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Controversial opinions about the books

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  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    I agree. And very Flemingesque too: Bond in the novels is made of quiet moments when great details are given to a menu or a game of cards.
  • Perilagu_KhanPerilagu_Khan
    Posts: 2,483
    Precisely. The notion that Bond is first and foremost an "action figure" is rooted in ignorance. Bond is very much a thinker--although not an especially deep one--and a man who takes great pleasure in the finer things in life. High-stakes gambling in an upscale casino is one of those finer things.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    And ordering dinner, or a drink, or playing golf... The novels are filled with slow, quiet moments and this is also Bond. I also love the quiet moments in the movies, when they manage to reproduce this: investigations, talk with the Bond girl, drinking and eating, etc.
  • jobojobo
    Posts: 7,500
    Exactly! When I read Fleming, it's allways those "subtle", quiet moments or gambling sequences that really stand out to me. I find it completely fascinating how much tension and excitement Fleming manages to project into those low stake scenarios. Simply fantastic! And I think Campbell did a good job in adapting that atmosphere to the screen. The choice of poker seemed appropriate to me. I don't think it would have been better with baccaret.

    But the thread is moving off from controversial territory now, so hopefully the following statement will cause some more stir. (It will probably sound like I'm contradicting myself now...):

    Casino Royale is too slowly paced to deserve its status as one of Fleming's very best novels.
  • WalecsWalecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    edited June 2014 Posts: 3,157
    jobo wrote:
    Casino Royale is too slowly paced to deserve its status as one of Fleming's very best novels.

    I disagree, the slow pacing is what makes me consider it one of the best novels but I respect your opinion, of course
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    Walecs wrote:
    jobo wrote:
    Casino Royale is too slowly paced to deserve its status as one of Fleming's very best novels.

    I disagree, the slow pacing is what makes me consider it one of the best novels but I respect your opinion, of course)

    This, and I also find CR a quick read, compared to many others with more action.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    Pacing is a tool, a tool that is very difficult to get a handle on. Fleming used it to various degrees of success. Sometimes sporadically, sometimes consistently, but most often - relatively brilliantly.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    RC7 wrote:
    Pacing is a tool, a tool that is very difficult to get a handle on. Fleming used it to various degrees of success. Sometimes sporadically, sometimes consistently, but most often - relatively brilliantly.

    I read somewhere that gun battles and chick are easy to describe. Try to keep your readers excited when the characters talk and drink coffee, this is challenging. And this is where Ian Fleming shows, IMO, that he is a true craftsman.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    Ludovico wrote:
    RC7 wrote:
    Pacing is a tool, a tool that is very difficult to get a handle on. Fleming used it to various degrees of success. Sometimes sporadically, sometimes consistently, but most often - relatively brilliantly.

    I read somewhere that gun battles and chick are easy to describe. Try to keep your readers excited when the characters talk and drink coffee, this is challenging. And this is where Ian Fleming shows, IMO, that he is a true craftsman.

    I think that's his genius. Where others would actively balance the outlandish with the mundane, Fleming's passages where Bond is in transit/situ are just as exiting as the action. Even when he insists Bond is bored there is a frisson of excitement as you know it won't last.
  • jobojobo
    edited May 2014 Posts: 7,500
    RC7 wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    RC7 wrote:
    Pacing is a tool, a tool that is very difficult to get a handle on. Fleming used it to various degrees of success. Sometimes sporadically, sometimes consistently, but most often - relatively brilliantly.

    I read somewhere that gun battles and chick are easy to describe. Try to keep your readers excited when the characters talk and drink coffee, this is challenging. And this is where Ian Fleming shows, IMO, that he is a true craftsman.

    I think that's his genius. Where others would actively balance the outlandish with the mundane, Fleming's passages where Bond is in transit/situ are just as exiting as the action. Even when he insists Bond is bored there is a frisson of excitement as you know it won't last.

    I agree with your points, all of them in fact. And I was exaggerating the statement a bit to make it more controversial. Normally I appreciate "slow" passages in Fleming, but there are som sequences in Casino that drags for me, and that's why I don't think it's on a level with his best novels: FRWL, Moonraker and Majesty.

    I still like it a great deal, of course. It's a very good introduction to James Bond as a character.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    Maybe not a controversial opinion, but an hypothesis: Fleming may have thought of CR as a one off, not the beginning of a series? Do we know if he intend to write more than one Bond story when he wrote it?
  • StirredNotShakenStirredNotShaken Toronto
    Posts: 2,400
    The ending trilogy (OHMSS, YOLT, TMWTGG) is the best run of books in the series.
  • Perilagu_KhanPerilagu_Khan
    Posts: 2,483
    StirredNotShaken wrote:
    The ending trilogy (OHMSS, YOLT, TMWTGG) is the best run of books in the series.

    Yes, that's controversial, but mainly because few rate Gun highly.

  • SaintMarkSaintMark
    Posts: 7,653
    StirredNotShaken wrote:
    The ending trilogy (OHMSS, YOLT, TMWTGG) is the best run of books in the series.

    especially when they are a quartet with TB-OHMSS-YOLT-TMWTGG. The whole SPECTRE trilogy and 007's return from the pits of hell.

  • WalecsWalecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    Posts: 3,157
    Funny thing, SPECTRE never gets mentioned in YOLT.
  • Perilagu_KhanPerilagu_Khan
    Posts: 2,483
    Come to think of it, you're right. And it is rather odd.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    It was disbanded at the end of TB, wasn't it? In any case, Blofeld in YOLT was a free, and mad, agent.

    Here is another potential controversial opinion: YOLT is only very marginally a spy novel.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited June 2014 Posts: 17,803
    Ludovico wrote:
    It was disbanded at the end of TB, wasn't it? In any case, Blofeld in YOLT was a free, and mad, agent.

    Here is another potential controversial opinion: YOLT is only very marginally a spy novel.

    Yes, but the whole SPECTRE machine was brought back by Blofeld in OHMSS. In YOLT it is clear that SPECTRE is now defunct and Blofeld is acting as a mad king very much on his own.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,803
    Never Send Flowers is one of the most interesting Bond continuation novels so far. How's that for starters?!
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    It was disbanded at the end of TB, wasn't it? In any case, Blofeld in YOLT was a free, and mad, agent.

    Here is another potential controversial opinion: YOLT is only very marginally a spy novel.

    Yes, but the whole SPECTRE machine was brought back by Blofeld in OHMSS. In YOLT it is clear that SPECTRE is now defunct and Blofeld is acting as a mad king very much on his own.

    A bit like King Lear. By the way, who played Lear recently in a production of Sam Mendes? Could he also play... Blofeld?

    Okay, I am starting rumors now.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,803
    Ludovico wrote:
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    It was disbanded at the end of TB, wasn't it? In any case, Blofeld in YOLT was a free, and mad, agent.

    Here is another potential controversial opinion: YOLT is only very marginally a spy novel.

    Yes, but the whole SPECTRE machine was brought back by Blofeld in OHMSS. In YOLT it is clear that SPECTRE is now defunct and Blofeld is acting as a mad king very much on his own.

    A bit like King Lear. By the way, who played Lear recently in a production of Sam Mendes? Could he also play... Blofeld?

    Okay, I am starting rumors now.

    I've actually got a blog paper pencilled in on the Madness of King Ernst I in YOLT. Should be good fun when it's completed. Here's hoping.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    That's partially why I said YOLT is not spy fiction, or only very peripherically. It is a nightmarish tale about loss of identity and belonging. Maybe Fleming's best novel.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited June 2014 Posts: 17,803
    Ludovico wrote:
    That's partially why I said YOLT is not spy fiction, or only very peripherically. It is a nightmarish tale about loss of identity and belonging. Maybe Fleming's best novel.

    Agreed. It's one of his most brilliantly bizarre and offbeat pieces. No world domination plot here (cf. the film version). I hope to explore that further in the paper as it's an idea I've had for a good while now and I want to explore it more in-depth. I see the Blofeld of YOLT as a veritable mad hatter, a lunatic like the ranting Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker and equally as much out of touch with reality. We are told of "that lunatic Hitlerian scream" from Blofeld in the Garden of Death at one point in the novel for instance.

    And just by the by, the same case could be made for 'QoS' and TSWLM not being spy fiction either of course. Fleming was a much more original and diverse writer than he was ever given credit for. YOLT is on the surface as uncommercial sounding a Bond thriller as anyone could have conceived (especially as a follow-up to OHMSS). Imagine the uproar if for example John Gardner had written such an offbeat Bond novel (or even a 'QoS' or a TSWLM for that matter). It is only because it has Fleming's name on it that we fans accept it as Bond canon. That said, I do love it and agree that it is one of Fleming's best novels.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    QOS and TSWLM are definitely not spy thrillers. The latter is crime fiction mixed with a coming of age story, the former a domestic tragedy and Fleming's version of Madame Bovary.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,803
    Ludovico wrote:
    QOS and TSWLM are definitely not spy thrillers. The latter is crime fiction mixed with a coming of age story, the former a domestic tragedy and Fleming's version of Madame Bovary.

    Yes, that was what I was getting at. Interesting you mention Madame Bovary. Never heard of that link with 'QoS' before but that's why I love this community!
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    What can I say I know my classics;-)
  • WalecsWalecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    Posts: 3,157
    Ludovico wrote:
    That's partially why I said YOLT is not spy fiction, or only very peripherically. It is a nightmarish tale about loss of identity and belonging. Maybe Fleming's best novel.
    I agree with you as well. I love how Fleming deals with the themes of life and death. Bond got at a point in his life when he doesn't care anymore. He lost Tracy, and he simply doesn't care about his life and his job. Life is hard and painful, but does this mean we should stop living it? In Japan, James Bond finds out that suicide is very common; before Bond goes to the Garden of Death, Tanaka offers him a suicide pill to avoid any pain. But Bond refuses: we only live twice, once when we first meet death in face. Pain is part of the life, and we should live it, not escape it. By suicide, we only end our life, and we'll never have any chance to make things better.
  • Perilagu_KhanPerilagu_Khan
    edited June 2014 Posts: 2,483
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    It was disbanded at the end of TB, wasn't it? In any case, Blofeld in YOLT was a free, and mad, agent.

    Here is another potential controversial opinion: YOLT is only very marginally a spy novel.

    Yes, but the whole SPECTRE machine was brought back by Blofeld in OHMSS. In YOLT it is clear that SPECTRE is now defunct and Blofeld is acting as a mad king very much on his own.

    Yes, Blofeld is a "mad king," but how can it be clear that SPECTRE is defunct when Fleming--and Blofeld--never even mention it? It's an odd omission, given the organization's centrality to the Blofeld character. I suppose it's remotely possible that Fleming was keeping SPECTRE merely in abeyance until some future point when he might wish to revive it under different auspices.

  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 14,824
    I always understood it like this: Blofeld created in the past other criminal networks which he disbanded as necessity. He IS SPECTRE. At the end of TB the organization is destroyed as its leaders are captured or killed. Sure, in TSWLM it is supposed to be active, but Fleming did not consider it canon. In OHMSS it is fairly safe to assume that Blofeld is working to recreate SPECTRE in a new form, in parallel with his other nefarious activities. In YOLT, I don't think it matters at all, his motivations being completely nihilistic.
  • Perilagu_KhanPerilagu_Khan
    Posts: 2,483
    Ludovico wrote:
    I always understood it like this: Blofeld created in the past other criminal networks which he disbanded as necessity. He IS SPECTRE. At the end of TB the organization is destroyed as its leaders are captured or killed. Sure, in TSWLM it is supposed to be active, but Fleming did not consider it canon. In OHMSS it is fairly safe to assume that Blofeld is working to recreate SPECTRE in a new form, in parallel with his other nefarious activities. In YOLT, I don't think it matters at all, his motivations being completely nihilistic.

    Or already has recreated. Bond suggests that the old SPECTRE "triangular cell" system is back in play with the various "staff" who administrate the Piz Gloria "clinic."

    In YOLT, while it is true that SPECTRE is essentially irrelevant, you'd think Fleming, Bond or Blofeld himself would mention SPECTRE if for no other reason than to provide a bit of historical grounding for Blofeld. A reader new to Bond who picked up YOLT as his first read would conclude that novel clueless about Blofeld's rich past in organized crime at the most grand level.

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