page, as he does from time to time. Sometimes it's more obvious (and more uncomfortable) than other times. But here it was particularly unfortunate.
And there is indeed quite a bit of seesawing going on toward the end, in terms of whether Bond is meant to be viewed as a comic book hero or just some guy, same as any other. It would have been interesting for the Bond girl in her own words to dismiss Bond as nothing more than some guy who had briefly entered her life and passed on again into the shadows, merely a footnote in a lifetime of adventures. But Fleming couldn't commit to that. He had to make Bond in her eyes the larger-than-life hero he had become across all those novels. And maybe Fleming was right to do that: own up to Bond's undeniable hero status. As you say, he had "fallen back in love with his character."
Yes, several of the things surrounding the hoods—including them calling Viv "slot" and "gash"—shook me harder than I'd remembered this time. It's really quite awful what Vivienne goes through.
Good point.
You must stop by California when you do!
How awful! I would at least take comfort in knowing that the kinds of people who do those sorts of things eventually, usually, get theirs. Still, an awful way to enter the holidays. I hope they slip up soon.
Also: "she breasted boobily to the stairs"
That may just be my new favorite phrase. I feel like that's something Archer would proudly say.
But the covers you have are well done, working from a different concept. The distant lights for Casino Ryoale, the flame for Live and Let Die, the sleek metallic sheen for Moonraker, the radio signal effect for Dr. No...
(I do have that boxed set and I'm very glad, now, that I bought it, having wondered at the time whether I really needed more Bond books.)
Edition I read: 1965 Pan paperback. A favourite cover. Blood on the snow.
Where I read it: At my mum's, over Christmas.
James Bond
Oh Bond. You're the sexiest man in the world but I’m not sure I can get over the woolly underpants, practical though they be.
We see again that Bond can’t help investigating trouble, and putting a stop to it, even when he’s on holiday.
It’s not uncommon for Bond to be fed up at the start of a novel. Usually this is because he doesn’t have anything to do; this time he does have a mission, but he’s become frustrated by its apparent pointlessness.
He’s also considering the future, a luxury he can’t usually afford. He gives more of himself to Tracy than to any previous women save Vesper; tells her more about his life, lets her further in.
We’re seeing a more mature and thoughtful Bond here, I think. He seems more aware of his physical and mental limits, and more careful.
The villain
Blofeld doesn’t get much actual screen time, although his machinations are felt throughout the book. Often he’s glimpsed, rather than seen, and Bond only has a couple of brief conversations with him.
The green contact lenses he’s affected are a striking, spooky touch. He and Bond are both playing people they’re not, and it’s fascinating to watch them face off.
More immediately present than Blofeld is the awful Irma Bunt, a necessary chaperone to the female patients at the clinic. Like other evil women in Bond, she is a creature of gross appearance and probably gross personal habits too.
Where did Blofeld acquire her? Maybe there’s a clue in the way she refers to Piz Gloria as an Eagle’s Nest, followed immediately by a Germanic heel-click from one of the staff.
The girl
We’ve had memorable first encounters with Bond women before, but the casino, the beach and the strange kidnapping make for perhaps the most striking.
Bond is doomed from the start, and he knows it. A pretty girl, in distress, who’s a brilliant driver? Hook, line and sinker.
What is it Tracy has that elevates her above the rest? She’s independent, strong-willed, and good in bed, but these are characteristics common to pretty much all the women of the Bond novels. She’s not the first to need Bond’s help, or the first to look after him when he needs it, but it’s clear from the start there’s something special about this one. Or maybe it’s simple timing; Bond has reached a point in his life where he’d like a more permanent arrangement.
As others have mentioned, she seems to get better suspiciously quickly and entirely after her stay at the clinic. This feels like wishful thinking on the part of Fleming, whose own wife had mental health issues. (Remember, also, that we’ll never know how permanent this change might have been.)
Bond’s proposal also feels rather sudden, but then he’s a secret agent whose life is in constant danger. He’s learned to take his pleasures as and when he finds them - and to make snap decisions based on his instinct, which rarely fails him.
Other cast
Marc-Ange Draco. It’s a wonderful name - part-angel, part-dragon - and he’s the type of rather wicked older man Bond always takes to. 007 could ask for no better father-in-law.
Poor Campbell. Doomed by an all too believable cockup.
Nice to see Vallance again; I don’t think I’d picked up until this read-through that he was a recurring character.
Special mention: the Luftwaffe pilot turned taxi driver who is Bond’s sole stag party guest. I’d like to meet him.
The plot
A classic Fleming plot: it starts as an espionage mystery, then escalates into something outlandish and outrageous, rising to violent action. The need to have a dozen or so beautiful young women around seems to have been dreamed up with an eye to a future film version.
This time round, the novel is given extra depth by the secondary strand of Bond and Tracy’s romance, which keeps crossing the main Blofeld plot.
We get to see Bond doing some Proper Spy Stuff, from adopting a cover identity to improvised invisible ink - though he feels worse about his harmless deception of the girls than a professional should, IMHO.
It’s evident that MI6 has done a lot of unravelling of SPECTRE since Thunderball, as Bond is very well-informed about the structure of the organisation and even the ‘Blofeld meetings’ at which justice is dispensed.
I do wonder about Blofeld and his title. Was it really vanity, or did he have something more nefarious in mind once ennobled? I wouldn’t put it past him.
The location
The description of the end-of-season beach at Royale is my favourite opening to any Bond novel - one of my favourite openings of any novel, in fact. I've used the word 'atmospheric' a lot during these reviews, I'm using it again here, and I make no apology for it.
Piz Gloria itself is a wonderful location: part ski resort, part mad scientist’s laboratory. Impossible not to picture it as it appears on film, especially since I’ve been lucky enough to go there.
For my money, the ski chase is where Fleming’s writing hits its all-time peak. You’re right there with Bond, feeling the agony and fear, the biting cold. James Bond isn’t a brilliant skier, just a competent one. He’s fallible, he falls, he bleeds; this is what’s missing from most of the films. Then the surreal atmosphere of the ice rink, and then safety and warmth at last. I just love this whole section.
Food & drink
Stodgy Alpine food and schnapps to keep the cold out. Know it well. Love it.
A much-needed comedy break as two adult men are forced to enjoy a traditional Christmas dinner together.
Miscellany
I can never recapture my first reading of OHMSS, when I had to go back and read the final page several times because, like Bond, I couldn't quite comprehend what had happened. But re-reading brings a different pleasure and pain, as you spot the foreshadowing of what's to come - right from the beginning in Royale, the setting for Bond's first great heartbreak and now the starting-point for his second. The bit where he gets the bachelor's button in his Christmas pudding almost makes me cry.
I REALLY want to try bobsledding some day. I mean, it sounds terrifying, but I'd like to give it a go.
Lastly, even without all the other things that make this book brilliant, I’d always have a soft spot for it because of the bit where Bond throws a knife at the calendar and aims for my birthday. Even though he misses.
Nor can he resist the urge to help a "bird with a wing down"--predictable old James!
This is an area where I think the book improves on the film, by giving Bond and Blofeld an openly antagonistic scene, where both have dropped their disguises.
That's a fascinating question, especially since Fleming usually made sure to fill in everyone's backstory. An ex-Nazi background is very plausible indeed. And of course in the next book Blofeld devolves a mad German and Bundt turns into his liebchen.
Good point. Bond does have post-proposal nightmare where he and Tracy turn into upper-class twits, but that doesn't seem likely. There's also Tracy's speech "I wouldn't love you if you weren't a pirate. I expect it's in the blood. I'll get used to it. Don't change. I don't want to draw your teeth like women do with their men. I want to live with you, not with somebody else. But don't mind if I howl like a dog every now and then. Or rather like a bitch. It's only love." A nice combo of male wish fulfillment and acknowledgement that Tracy needs an occasional howl.
I don't think Ann Fleming had genuine mental problems--at any rate, she was no less neurotic than her husband. But she was certainly a handful, and perhaps not as supportive as she could have been. But then again her husband was a selfish philanderer and they were both egoistic and strong-willed. Their son Caspar might be a better candidate for mental problems, suffering as he did from severe and ultimately suicidal depression. Unlike Tracy, he found no one to save him from himself.
Trivia: Vallance was based on Sir Ronald Howe, former deputy commissioner of Scotland Yard. Howe reviewed From Russia With Love for the Sunday Times and (predictably) gave it a great review, praising Fleming as "the most readable and highly polished writer of adventure stories to have appeared since the war...the particular brand of stereoscopic realism at which he excels will mesmerize the most exacting intelligence into accepting any of his invariably macabre flights of fancy." He concluded that "If a psychiatrist and a thoroughly efficient copy-writer got together to produce a fictional character who would be a sort of H.C.F. of the mid-twentieth century subconscious male ambition, the result would inevitably be James Bond."
And there are further nods to Bond's movie future: "And that beautiful girl with the long fair hair at the big table, that is Ursula Andress, the film star. What a wonderful tan she has!" I also think Bond's sudden emergence as a Scot is tied to Connery's casting, though I know this a matter of controversy. But if Fleming has already been thinking of making Bond Scottish, Connery seems to have tipped the balance.
Indeed, but the idea of snobbery as an Achilles heel works best if Blofeld really is vain enough to jeopardize his entire operation by title-hunting. And the great scene of Bond stringing Blofeld along shows how badly the old crook wants to be noble:
The genealogy theme shows how well Fleming could incorporate his research into the foundation of his fiction and turn it into a determining theme. The latter is important, because each Bond book has a strong overriding theme, so the books don't blend into each other and feel the same. Fleming reused many of the same character types and had his fair share of formulaic elements, but each of his books is truly distinct. Many genre authors write the same book but with variations, but Fleming lets his themes and locations determine the nature of each book, and these always changed with each novel. The basic themes of OHMSS are snow, marriage, and genealogy--all are unique to this Bond book and no other.
Lots of readers at the time of publication were hit equally hard. When the newspaper columnist Herb Caen met Fleming he couldn't resist a fan-boy question:
Another interviewer was more upset about Tracy's exit:
Indeed. It was the same thing with Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe - see The Poodle Springs Mystery. Fleming is referring to his discussion with Chandler for BBC Radio that was broadcast on 10 July 1958.
Quite unintentionally, my now off-schedule course through our Flemingathon had me reading OHMSS through Christmas and New Year's in a beautiful seaside town in Northern California where I was staying with family. And what a wonderful way this was to experience the book—turning the pages of Bond's snowbound adventure beside a crackling fire with a glass of bourbon or champagne or sitting on a bench overlooking the beach and the most incredible sunsets, rather like where our hero begins. The setting was perfect.
Now, while the film is a personal favorite and though I know the book is held in high regard by fans of Fleming, my past reads of OHMSS have left me to an extent let down. I went in this time hopeful for a revelation, but came out much the same as I have in the past. Parts of this one are great, truly, and there is no rivaling Bond's harrowing escape from Piz Gloria in the dead of the night. But the novel's central conceit of Bond committing himself to marriage still rings as false as ever for me and the film in my opinion does improve upon the book in all major respects.
Without further ado, some notes on OHMSS:
The opening chapter is wonderful. One of Fleming's best openings. As he does from time to time, Fleming permits Bond a momentary escape into his memories—this time all the way back to his childhood. The detail about the shells and the "wrack" on his window sill is an especially specific and poignant one, particularly with that parenthesized "No, we'll have to leave that behind, darling. It'll dirty up your trunk!" perhaps suggesting the moment when Bond left for boarding school and the effect that that had on him. As always, Fleming the narrator and Bond alike scoff at the sentimentality of it and shut the memories up again in their "long-closed file." These scenarios keep occurring for Fleming and for Bond throughout the books, as they do in life.
Interesting that Bond decides to resign over being assigned to track down SPECTRE indefinitely in the book, whereas he resigns in the film because he’s being taken off the SPECTRE case after following them for so long with no results. Completely opposite reasons. The only real difference is that M considers the pursuit of SPECTRE of paramount importance in the book and as a fruitless endeavor in the film. It's also interesting to see mention of Bond doing investigative work all over the world—a whole year’s worth—that turns up nothing. A touch of reality added to the escapism, sort of like the dull office work in Moonraker.
I do like how snarky Bond’s letter gets and that he parenthetically checks himself, mentioning he’ll probably have to redraft all this.
Hmm, an emotionally and mentally unstable (and by her own admission suicidal) girl “in the grip of stresses he could not even guess at” who asks Bond to treat her “like the lowest whore in creation” and Bond kindly obliges. I suppose there’s something that could be declared morally questionable about that. Thought Fleming might do a little extra pen-work to soften the WTF factor a little, rationalize Bond's decision or whatnot, but there at the top of the next page we cut to “An hour later...” I guess Bond’s libido cures mental illness as well as lesbianism? Wonder what else it works on...
Spoke too soon. She’s crying in the dark. Bond sensitively thinks “what the hell” and goes to sleep.
This next scene in particular, Tracy abusively shouting at Bond, is a completely different Tracy from the one Rigg gave us on film. I love Rigg in OHMSS and wouldn’t trade her for the world, but one of the French actresses also considered for the role—Brigitte Bardot or Catherine Deneuve—undoubtedly would have been closer to book Tracy. I’ve seen both play something like what book Tracy calls for on film before.
Another point of difference is that Tracy’s desire to end her life isn’t explained terribly convincingly in the film, whereas in the book she’d just been deserted by her husband and lost her baby of six months. Yes, that makes a bit more sense why she'd be at the end of her tether.
Interesting—shocking really—that Bond decides he won’t pass on the intel that their Universal Export cover had been exposed by the Union Corse—two of whose members had previously defected to SPECTRE! Geez, you’d think that would be grounds for termination if he was ever found out! Interesting also that he doesn’t have to name his lead in his report or isn’t asked by anyone at HQ for more info for them to pursue, crosscheck, etc. Maybe Bond has enough seniority at this point that he’s able to dismiss anyone from other departments who would ask?
Pagers were known as syncraphones in the 60s apparently. Learn something new every Fleming.
Bond “rather bitchily” flirts with Goodnight. Does he throw a limp wrist in her direction, snap his fingers, and call her outfit a train wreck? How exactly does one “rather bitchily” flirt with a girl?
Goodnight reads to me like a bit of a ditz, but that's probably just the combination of the 00s placing bets on who will lay her first—don't envy whoever runs MI6's HR department!—and her giggling at Bond's lame joke as he rings off their call. At least she's not a straight reproduction of Loelia. Still, I see no reason for Fleming to have replaced her. Again, I think Loelia with all her history might have made for a better Bond girl in Golden Gun.
I wonder if Griffon Or’s great rant about the possible importance of Bond’s family name is one more piss-take of Fleming’s over the dullness of the name Bond. It isn’t really quite there on the page the way some of Fleming’s other more obvious piss-takes are, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise if that had been in the back of his mind.
While Blofeld’s bid for his title comes off a bit silly in the film, in the novels you see an interesting build to Blofeld's egomania, his absorption with his self, moving from plots of world domination to ultimately cultivating his own personal garden of death. This fixation on achieving a title of renown is a well-crafted stepping stone in that progression.
Bernard Lee truly was the perfect embodiment of Fleming's M. Every line reads in his voice without effort or imagination: "'M speaking. I want the Prime Minister personally, please.' He might have been asking for the mortuary."
Tanner quipping about explosive snowballs from Q Branch? Sounds like the kind of self-referential humor you might find in a Bond film released today. Perhaps even back then in 1963 with only Dr. No released thus far (and From Russia With Love in production?), Fleming was already realizing and remarking on how the films would amplify the fantasy inherent in his books.
Death by bobsled run—wonderfully bizarre, and Fleming describes it so impeccably in Bond’s imagination you buy fully into the horror of what that kind of death would actually be like to experience. (Also, the terrifying description nicely sets the reader up for the moment when Bond hurls himself down the same run after Blofeld in the end, completely unprepared and not knowing whether his skeleton bob is in good order. Smart storytelling.)
Yet another notable film/novel difference: in the film, despite a great build up in the relationship between Bond and Tracy, once Bond meets those ten gorgeous girls, he goes wild sleeping with them, seemingly for his own pleasure. It’s for his own pleasure in the book too of course, but it’s only Ruby, and it feels a bit more obvious that he’s doing it—the, well, the “pumping”—primarily for information. There are certainly things in the film that don’t make full sense until you read the book and realize how things got slightly lost in translation from their source. For instance: bunch of hot girls, Bond sleeps with one for information, translates to: bunch of hot girls, Bond starts sleeping with them like crazy.
The moment when Campbell bursts into the office, caked in blood and snow, arrives as a complete surprise at the moment of a rather interesting development between Bond and Blofeld—just as Bond, as Sir Hilary, is ensuring his own safe passage off the mountain by accepting Blofeld’s bribe. No sooner has he secured his safety than he's put in greater danger than ever! What a cruel god (Fleming) presides over his universe! Crueler still knowing how it all ends!
And the Universal Export leak does come back to bite Bond. What the hell was he thinking? They could have immediately put a halt to all use of the U.E. cover.
I simply don’t buy Bond falling for Tracy enough to marry her. I believe he sees her a total of three times before he heads after Blofeld, then she saves his bacon and he's ready to marry her. On top of that, Tracy is regrettably not one of Fleming's better sketched Bond girls. She's certainly no Tiffany or Honeychile or Domino or Vivienne. It's a shame really that Fleming didn't bring out his big female character writing guns the one time he decided to have Bond fall in love for life. And then there's the business of the nightmare and Bond waking in a sweat and having to reassure himself that he's making the right decision and can somehow make his life with Tracy work. If that doesn't just sing of true love, I don't know what does.
“By that time the man would be in Peking or somewhere, cooking up something else.” So close, M. Oh so very close.
Bond suggests his resigning as a cover for taking leave to attack Blofeld. Fleming really had the idea of "resigning" on the mind while writing this.
Bond's pursuit of Blofeld down the bob-run is thrillingly written in true Fleming fashion, but I'm afraid it's all over too quickly. The grenade is a nice touch (and I especially loved grenades being thrown at Bond from the cable cars while he was escaping on skis—God, that was such a great sequence!), but we don't even get to see any of the battle between Draco's men and Blofeld's at Piz Gloria. Fortunately, the film would deliver the goods where all that's concerned.
Side note: the New American Library version I was reading incorrectly spells Blofeld's name as "Bloefleld!" during the climactic bobsleigh chase (though the exclamation mark, I'm positive, was Fleming's own).
I like Bond's thoughts on money: that the only money worth having is not quite enough and there's enjoyment to be found in working to save up enough to buy what you really want. That's a good philosophy on money.
Despite Tracy being, in my opinion, a not so strongly drawn character, there is undeniable tragedy in her ending and Fleming writes it perfectly. Fleming was the master of the "less is more" ending. OHMSS is no exception. The sense of tragedy is further compounded by rendering Bond unconscious immediately at the moment of her death, leaving him no chance of providing Tracy help should there have been a window of opportunity. She also, in a sense, dies without him as he isn't consciously there. And of course there's the horror of waking confused and realizing piecemeal where you are and what has become of your newly wedded bride. Bond's final lines are heartbreaking and—one more point of credit to the film—were perfectly realized (as written by Fleming) by George Lazenby. Again, leaving us hanging, emotionally, with Bond's final words and the patrolman rushing to his radio was a brilliant way to conclude the scene.
Total scrambled eggs count: 3 (done with fines herbes May-style, ordered runny by the girl arguing with Elizabeth over the death of Bertil the Yugo, and plenty of them for breakfast with Tracy in the airport restaurant)