"THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH" -- IAN FLEMING

"It is possible to treat Bond's adventures as partly a joke, grin at his car and his concealed weapons, boo at his enemies, whistle when the girl appears, groan heavily when he gets captured, cheer when he works his thousand-to-one chance of escape? That sort of thing happens when the three so far extant Bond films are shown. It's a send-up, see? - partly, anyway. Sean Connery gives a gambling-joint doorman five pounds and they laugh, we laugh; we don't laugh when Bond slips the chef de partie a hundre- mille plaque after a win in Casino Royale. Nor does the author. Mr. Fleming probably laughed about what he wrote, but he doesn't laugh in his writing. I approve. I enjoy the films and the laughs in the films, but I like the books better."
- Kingsley Amis, "The James Bond Dossier," 1965

"Lovely, wonderful man. He was James Bond."
- Albert Broccoli, "The Incredible World of 007," 1992

"He had great energy and curiosity and he was a marvelous man to talk to and have a drink with because of the many wide interests he had..."
- Sean Connery, "Playboy" Interview, November, 1965

"Fleming was an incredible snob."
- Roger Moore to Dick Cavett, 1980

"I knew Ian, funnily enough, but I never particularly liked him. We became, eventually, enormously good friends, but I thought he was a pompous son of a bitch, immensely arrogant, and when we met just after I'd been signed to do the picture at some big press show put on by United Artists, he said, 'So they've decided on you to fuck up my work.'"
- Director Terrence Young

Most thrillers are written by tired hacks, who sit in front of a typewriter 14 hours a day, 365 days a year. Most are overweight, overtired, and have no life experience beyond their word processors. They work out their stories as if they were doing their homework in the fourth grade. Their love is in the craftsmanship, their plots are more like math problems than high adventure.

James Bond's creator was never like that. Like Bond, he abhorred 'the soft life." Ian Fleming really was a spy. He lived a fast, adventurous, and (at least until he was married) wild life. And even after he married, much of his year was spent on treasure hunts or exploring for his news service. Listen to an interview with him here

Fleming reserved just two months per year for Bond. Away from England, between spear-fishing, parties, shark-feeding, and golf, he crafted each thriller in a primitive house overlooking the seas of Jamaica.

The rest of the year, Fleming worked as an adventure journalist, and his crisp but detailed descriptive style added greatly to the 007 book series. At first the books fed off his own war experiences, but later he seemed to use Bond to live out his fantasies -- of still being a handsome bachelor spy. Finally, as heart disease overtook him, he used 007 to confront his fear of death. (He is buried in Swindon at St. James's church, just yards from his former home, pictured at right.)

In many ways, Fleming is just as fascinating as his creation.

THE BOOKS

"The Russians believed Fleming's description of a spy agency to such an extent that the arrival of a Bond alternative, in the form of John le Carre's spies, created a fierce controversy among their intelligence analysts."
- Peter St. John, professor of political Science at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg

"There is a surprising degree of reality in the novels. Fleming was high enough up in intelligence systems during the war to know how they worked and his writing reflected a keen sense of prevailing Western political sentiments."
- Peter St. John, professor of political Science at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg

"He had achieved the rare combination of exciting plot with dull heroes and overwhelming boredom."
- Kim Philby (the Third Man), British double agent who secretly worked for the KGB (what do you expect from a Commie traitor, anyway?)

Intellectuals will hate to hear this, but Ian Fleming is possibly the most influential writer of the 20th century. Hemingway and Fitzgerald changed the themes and narratives of modern writing, but Fleming went beyond influencing just other novelists: his writing changed film, television, and our entire culture - not always for the better, necessarily, but profoundly. Because he worked in a particular genre, his effect was more subversive: not through the critics and scholars that define what is to be read in "important" literature, but through the popular culture. There is not a TV show or movie that isn't somehow influenced by Fleming or by what he created.

It should be noted that the Bond books were actually MORE successful than the films up until Fleming's death. The twelve Bond books published during Fleming's life were translated into 11 languages and grossed 60 million dollars - an astronomical sum in 1964 (and not too shabby today).

STYLE

"His central device, the wildly improbable story set against a meticulously detailed and somehow believable background, is vastly entertaining; and his redoubtable, implacable, indestructible protagonist, though some think him a srangely flat character, may well be not so much the child of this century as of the next."
- New York Times

Fleming wrote entertainingly, and in a sense he is the main character of the books. James Bond is basically a soulless, unhappy civil servant, constantly bored with his job. But the writing makes the story fun -- if 007 lacks personality, the writing definitely does not. This is why Bond needs to be funny in the films -- the writing for a film has to be invisible, so now Bond has to entertain us through all the plot twists, brutality, and gore.

"My plots are fantastic, while being often based upon truth. They go wildly beyond the probable but not, I think, beyond the possible. Even so, they would stick in the gullet of the reader and make him throw the book angrily aside - for a reader particularly hates feeling he is being hoaxed - but for two technical devices: first, the aforesaid speed of the narrative, which hustles the reader quickly beyond each danger point of mockery and, secondly, the constant use of familiar household names and objects which reassure him that he and the writer have still got their feet on the ground. A Ronson lighter, a 4.5-litre Bentley with an Amherst-Villiers super-charger (please note the solid exactitude), the Ritz Hotel in London, the 21 Club in New York, the exact names of flora and fauna, even Bond's Sea Island cotton shirts with short sleeves. All these details are points de rep?re to comfort and reassure the reader on his journey into fantastic adventure."
--Ian Fleming, "How To Write a Thriller"

In the books, Fleming goes into great detail to describe every meal, gun, girl, facial characteristic and even shampoos to make us believe what we are reading is real. This is important, because if we don't believe that stuff, we'll never believe in pet giant squids, undiscovered rocket bases, stolen atomic bombs, or germ-warfare dispensing allergy clinics in the Alps. "Of course it's all real," we say, "because if it isn't why is Bond carrying a battered oxidised black Ronson lighter with his gunmetal cigarette case containing specially made Macedonian blend cigarettes with three gold rings around the butt from Morlands of Grovenor Street?"

Fleming's easy use of detail and brand-names to define his characters helped blaze a new style in popular literature where the real world and the fictional world collided. That style helped create the product placement we see in every film and TV show we see today (although it's used more for financial than aesthetic reasons now ).

In fact the product placement that so many critics complain about in the Bond films is actually one of the stronger links they have to the books.

Fleming meets the real James Bond.

MAIN CHARACTER

"The real everyday world of spies, of killing people, of treachery is nasty. Fleming didn't really like it and I think he made Bond not really like it either. It is surprising the number of books in which Bond is totally unenthusiastic about the world in which he lives."
- Timothy Dalton: "The Making of Licence To Kill"

Unlike the film character, the Bond of the books is actually an "everyman," Slight of build and quite fallible in his decisions, he's no smarter or funnier than the reader - it's his adventures that are stylish. The reader is thus allowed to experience the adventure through Bond, not just admiring the wit and toughness of the main character as in a Chandler book. We become Bond as we read.

"I wanted to show a hero without any characteristics, who was simply the blunt instrument in the hands of the government," said Fleming. "I quite deliberately made him anonymous. This was to enable the reader to identify with him. People have only to put their own clothes on Bond and build him into whatever sort of person they admire. If you read my books you'll find that I don't actually describe him at all." See how he came up with his character's name here.

Bond enjoys high-stakes gambling, the best wines and champagnes, automobiles, and cigarettes, but is apart from these trappings of class. He's just a civil sevant with great job benefits. Outside of a maid, he lives his everyday life just like most of us -- only he's better at it.

TEXTURE

"Ian Fleming introduced the element of the adventure story into the spy story. He took all those big 1930's Bentleys on the highways and put them into his work. Nobody had done anything like that before."
- Len Deighton, author of "The Ipcress File" and the Bond screenplay "Warhead."

With the outlandish plots Fleming dreamed up for Bond, he had to make it seem as believable as possible to keep the reader involved (something that the movie makers should remember). Every gun, food, wine, building, and death throe was studiously researched to heighten the realism.

Fleming loved to research, and he was always storing information away for his Bond novels. O.F. Snelling recalled hearing Fleming on a radio show with Raymond Chandler. Fleming proudly announced that he had learned that the first thing a man does after awakening from being knocked unconcious is to vomit. Sure enough, in the next Bond novel, 007 gave an authentic heave after reviving himself.

On another occasion, he questioned a former Navy friend and polar explorer who had written a survival manual for escaped P.O.W.'s. A delighted Fleming questioned the man about a hypothetical situation in which a Russian stood between him and starvation: what would be the best part of a man to eat? The explorer evaded the question as long as he could, but Fleming persisted - would it be the palm of the hand? Finally he got his answer: A cut of the rib. Fortunately in the later Bond books, James stuck to scrambled eggs.

"My books tremble on the brink of corn." - Ian Fleming

HUMOR

The Bond books are full of tongue-in-cheek humor.

While Bond himself is not a humorous person, often the action around him is.

The books can be self-referential without cutting into the drama and believability: In Bond's obituary in You Only Live Twice, M even comments on the books (and he's not very impressed). In On Her Majesty's Secret Service Bond sees actress Ursula Andress -- who was the current Bond movie girl in Dr. No.

(The humor continued into the John Gardner era, when in the novel Scorpius, Bond watches a movie on an airplane featuring his favorite actor - Sean Connery.

These jokes do not cut into Bond's believability (as a lot of in-jokes in the films do). Bond is still a real person, living through it all, not a joke himself. Somebody should've explained that to Roger Moore...

SEX

"In the sixties, we thought the James Bond books were extremely naughty! We wouldn't take a second look now; the sex in those books is extremely tame compared to what we're used to in the modern novel."
- John Gardner, Bondage #11

While the James Bond of Fleming's writing expressed his fears and doubts about his missions and actions, Bond never expressed doubts concerning the attraction he felt for certain women. James Bond never paused before a kiss, nervously concerned with rejection. In fact, Bond's only real rejection in the novels (by Gala Brand in Moonraker) comes as a brutal shock. This inner confidence made both Bond and Fleming heroes of the more sexually open world of the 50s and 60s.

By 1960 Ian Fleming, James Bond, and Playboy magazine became a nearly synonymous cultural force, truly united with Playboy's publication of The Hilderbrand Rarity. The union of styles and tastes continued beyond Fleming's death into the mid-sixties.

Fleming's heroines, while certainly not paragons of feminism, are universally strong, and often tragic figures. Rarely damsels in distress, the "Bond women" (or more commonly, "Bond girls") tend to have their own agendas, solid strengths, and an ability to stand on their own.

VILLAINS

"It's no accident that Mr. Big is always a millionaire. You never get Bond going down dark alleys or looking for villains. He's always in the lap of luxury. He's always going to exotic places, which takes the audience into marvelous realms."
- Guy Hamilton, director of "Goldfinger," "Diamonds are Forever," and "Live And Let Die"

Fleming's villains provide the author with great opportunity to explore larger themes. Through the grand schemes of Mr. Big, Sir Hugo Drax, Goldfinger, Dr. No, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Fleming wages a literary battles with the deadly sins. Sloth, vengeance, greed, and snobbery are but some of the dragons Bond must battle in human form.

STRUCTURE

Fleming had a basic formula for his Bond books, which he rarely strayed from. They usually began with a teaser - an action scene that actually occurs later in the narrative. After this event, the novel would flash back and lead up to the first scene later in the story. Fleming used this devise to hook the audience, yet still allow him the slow narrative build-up he needed to create a suspenseful thriller.

Action shows on TV now use Fleming's narrative formula religiously. Every cop and detective show tries to hook the viewer by opening with an action-packed scene from the middle of the story ("Tonight, on Magnum P.I."), then flashes back in the to reveal how we reached this particular point.

The Bond films use this formula, but not within the narrative: they try to hook the viewer with a wild stunt, then begin the story after the titles (this is one of the many reasons some Bond films feel so long and disjointed).

Fleming also built his chapters to lead the reader along into the next chapter. Each chapter has its own cliffhanger, defying the reader to put the book down. Today on TV, scenes are pointed to lead the viewers past commercial breaks, much like Fleming tried to sweep readers along, chapter to chapter.

"The craft of writing sophisticated thrillers is almost dead. In this age of higher education, writers seemed to be ashamed of inventing heroes who are white, villains who are black, and heroines who are a delicate shade of pink. "I am not an angry young, or even middle-aged man. I am not 'involved.' My books are not 'engaged.' I have no message for suffering humanity and, though I was bullied at school and lost my virginity like so many of us used to do in the old days, I have never been tempted to foist these and other harrowing personal experiences on the public. My opuscula do not aim at changing people or making them go out and do something. They are not designed to find favor with the Comintern. They are written for warm-blooded heterosexuals in railway trains, airplanes or beds..." - Ian Fleming, "How To Write a Thriller," 1962

interview/profile of Ian Fleming
that appeared in The New Yorker on April 21 1962. Enjoy!

Bond's Creator Ian Fleming, whose nine Secret Service thrillers ("Casino Royale,"
"Doctor No," "For Your Eyes Only," "From Russia with Love,"
"Live and Let Die," "Moonraker," "Goldfinger," "Diamonds
Are Forever," and "Thunderball") have had phenomenal sales in
this country and abroad (more than eleven hundred thousand hardcover
copies and three and a half million paperbacks), was here for a weekend
recently en route from his Jamaica hideaway to his London home, and we
caught him on a Sunday morning at his hotel, the Pierre, where he
amiably stood us a lunch. He ordered a prefatory medium-dry Martini of
American vermouth and Beefeater gin, with lemon peel, and so did we.

"I'm here to see my publishers and assorted crooks," he said.
"Not other assorted crooks, mind you. By 'crooks' I don't mean
crooks at all; I mean former Secret Service men. There are one or two
of them here, you know."
"Who?" we asked.
"Oh, men like the boss of James Bond, the operative who's the chief
character in all my books," said our host. "When I wrote the first
one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man
to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument. One of
the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James
Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a
name for my protagonist I thought, My God, that's the dullest name
I've ever heard, so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the
world has become an exciting one. Mrs. Bond once wrote me a letter
thanking me for using it."

Mr. Fleming, a sunburned, tall, curly-haired, blue-eyed man of
fifty-three in a dark blue suit, blue shirt, and blue-dotted bow tie,
ordered another Martini, and so did we. "I've spent the morning in
Central Park," he said. "I went to there to see if I'd get
murdered, but I didn't. The only person who accosted me was a man who
asked me how to get out. I love the park; it was so wonderful to see
the brown turning to green. I went to the Wollman skating rink and saw
all those enchanting girls skating around, and then I thought, This is
the place to meet a spy. What a wonderful place to meet a spy! A spy
with a child. A child is the most wonderful cover for a spy, like a dog
for a tart. Do tarts here have dogs? I was interested to see that in
the bird reservation in the Park there was not a single bird. There are
no people there--it's fenced in, you know, with a sign--but no
birds either. Birds can't read."

Mr. Fleming lit a Senior Service cigarette and, in answer to some
questions from us, said he was a Scot, that he had been brought up in a
hunting-and-fishing world where you shot or caught your own lunch, and
that he was a graduate of Eton and Sandhurst. "I shot against West
Point," he said. When I got my commission, they were mechanizing the
Army, and a lot of us decided we didn't want to be garage hands
running those bloody tanks. My poor mamma, in despair, suggested I try
for the diplomatic. My father was killed in the '14-'18 war. Well,
I went to the Universities of Geneva and Munich and learned extremely
good French and German, but I got fed up with the exams, so in 1929 I
joined Reuters as a foreign correspondent and had a hell of a time.
Wonderful! I went to Moscow for Reuters. My God, it was fun! It was
like a tremendous ball game."

He ordered a dozen cherrystones and a Miller High Life, and we followed
suit. "I like the name 'High Life,'" he said. "That's why I
order it. And American vermouth is the best in the world."
He added that he had been with Reuters for four years, and we asked
what happened next.
"I decided I ought to make some money, and went into the banking and
stock-brokerage business--first with Cull & Company and then with
Rowe & Pittman," he said. "Six years altogether, until the war came
along. Those financial forms are tremendous clubs, and great fun, but I
never could figure out what a sixty-fourth of a point was. We used to
spend our whole time throwing telephones at each other. I'm afraid we
ragged far too much."

We inquired about the war, from which, according to the British Who's
Who, Mr. Fleming emerged a naval commander, and he said, "I was
personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, so I went
everywhere."
We asked what he'd done after the war.
"I joined the editorial board of the London Times," he said. "I
still write articles for it, and I'm a stockholder. And in 1952, when
I was in Jamaica, Cyril Connolly asked me to write an article about
Jamaica for his magazine, Horizon. It was rather a euphoric piece,
about Jamaica as an island for you and me to go to. "
We promised to go, and he said, "How about some domestic Camembert?
It's better here than the French."

During this and coffee, he reverted to the non-ornithological James
Bond. "I think the reason for his success is that people are lacking
in heroes in real life today," he said. "Heroes are always getting
knocked--Philip and Mountbatten are examples of this--and I think
people absolutely long for heroes. The thing that's wrong with the
new anticolonialism is that no one has yet found a Negro hero.
They're scratching around with Tshombe, but...Well, I don't regard
James Bond precisely as a hero, but at least he does get on and do his
duty, in an extremely corny way, and in the end, after giant despair,
he wins the girl or the jackpot or whatever it may be. My books have no
social significance, except a deleterious one; they're considered to
have too much violence and too much sex. But all history has that. I
finished the last one, my tenth James Bond story, in Jamaica the other
day; it's long and tremedously dull. It's called 'The Spy Who Loved
Me,' and it's written, supposedly, by the girl. I think it's an
absolute miracle that an elderly person like me can go on turning out
these books with such zest. It's really a terrible indictment of my
own character--they're so adolescent. But they're fun. I think
people like them because they're fun. A couple of years ago, when I
was in Washington, and driving to lunch with a friend of mine, Margaret
Leiter, she spotted a young couple coming out of church, and she
stopped our cab. 'You must meet them,' she said. 'They're great
fans of yours.' And she introduced me to Jack and Jackie Kennedy.
'Not the Ian Fleming!' they said. What could be more gratifying
than that? They asked me to dinner that night, with Joe Alsop and some
other characters. I think the President likes my books because he
enjoys the combination of physical violence, effort, and winning in the
end-like his PT--boat experiences. I think James Bond may be good for
him after the dry pack of the day."
Mr. Fleming is married to the former wife of Lord Rothermere and has a
nine-year-old son, Caspar, who is away at boarding school. "He
doesn't read me, but he sells my autographs for seven shillings a
time," his father said.

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THE BOOKS

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