The increased level of violence as a key factor in Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun (1968)?

Dragonpol

What are your thoughts on the uncharacteristically violent nature of Colonel Sun by Robert Markham, as a James Bond novel?

Did Kingsley Amis (or Robert Markham) go too far in the CR and LALD direction, do you think?

This level of violence - rape/skewering/stabbing/burning/head torture etc. - was it a step too far for a James Bond novel or do you think it fitted in with the works of Ian Fleming?

There are characters brutally stabbed to death, skewered with wooden skewers, almost burnt alive, raped, and Colonel Sun is stabbed by Bond twice in the back and then partially blown up by his own mortar bomb and finally given the coup de grace by a knife slid into his heart by Bond, after he has apologised for the head torture that he had just inflicted upon him and that he was a mad fool to quote Justine by the Marquis de Sade (whose name the word "sadism" is taken from) etc.. I think the violence in this Bond novel is certainly more graphic than those by Ian Fleming. It's also quite a different death scene for a villain here, with Sun calling Bond "James", rather like Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. This is indeed appropriate as Colonel Sun sits very much with the more brutal and violent James Bond early novels like Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Diamonds Are Forever and Dr. No.

Perdogg

I had no trouble with the violence. What really surprised me was explicit nature of the sex.

Dragonpol

Perdogg wrote:

I had no trouble with the violence. What really surprised me was explicit nature of the sex.

Thanks, perdogg. Great to see you here too! Just like old times. I think you're also right on the sex. It's also a lot more of a political novel, too, I think. Amis seems to take elements of Fleming and make them a bit more brutal and extreme.

Perdogg

You also have to remember the era in which Amis wrote the novel. There a social revolution involving sex and drugs in the US and the end of class system in UK. Also, the crime rate in the US started to take off.

Dragonpol

Perdogg wrote:

You also have to remember the era in which Amis wrote the novel. There a social revolution involving sex and drugs in the US and the end of class system in UK. Also, the crime rate in the US started to take off.

Yes, I will have to include an element of social commentary in my article, I fear, to cover this area. It's all grist to the mill.

jetsetwilly

I'm due another read of Colonel Sun. I remembered reading it years ago and thought it was very good, and very much like Fleming. I also remember the torture scene at the end being pretty horrific, on a par with CR.

I'm off to Cyprus soon for a holiday.....perfect chance to re-read it again then. B-)

Dragonpol

jetsetwilly wrote:

I'm due another read of Colonel Sun. I remembered reading it years ago and thought it was very good, and very much like Fleming. I also remember the torture scene at the end being pretty horrific, on a par with CR.

I'm off to Cyprus soon for a holiday.....perfect chance to re-read it again then. B-)

Let us all know what you think of't when you get it read, jetsetwilly.

jetsetwilly

Dragonpol wrote:

jetsetwilly wrote:

I'm due another read of Colonel Sun. I remembered reading it years ago and thought it was very good, and very much like Fleming. I also remember the torture scene at the end being pretty horrific, on a par with CR.

I'm off to Cyprus soon for a holiday.....perfect chance to re-read it again then. B-)

Let us all know what you think of't when you get it read, jetsetwilly.

Will do. I'm now quite looking forward to reading it again.

Is the scene in LTK when Bond escapes from M, a nod to the scene in Colonel Sun at the beginning, when Bond escapes over the balcony from M's house?

Dragonpol

jetsetwilly wrote:

Dragonpol wrote:

jetsetwilly wrote:

I'm due another read of Colonel Sun. I remembered reading it years ago and thought it was very good, and very much like Fleming. I also remember the torture scene at the end being pretty horrific, on a par with CR.

I'm off to Cyprus soon for a holiday.....perfect chance to re-read it again then. B-)

Let us all know what you think of't when you get it read, jetsetwilly.

Will do. I'm now quite looking forward to reading it again.

Is the scene in LTK when Bond escapes from M, a nod to the scene in Colonel Sun at the beginning, when Bond escapes over the balcony from M's house?

Could be, though I've never looked at it that way before.

Dragonpol

Any other MI6 agents want to give their views on this one?

I find the study of Colonel Sun most fascinating!

chrisisall

I found the torture scene most squirm-worthy. But then, I live in my head...

Dragonpol

Yes, Amis consulted a doctor for that scene and he told Amis that what people fear most in a torture is that what they cannot see - the head, the mind, the brain. I think this is why the torture scene is so violent and memorable - it almost rivals the one in Casino Royale.

Villiers53

Amis was reflecting the era. Fleming started the series in '53. Colonel Son was published in '68.
In the interviening 15 years the spy thriller genre had move on. Perhaps more than Fleming reflected in his own own work. Particularly post OHMSS.
For example, the Blaise series had become extremely successful with quite graffic sex and violence. Quiller had entered the scene and Le Carre and Deighton had brought a more realistic take on things. In this scenario, I think Amis was merely regrounding Bond after the relative lacklustre YOLT and TMWTGG and reflecting contemporary tastes.
I'm a huge fan of this novel and in the Bond lexicon ,I rank it No.3 after FRWL and OHMSS!

Dragonpol

Villiers53 wrote:

Amis was reflecting the era. Fleming started the series in '53. Colonel Son was published in '68.
In the interviening 15 years the spy thriller genre had move on. Perhaps more than Fleming reflected in his own own work. Particularly post OHMSS.
For example, the Blaise series had become extremely successful with quite graffic sex and violence. Quiller had entered the scene and Le Carre and Deighton had brought a more realistic take on things. In this scenario, I think Amis was merely regrounding Bond after the relative lacklustre YOLT and TMWTGG and reflecting contemporary tastes.
I'm a huge fan of this novel and in the Bond lexicon ,I rank it No.3 after FRWL and OHMSS!

Thanks so much for your reply, Villiers53! Much food for thought there in your considered reply there. More grist to the blog article-writing mill, then. I particularly like your comment about the changes in the era of the thriller, although I think that John Gardner's debut Bond continuation novel Licence Renewed was not as violent as Colonel Sun was. Though I do suppoase that that all of this is rather subjective in nature, depending on one's own personal mores for violence in popular culture, although the era of the late 1960s certainly changed the ideas about violence, just as World War II and the Holocaust inevitably changed the early post-war thriller that Ian Fleming's Bond novels slotted into.

timmer

There is no mistaking Amis' book for a Fleming. In fact if one had just finished reading the Fleming novels and then picked up Colonel Sun, not knowing that it was written by a different author, the astute reader would spot the difference almost immediately.
But that said, I think what Amis did well, was embrace the Fleming style. He caught the character of Bond well enough, but what he also did was boldly pepper the narrative with his own contemporary socio-political observations, much as Fleming was want to do. Now of course, we are getting Amis's views on the world, as opposed to Fleming's, but it's still consistent with the Fleming style, ie Ariadne was a communist, so we get all her musings, as well as counter musings from others, with Bond and we, the dear-reader, essentially taking it all in, as colour added to the broader mission story, much the way Fleming liked to serve things up.
Amis amped up the sex, at least the frequency. Bond and Ariadne are like a couple of cats in heat. Maybe this was indeed Amis simply reacting to the more graphic thriller-novel tone of the time.
The torture scene though, I thought was Amis trying to make a CR-like impact, right out of the box - to get all his Fleming-Bond bonafides on the table early. I found it very disturbing, but at least it set up a satisfying payoff, with Sun's well deserved gruesome death. Sun is to some extent, Amis' attempt at Dr. No, another equally despicable villain, whose grisly death at the hand of Bond, was also eagerly anticipated by the reader.
Regarding extended torture sequences, we saw this again in another continution-author's debut. Christopher Wood felt compelled it seems, to put his CR-bonafides on the table right away by adding a graphic torture scene early on, in his novelization of his own TSWLM screenplay. In Wood's book, Anya's goons go to work on Bond's nether regions, until interrupted by Anya.
Wood, like Amis, also amped up the violence with a much grislier scenario surrounding the opening log-cabin setting, compared with what we saw in the film.
Because Fleming had such a deft, almost macabre touch with both sex and violence, I get the impression both Amis and Wood, made their own attempts to at least capture the Fleming spirit in their printed works.

chrisisall

Nice comments, Timmer! Much agreement.

Villiers53

timmer wrote:

But that said, I think what Amis did well, was embrace the Fleming style. He caught the character of Bond well enough, but what he also did was boldly pepper the narrative with his own contemporary socio-political observations, much as Fleming was want to do. Now of course, we are getting Amis's views on the world, as opposed to Fleming's, but it's still consistent with the Fleming style, ie Ariadne was a communist, so we get all her musings, as well as counter musings from others, with Bond and we, the dear-reader, essentially taking it all in, as colour added to the broader mission story, much the way Fleming liked to serve things up.
Amis amped up the sex, at least the frequency. Bond and Ariadne are like a couple of cats in heat. Maybe this was indeed Amis simply reacting to the more graphic thriller-novel tone of the time..

Timmer makes some excellent points and I think his observations about Amis incorporating his own view and politic is particularly astute.
As one who bought and read the post '63 Bond canon in real time (my Colonel Son is a JC 1st edition) I would add that at that point in history Bond aficionados had a strong feeling that after OHMSS, Fleming had lost his way.
OHMSS was universally viewed as one of, if not the best Bond novel . YOLT was much anticipated but recieved a somewhat lacklustre reception. Whilst TMWTGG, published after Fleming's death, was viewed as cobbled together and distinctly third rate.
Given this context,I think Amis viewed his job as resuscitating Bond by writing a flat out thriller in the style of MOONRAKER , FRWL & OHMSS whilst feeding the appetite of a thriller readership that had become more demanding as a result of the extreme success of the newer spy franchisers.
Avid spy afficianados around at the time will recal that the success of the likes of Blaise, Craig, Quiller,Palmer,Smiley,Callan had surpassed Bond albeit the evolution of 007's film career has ensured that he is the one that has survived and prospered.
Against this backdrop, I think Amis succeeded extremely well. He produced a well plotted, high velocity thriller that OK, amped up the sex and violence but was also highly literate. If only the dynamic duo of Faulks/Deaver could have scaled these heights!

Dragonpol

timmer wrote:

There is no mistaking Amis' book for a Fleming. In fact if one had just finished reading the Fleming novels and then picked up Colonel Sun, not knowing that it was written by a different author, the astute reader would spot the difference almost immediately.
But that said, I think what Amis did well, was embrace the Fleming style. He caught the character of Bond well enough, but what he also did was boldly pepper the narrative with his own contemporary socio-political observations, much as Fleming was want to do. Now of course, we are getting Amis's views on the world, as opposed to Fleming's, but it's still consistent with the Fleming style, ie Ariadne was a communist, so we get all her musings, as well as counter musings from others, with Bond and we, the dear-reader, essentially taking it all in, as colour added to the broader mission story, much the way Fleming liked to serve things up.
Amis amped up the sex, at least the frequency. Bond and Ariadne are like a couple of cats in heat. Maybe this was indeed Amis simply reacting to the more graphic thriller-novel tone of the time.
The torture scene though, I thought was Amis trying to make a CR-like impact, right out of the box - to get all his Fleming-Bond bonafides on the table early. I found it very disturbing, but at least it set up a satisfying payoff, with Sun's well deserved gruesome death. Sun is to some extent, Amis' attempt at Dr. No, another equally despicable villain, whose grisly death at the hand of Bond, was also eagerly anticipated by the reader.
Regarding extended torture sequences, we saw this again in another continution-author's debut. Christopher Wood felt compelled it seems, to put his CR-bonafides on the table right away by adding a graphic torture scene early on, in his novelization of his own TSWLM screenplay. In Wood's book, Anya's goons go to work on Bond's nether regions, until interrupted by Anya.
Wood, like Amis, also amped up the violence with a much grislier scenario surrounding the opening log-cabin setting, compared with what we saw in the film.
Because Fleming had such a deft, almost macabre touch with both sex and violence, I get the impression both Amis and Wood, made their own attempts to at least capture the Fleming spirit in their printed works.

I think that you make some very astute and most excellent points, timmer. Thank you for your considered reply. I do think that on the subject of torture in debut Bond novels, one should also include the high frequency white noise torture that Mary Jane Mashkin and Dr Anton Murik put James Bond through in John Gardner's debut Bond novel Licence Renewed (1981). Some commentators however noted that they felt that Gardner's heart wasn't in it and it was a rather sanitised torture. Gardner followed this debut torture up with the ice water torture in Icebreaker (1983) and the o-kee-pa initiation ceremony and ritual torture at the end of one of his more bizarre novels, Brokenclaw (1990). It again involved potential torture of the genitals, akin to Fleming's Casino Royale and Wood's The Spy Who Loved Me. I think that the film update of the carpet beater torture in Casino Royale (2006) using a knotted rope was rather excessive and less believable than the carpet beater used in the novel. The way Craig Bond made light of the torture didn't help either, in my view. I recently bought a collection of about 10 different carpet beaters and I actually find it hard to believe that they would ever inflict much damage on anybody, even in sensitive areas. Perhaps Le Chiffre was using a particularly hardened carpet beater?

chrisisall

Villiers53 wrote:

As one who bought and read the post '63 Bond canon in real time (my Colonel Son is a JC 1st edition) I would add that at that point in history Bond aficionados had a strong feeling that after OHMSS, Fleming had lost his way.

Interesting. My first reading was WAAAAY after real time, and I remember thinking that the last two novels seemed to be getting more like the movies regarding the fantastical elements & unlikely espionage. And I remember Colonel Sun slamming it back down to the tone of the earlier novels, so yeah, I think Amis' mission was accomplished.

Dragonpol

chrisisall wrote:

Villiers53 wrote:

As one who bought and read the post '63 Bond canon in real time (my Colonel Son is a JC 1st edition) I would add that at that point in history Bond aficionados had a strong feeling that after OHMSS, Fleming had lost his way.

Interesting. My first reading was WAAAAY after real time, and I remember thinking that the last two novels seemed to be getting more like the movies regarding the fantastical elements & unlikely espionage. And I remember Colonel Sun slamming it back down to the tone of the earlier novels, so yeah, I think Amis' mission was accomplished.

Yes, it is indeed most interesting and welcome to hear from literary Bond fans who read the novels in real time. More please.

Dragonpol

I find the death scene of the eponymous Colonel Sun himself to be a rather drawn-out affair and I make reference to this in my article, which is still in the works (had the idea as far back as 2008 in my notebook). I think that this follows along the dark path of the similar drawn out death scene of a certain Francisco Scaramanga (compared also to the film "clean kill" death scene of Scaramanga) in Fleming's last Bond novel The Man with the Golden Gun (1965), which as we all know came just directly before Amis' Colonel Sun, so perhaps Fleming himself started this progression towards more violent ends for the Big Bad towards the end of his reign as Bond's creator.

There's almost a breaking down of Colonel Sun's character at the end, where he apologises to Bond for the torture just before Bond slides the knife through his heart and he becomes doll-like in death. I think that this is one of the best and most interesting villain deaths in the Bond series; it recalls Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye the film too.

Dragonpol

Any other interest on this one?

I suppose society had become much more violent both culturally in various media and in actual real-life by the time that Amis' Colonel Sun was released in Britain in March 1968, some two years after the publication of Fleming's last posthumous collection of Bond short stories.

The old censorship rules in both literature and film were very much out by this stage. The future seemed bleak, a Burgessesque "ultaviolent" dystopia to be in constant fear of. And all of this even before the cult killings (Charles Manson's cult Helter Skelter etc.) of the late 1960s and the senseless high school massacre of the late 1990s and beyond became a byword for all forms of American extremism fuelled by a diet of violent films and video games and films, or so the sociologists tell us. No much wonder the violent content in popular culture had to increase as a direct result of the real-life world they claimed to be reflecting on the big screen or in print.

TheWizardOfIce

I think there is a tangible increase in the levels of violence in Colonel Sun but not so much that it takes it out of the Fleming ballpark.

The CR torture 15 years earlier not to mention things like Bond slowly having his finger broken in LALD and the obstacle course of death in DN are no more or less gruesome for me than anything in CS.

I love the scene with the boat captain where Amis describes how if you hit someone on a certain bone they crumple in agony and the torture scene is up there with Fleming.

It might also be interesting to follow this thread into the Gardner books which I think were pretty good for violence too. Does Gardner up the ante from Amis in this respect? Certainly the Icebreaker torture is on a par with the CR bollock bashing and CS brain probing. And Gardners description of Bond shooting people with the Glaser slugs and the climaxes of NLF and NDMB have some graphic stuff.

The torture scene in Brokenclaw is probably his most gruesome but I feel it went too far. Not in terms of graphic violence but in terms of Bond being damaged.

The best Bond tortures should be as painful and twisted as possible but by the start of the next adventure the damage should have pretty much completely healed and Bond should be back to normal. The Brokenclaw torture went too far I feel with Bond undergoing severe trauma and scarring which would quite probably impact on his future ability to do his job.

In summary I dont really think Amis went much further than Fleming and while there was probably a conscious effort to replicate some of Ians inventive brutality I dont consider that he overstepped the mark and I find the violence in CS sitting happily within the best traditions of entertaining Bondian brutality.

Dragonpol

Well, this is the crux of my forthcoming article, that the violence was more graphic. I remember a character being stabbed repeatedly and most violently on a boat. I was younger then, but I remember it being almost unbearable for me to read! I am still quite squeamish! I look forward to your comments on this article as I've been slaving away at it on and off for quite some time! I do hope that you enjoy it and that you don't bash it as much as the Drax's Gambit one on the blog at the end of January. I do need to be more prolific in my writing, though!

TheWizardOfIce

Dragonpol wrote:

I do hope that you enjoy it and that you don't bash it as much as the Drax's Gambit one on the blog at the end of January.

Well of course I cant promise that old chap. If you're wrong I'll have to tell you. I'll probably have to reread CS though to be able to comment with any authority.

Dragonpol

TheWizardOfIce wrote:

Dragonpol wrote:

I do hope that you enjoy it and that you don't bash it as much as the Drax's Gambit one on the blog at the end of January.

Well of course I cant promise that old chap. If you're wrong I'll have to tell you. I'll probably have to reread CS though to be able to comment with any authority.

That would be most welcome. I hope you see some merit in it as it's an idea I've had a very long time, so I welcome the release to let it go, in a way!

Dragonpol

Any further interest on this one?

timmer

I have some general reservations on the torturing of Bond in the continution novels. Again, I think its all overstated. And I am talking about Bond rendered helpless and tortured as opposed to Bond overcoming extreme adversity. Realistically, anyone who finds themselves in such a situation is already dead, barring a miraculous rescue. Torture is simply a prelude to execution. You may as well take your cyanide pill if you can access it from your back molar, but do wait until strapped in, and it is indeed game over.
Fleming only subjected Bond to such ignominy the once, in CR, and he fully explained that Bond was indeed as good as dead. Only a fortuitous rescue saved his butt. The torture rescue served to harden Bond and helped set him up for future adversities.
Fleming never put Bond in such a hopeless situation again. In any other future predicament, Bond had a fighting chance. But escaping a helpless torture scenario is not realistic, especially not twice in one's life.
Yet we have all these continuation writers having to toss their CR torture bonafides on the table too. I don't buy it. Would have been best to leave it alone as Fleming did, after Bond's one very fortunate rescue.

Dragonpol

timmer wrote:

I have some general reservations on the torturing of Bond in the continution novels. Again, I think its all overstated. And I am talking about Bond rendered helpless and tortured as opposed to Bond overcoming extreme adversity. Realistically, anyone who finds themselves in such a situation is already dead, barring a miraculous rescue. Torture is simply a prelude to execution. You may as well take your cyanide pill if you can access it from your back molar, but do wait until strapped in, and it is indeed game over.
Fleming only subjected Bond to such ignominy the once, in CR, and he fully explained that Bond was indeed as good as dead. Only a fortuitous rescue saved his butt. The torture rescue served to harden Bond and helped set him up for future adversities.
Fleming never put Bond in such a hopeless situation again. In any other future predicament, Bond had a fighting chance. But escaping a helpless torture scenario is not realistic, especially not twice in one's life.
Yet we have all these continuation writers having to toss their CR torture bonafides on the table too. I don't buy it. Would have been best to leave it alone as Fleming did, after Bond's one very fortunate rescue.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, timmer. Yes, I do think that the Bond continuation authors were indeed showing their "CR torture bona fides" in CS, LR, IB, BC and ZMT (the rattan cane torture).

Dragonpol

I'd really love to hear more of your views on this topic as I'm still working on the upcoming article and I highly value the input of Bond fans as a very important part of the writing process.

Dragonpol

I'd like to bump this thread as I'd love to hear some more examples of films/books/TV/radio shows where in your considered views there was an increase in violence displayed post-1965 or so, so as to be relevant for Amis' Colonel Sun. As much ink has already been spilt on this Bond continuation novel over the years, I think I have invented an original critical approach in this new article of mine, plus I like the title, even if I do say so myself. I've had the idea for this article since 2008 so I'd really like to get it out there amongst Bond fans and the general reading public online more generally. Hope to hear more views on this one, as always.