James Bond is contacted by an old flame, Gwendolyn Gann, formerly Agent OO3, who warns Bond of a serious threat to England and the world, an organizatJames Bond is contacted by an old flame, Gwendolyn Gann, formerly Agent OO3, who warns Bond of a serious threat to England and the world, an organization called Myrmidon. But before they can meet, OO3 turns up dead, and Bond wants to find out who her killer is and expose Myrmidon. But things get messy, of course.
The story of Bond and Gann switches from past to present; the notable thing about her compared to the books and films is that she is not just eye candy. He acknowledges she is superior to him as an agent in many ways. There were in Fleming's original conception--and also in the films--Bond women who were strong and smart as well as beautiful, but this is different. She's seen here as an iconic agent figure, and she's also older than him, and not Barbie/Playboy bodied, which would never have happened in the old Bond universe.
Anyway, it ends in a cliffhanger and there's also another surprise at the end. I've read them all in the series, so I'll read on, but this one seems standard issue in most ways. But it's interesting to have read this in the light of my reading of Mick Herron's Slough House series, where "slow horse" (aka loser) agents solve crimes, not supposedly perfect males such as Bond whose best laid plans always ultimately work out....more
A short action-focused volume in the series from Dynamite, where Bond gets involved in a Spectre civil war. Bond plays the two sides against the middlA short action-focused volume in the series from Dynamite, where Bond gets involved in a Spectre civil war. Bond plays the two sides against the middle, in hopes to destroy Spectre or at least learn more about its inner workings. Blofield sort of attempts to leverage pressure on Bond to work for him--what??--by threatening to kill his buddy Felix Leiter. Decent writing by Christos Gage and fine action sequences by Luca Casalanguida....more
The weakest entry thus far in the Dynamite series featuring James Bond, 007. My theory was they wanted to release this in conjunction with the new BonThe weakest entry thus far in the Dynamite series featuring James Bond, 007. My theory was they wanted to release this in conjunction with the new Bond movie, and seeing they had nothing, they cobbled together a number of artists and writers to help Vita Ayala, and they produced this as a kind of cash grab. Here's the improbable story: Bond gets involved with a a former art forger and now insurance investigator, Brandy Keys, to nab some art thieves. Not clear why MI6 would have Bond do this. I am not a fan of the generic art, but the story is worse--begins slowly, continues in disjointed fashion, and drags. In one issue Bond hardly appears at all.
So why two stars instead of one? There is a connection to Live and Let Die in the last issue, if you have read that, and I have. I also was mildly interested in the connections, some parallels, between Bond and Keys. But over all I had a hard time concentrating and following it. Disappointing....more
James Bond Origin, Volume 2, written by Jeff Parker and illustrated by Ibrahim Moustafa, is the eighth in the Dynamite series updating James Bond for James Bond Origin, Volume 2, written by Jeff Parker and illustrated by Ibrahim Moustafa, is the eighth in the Dynamite series updating James Bond for the new millennium, even as we still await a black female Bond in the film series. Some of these volumes acknowledge the racism and sexism and colonialism of the original stories, but Parker takes us back to a young Navel Lieutenant James Bond during WWII, and two stories, The Russian Ruse and The Debt. In the first one, Bond, under cover for British Intelligence, discovers a Soviet plot and gets injured in the process. In the second story, "The Debt," Bond, recovering at home, is sent to investigate the cause of his mentor’s death. He works with an old buddy from his training days who owes him one--the debt--and in the process learns a lot about loyalty and also playing cards from the underground.
The stories are a tad thin in this short volume, but they are entertaining and promising, and I like very much the period art. I like this young, idealistic, patriotic Captain America-ish (Captain British-ish? Scotch-ist?) Bond before he gets jaded, cynical, and ruthless in the Fleming stories. He’s also vulnerable, a touch naive, makes mistakes from which he needs to learn to become the James we later have come to know. And if you're looking for the evidence that women are attracted to him, and he to them, The Debt begins to deliver on that promise. A must for Bond fans....more
The second volume of Greg Pak’s James Bond run, focused on getting Odd Job equal billing with Bond, and also rewriting Asian perspectives and characteThe second volume of Greg Pak’s James Bond run, focused on getting Odd Job equal billing with Bond, and also rewriting Asian perspectives and characters and culture and history within a world initially created by Ian Flemng, focused on Asian villain Goldfinger. But the other thing the series does is reclaim the feel of the original Bond; he’s just not racist or sexist (in my opinion). The universe these characters inhabit are surely more diverse: Moneypenny and his boss M are black, and Korean-American John Lee is Odd Job.
Bond is depicted on the cover in a yin/yang context, and a couple times is seen as like two-face (from the DC universe), because he plays the villain for part of the story. There’s a plot twist in the conclusion that has Bond in a sticky wicket, morally. Goldfinger is different here, in some ways, from either Fleming’s idea or the movie version, though still a villain.
The story is pretty straightforward, but the art is what shines here, with Eric Gapstur and Robert Carey creating a dizzying array of scenes to match the breakneck pace of the plot. They are especially good with action sequences. I think this is more than solid, not the best of the Dynamite Bond series, but good and ambitious work. ...more
This volume is part of the Dynamite Original stories about James Bond, and it has a pretty uninteresting premise: Moneypenny is kidnapped by men who wThis volume is part of the Dynamite Original stories about James Bond, and it has a pretty uninteresting premise: Moneypenny is kidnapped by men who want information about Bond. These bad men give her truth serum and so all the six short stories in the volume are told by Moneypenny to her captors. Maybe the effort to link the stories within the story is a better idea than just a simple story collection, but the stories are told by Moneypenny, and there doesn’t seem to be anything distinctively Moneypenny about them. Though most of them are still good enough to read for sheer quick Bond-ing.
This series of shorter (usually too short) stories are written and illustrated by different teams: “The Broker” (Ayala, Lore, Perez, Diaz), “The Rare Dinner” (Percy, Baal, Woods), “The Oddest Job” (Pak, Kotz, Diaz), “One Pistol, Three Silencers” (Simone, Marron, Kelly), “Men Without a Country” (Russell, Carey, Kurichiyamil), and “The Hook” (Diggle, Casalanguida, Woods) so the writing and art quality vary pretty widely. Maybe I like the Diggle story best. The stories do link to other Dynamite volumes, such as the Odd Job stories Pak did. As the stories are being told, Bond of course is racing to rescue her. And does he in fact rescue her?! Guess you’re gonna have to read it to find out! But if you are a Bond fan/collector, you will want to take a look at it. It's good enough, just not great. And the fine cover leads you to think there will be sinister and sexy Bond "girls" ( as they were called re Bond movies back in the sixties. . . okay, women!). And you would not be wrong, though the center of the stories generally is another kind of action, with guns....more
I think I first encountered Greg Pak in a collection intended to speak to the obvious gap in and racist representations of Asian Americans in comics, I think I first encountered Greg Pak in a collection intended to speak to the obvious gap in and racist representations of Asian Americans in comics, Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology. . So Pak does a lot of work in comics. But I suspect the obvious attraction in Pak’s contribution to the impressive Dynamite comics revision of James Bond is the opportunity to reclaim the sexy tough Bond many of us have known and loved, while at the same time placing him in a more diverse (and less racist, sexist) context—Moneypenny and his boss are black—but especially in this volume, the Korean-American John Lee is a new Odd Job character, whom Bond throughout (somewhat annoyingly) is either to going to kill or team with, and can’t seem to decide. And Odd Job is a worthy partner/adversary for Bond. In a way, he almost upstages Bond in this one. Maybe that's the most audacious move in this Bond run, that (the Korean-American) Pak has (Korean) Odd-Job essentially upstage Bond for most of the volume! He's as much a "magnet" for women and as strong and able as Bond is in this work.
Anyway, there are multiple representations of minorities in this volume, while retaining the fundamental thriller dimension most readers/viewers have come to value, wherein (possibly good guy) Lee and Bond are either working against or with each other fighting a terrorist organization called ORU (which stands for gold. . . right, you guessed it, Goldfinger!), which is seeking The Golden Dragon of Goryeo. This is just the first volume of the Oru story, but it’s good. It’s not up to Warren Ellis or even Ales Kot level in this series, but it’s better than average in this very good Bond run, maybe like 3.75....more
“It was like a miracle to suddenly see him here, out of the blue.” –Vivian, speaking of James Bond
The Spy Who Loved Me (1963) is the tenth book in Ian“It was like a miracle to suddenly see him here, out of the blue.” –Vivian, speaking of James Bond
The Spy Who Loved Me (1963) is the tenth book in Ian Fleming’s spy thriller series featuring James Bond, except this one doesn’t feature Bond. Spy is a departure from any approach he ever took before in that it is 1) his initial first person account and one 2) told from the perspective of a woman.
If you know Sean Connery’s Bond, the Bond of the movies, could you believe a movie with Bond in iy might focus on the perspective of one of the women he meets? Maybe. Having read the novels, featuring Bond, the largely misogynist mouthpiece for the misogynist author (i.e., Pussy Galore, Octopussy, and so on), having heard Fleming’s Bond’s disdain for women (unless he can bed one of them for a short time, of course), can we imagine a successful Fleming novel from a woman’s perspective?
Nope.
But hey, let’s consider it for a minute: Fleming has created a few strong women in his books, women with various spy skills, some very smart and some physically powerful, though they are always ultimately secondary to Bond, and their skills are always secondary to their beauty. They are always beautiful and usually shallow, and good in bed, which is why so many men seem to like them (including me at times, I'll admit, especially as a teen). In this book 2/3 of the time is focused on two failed relationships of Vivian, a rich and shallow person; she's basically taken advantage of sexually by two men who use her and desert her. Vivian is sick of men; we sympathize with her. This is not a Bond story, not a thriller, but okay, good if you just want a story about a rich girl on her own, I guess.
Vivian decides to buy a Vespa and go on a road trip to see America; on the route south from New England, she works in a motel and is taken hostage by two American gangsters, Sol Horror and Sluggsy Morant (ugh, those names!), reminiscent of typical American noir thugs who (again, two more jerks/men) terrorize and brutalize her; again, we sympathize with her as a woman (in peril). And then, out of the blue and into the motel walks Bond who has a blown tire, needs a place to sleep, and quickly rescues Viv and with whom--within six hours—she falls deeply into love, with “the ideal male,” with whom she has sex with once before he leaves for good.
Traumatized and used by men throughout the book, Vivian understands that Bond also will leave her, that he is solitary, needs no one, but he is still for some inexplicable reason "ideal" for her, her hero in the same way damsels in distress fall in love with their knights in shining armor.
“I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn’t care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn’t care, because none of them would ever own him—own any larger piece of him than I now did.”
Doesn't this sound like it is Fleming's idea of an ideal woman who can put up with any philandering possible and still be there for him? Most critics hated this book (though a couple liked it as a kind of attempt as a Daphne du Maurier “romance”!), the public hated it, and Fleming hated it, refusing to have any of the plot used in any film by its name, so when that title was finally used, in 1977, only the steel-toothed character of Horror was included, although under the name Jaws. I don’t recall the film at the moment, but I really did not like this failed attempt at writing from a woman’s perspective.
Some of the writing is a decent imitation of American noir, maybe, but Bond never seems real here to me in the way he does in other books. It's almost as if it were written very early on, not as a ninth novel featuring Bond as a developing character. It's Bond as seen by one of his shallow women, as a god, which is the brand Fleming created for him. While I have some sympathy for Vivian in the beginning of this (essentially) non-Bond book, I don’t like her sudden shallow turn to fall in love with Bond--The Spy Who Loved Me For One Night?!! I don't recommend this as thriller or romance....more
Thunderball is the ninth book in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, and the eight novel, after a seriously good collection of short stories. This book nThunderball is the ninth book in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, and the eight novel, after a seriously good collection of short stories. This book now bears the authorship of Fleming on most editions, but it was really the collaboration of several people, and a legal agreement at one time insisted that Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham be given co-author status. It is really the novelization of an unfilmed screenplay which moreover borrows scenes from and ideas from previous novels.
So we have reason to be suspicious this will stink, but I found it pretty readable, with a familiar cartoonish/pulpy plot:
Ernst Blofeld, leader of the terrorist organization SPECTRE (Dr. Evil in Austin Powers), has hijacked an American plane loaded with atomic weapons. Unless his demands are met, he will destroy one of the world's major cities. Given only one week to locate the missing bombs, Bond goes to the Bahamas, encounters Blofeld's right-hand man, Emilio Largo--who, in typical Fleming fashion, has "pectoral muscles the size of dinner plates"--and his mistress--and as you know, soon to become Bond's mistress--Domino.
Things of interest:
*Domino saves Bond, which is unusual.
*The book (in 1961) opens with Bond forced because of his drinking (roughly a half of a fifth a day) and smoking (roughly 60 cigarettes a day) forced to go to a health spa, all of which is eventually abandoned. We have to believe that Bond can do all this indefinitely, always look like a Greek god, and get the girl.
“It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”
*We learn, in the spa, that the body remembers pleasure but it does not remember pain.
*There were two film adaptations featuring Sean Connery, Thunderball (1965) and Never Say Never (1983), produced by original screenplay co-author Kevin McClory.
Even as a kind of pastiche of former Bond plots and characters, it is pretty well-written, focused mostly on action, without the occasional existentialist Bond reflection that makes its way into the earlier books. I listened to the audiobook while I worked out to develop "pectoral muscles the size of dinner plates."...more
For Your Eyes Only is the eighth book in Ian Fleming’s James Bond spy thriller series, a collection of five short stories, "From a View to a Kill," "FFor Your Eyes Only is the eighth book in Ian Fleming’s James Bond spy thriller series, a collection of five short stories, "From a View to a Kill," "For Your Eyes Only," "Quantum of Solace," "Risico," and "The Hildebrand Rarity,” all of which had parts to play in various film adaptations. Four of them were originally developed out of plots for a tv series that was never made. I have only somewhat enjoyed aspects of my first time run through each of the Bond books, which haven’t held up for me as well as the (fun) films—some of the plots are over-the-top goofy and the villains are cartoony, he takes time to reveal racism and sexism that are difficult to but I was happily surprised to discover that each of these stories was satisfying, sometimes revealing fictional experimentation. On the while, the prose is lean and punchy as it almost never is in the novels. Yes, there’re expert cold-blooded killings and “unbelievably” beautiful women, but the cartoonish nature of the same in the novels is largely gone. Fleming the writer takes over from Fleming the entertainer.
“Quantum of Solace” is very unusual in what I have read thus far in Fleming; written as an homage to Somerset Maugham, whose story “His Excellency, “ Fleming admired. It is basically a dinnertime story told to Bond of a civil servant, Philip Masters whose life was ruined by his marriage to stewardess. Bond, bored by his dinner party companions, had joked that if he might marry at some point, it would be to a stewardess who might wait on him at his beck and call. His companion, in his cautionary tale, reveals what became problems for another man, whose stewardess wife was unfaithful to him, and surprise (!) had been one of the supposedly boring attendees at the dinner that evening. Pretty charming story.
“For Your Eyes Only" is the story of Bond doing a favor for his boss, M, whose friends, the Havelocks, have been killed by an ex-Gestapo officer, von Hammerstein, who had wanted to buy a Jamaican estate. They are killed by two Cuban hitmen, who hide out with von Hammerstein Vermont until Bond—and the Havelocks' daughter, Judy, who is an expert marksman—show up. Judy, resisting Bond’s suggestion that such killing is “man’s work,” kills von Hammerstein with her bow and arrow, and Bond takes care of the gunmen who subsequently injure Judy, and then, you know, Bond takes care of Judy in the way that only Bond seems to be able to do.
The stories are surprisingly well done and serious literary efforts, and I’ll look forward to reading more of them from Fleming. ...more
“Whatever glamour we see in Bond—it’s not worth the price”—Ales Kot
So this is book seven in the “new Bond” Dynamite comics series, the intent of which“Whatever glamour we see in Bond—it’s not worth the price”—Ales Kot
So this is book seven in the “new Bond” Dynamite comics series, the intent of which is to bring Bond up to the present, offering various artists’ takes on how to bring the tone of the original, Ian Fleming's Bond and not the Sean Connery film Bond, into contemporary Bond stories. In some ways all of them can be seen as reflections on Bond and Fleming. For instance, in this and some of the other Dynamite comics volumes James Bond is much more violent than in the squeaky clean films, and more of the brooding existentialist you find him to be in the early Fleming books. Yes, James is also a “woman’s man,” in some of the books, but he’s also more of an invent-your-survival killing machine than an MI6 Mr. Suave Martini Gadget Guy. More of a bourbon man, yes, but also less escapist fun we have associated with the Bond franchise. This more tortured Bond is the Bond Kot is interested in.
So as you can imagine, some of these twenty-first century Bond tales are a mixed bag. The best of the bunch so far has been the volume of Warren Ellis, imo. But this very volume is one such mixed bag itself, written by Ales Kot, and drawn by different artists. There isn’t an attempt to make the art styles sync in any way, or to even make the Bonds look alike. He’s on steroids/testosterone in the contemporary fashion in one, then leanly muscular in the next. That is clearly deliberate in this volume; the thing that unites all the stories is that they were written by Kot and that each issue features action in terms of Bond’s body, as in The Heart, Lungs, and so on. It takes an opportunity to reflect on Bond and his legacy. Each volume is connected to injuries he has suffered, which correspond with psychological injuries. The last story is an attempt to tie things together, connect them all to one larger story of Bond and The Damage Done.
There’s a tone in Kot’s writing here I was having trouble fixing on that I was helped with by reading the afterword, where Kot says of Bond that he is an “imperialist, colonialist construct,” and also racist and misogynist, too, in that he is a white man who uses women of various ethnicities “without regard to their well-being.” Now, Bond as lover is one of the chief reasons both men and women (okay, more men than women, at a glance at the Goodreads ratings/reviews) read Bond, so we are getting into touchy territory here, I know. But Kot has his various points to make, and he makes his various them throughout this volume without losing sight of him as a human being. So I reread it from the perspective of his afterword and I began to understand what he was doing.
Example: Bond is working undercover at some soiree, out to find a guy who is going to try to kill a woman. Bond’s protecting this woman. We don’t know why the guy would kill the woman or why Bond would protect her. At one point another woman calls him a “hunk meat mountain.” I almost stopped reading right there, I’ll admit it, on first read. Why, that isn’t Bond language! Or, on reread, maybe it is, in that when Bond walks in the room women all turn their heads, and he makes his choice of them if wants to. He’s a body, and “his” women are bodies. And Bond in this first issue is not the lean Sean Connery, but is seen here almost as Thor and Hulk are depicted, and even Batman now, with monster pecs and arms. He’s the contemporary muscular hyper-masculine male. He’s male eye candy; he’s a body!
On reread I see Kot as deconstructing him in an anti-colonialist fashion. Bond figures out who is the assassin, in a room full of white rich people. Why, surprise, it is as it was in Fleming’s day as he wrote it, the swarthy dark-skinned guy! So Bond kills this guy, saves a rich woman, and Bond finds a note on the guy, a goodbye note explaining why he happened to be doing this hit job--forced to do so through poverty and strong-arming, and telling his family he loves him. This part of the story would not have happened in Fleming books--sympathy for the assassin, seeing things from his point of view. But afterwards, Bond feels badly about having killed this guy. When the doc offers him pain meds he declines: “I want it to hurt.”
In another issue or chapter here, Bond actually waterboards a woman who is critical of England’s continued colonialist legacy, from 1763—when England gave blankets infected with small pox to indigenous Americans on orders from military high command--through Margaret Thatcher to Brexit. The woman says to Bond: You just follow orders, doing what the government wants you to do, right? You’re part of this “great country.” Whew! Political critique in a Bond book??! I can see why this is a low-rated Bond book, because it is actually a critique of Bond as unquestioning imperialist representative, but it is good and interesting as a fresh angle. And you know, it is also part of Fleming's Bond.
In another issue/chapter Bond is talking to a bunch of white nationalist arms dealers, and (spoiler alert), Bond ends up slaughtering ALL of them. Would James Bond do this?! Well, Fleming’s Bond WAS very violent, not the suave Connery that was more a lover than a fighter. But we see what the legacy of violence might have been for secret agents like 007 who only get assigned those numbers IF they are killers. Bond pays for killing, in body and soul, but he also IS a killer. Do we really want to slaughter all the neo-Nazi haters out there?
In the final chapter there’s a chat in a pub between fellow agent Franz Leiter and Bond as Leiter arranges for a guy to be killed in the pub. The guy dies, and they go on drinking. There’s a certain level of anguish, depression, existential angst in this volume that you find in the early Fleming Bonds—or in Goldfinger, where there is an extended meditation on death, and what it means to kill people and have your own brushes with death. Kot in places is not unsympathetic to Bond, the killing machine; he finds him complex, both troubling and troubled.
So, again, the Goodreads rating for this is low as I said and I’m not surprised. There’s not much fun action, because it's not, when you come down to it, really fun action to kill people. There’s a lot of talk, because this one is primarily reflective. It’s a very dark socio-political commentary on Bond in the current climate, with neo-Nazis, extra-judicial torture, and the world going to hell. I have already begun reading Goldfinger (for the first time) and will not be able to keep this critique out of my head as I read on. I think Kot is brave and smart to have done this work WITHIN a Bond series! I can’t say I loved it, but I admire the heck out of it....more
Well, I think I am just about done reading Ian Fleming’s stories of Agent oo7, James Bond, thank you very “The glamour isn’t worth the price”—Ales Kot
Well, I think I am just about done reading Ian Fleming’s stories of Agent oo7, James Bond, thank you very much. This is in spite of my being a completist; I set out to read the series and read them all I usually would do. But I think I sort of have the pattern here: Bond meets a villain, meets a “girl” and defeats the villain. You do what you can to ignore the (casual?) racism and misogyny in exchange for the glamour, and well, the best of James.
This one begins with Bond on vaca meeting a man who is being cheated at Canasta by Goldfinger; Bond exposes him, but then hangs out with him, having The Best Dinner of His Life at the Best Restaurant in the World. He plays golf with Goldfinger at the Best Golf Course in the World, where Bond finds Goldfinger also cheats at golf. They drive the Best Cars in the World, and drink the Best Whiskey. We, who want to Be Bond, take notes on all the specifically-named product placements. Sales soar.
Auric Goldfinger is the richest man in Great Britain, and he is obsessed with gold, he can’t get enough of it. One of Goldfinger’s assistants is Pussy Galore, who leads a band of mercenary lesbians. Auric (which also means gold; he’s a walking redundancy or tautology) finds Bond is Not on His Side, forces Bond to work for him in his goal to knock off Fort Knox (!). This plan does not work, but he does eventually “get the girl” and do the right thing in preventing AG from killing the 60K people he felt were expendable toward his goal. Thus proving that imperialist Bond is not as bad as Goldfinger. Goldfinger is really interested in winning, in accumulating, in money. He doesn’t really have what Bond has, which is lust for beautiful women. Goldfinger replaces the deadly sin Lust with Greed.
We know Bond is also a capitalist, and imperialist; he loves everything Goldfinger loves, the Best of Everything. He wants the Finer Things of Life, and we as readers are seduced as Bond is seduced (I admit I have noted some brands of alcohol Bond orders! I would love to own just one of his cars, even for a day!). We want those things, too. But the difference between Bond/us and Goldfinger is that we won’t do ANYTHING to get those finer things. We won’t allow 60K people to die so we can be the Richest Man in the World. He literally paints his women (normally prostitutes) gold before sex, which is a thing you know from book and film covers. Cool? Glamorous? Uh, no, painting skin all gold is not good for you, as it turns out. It can kill you. As Kot makes clear, “glamour is not worth the price you pay.” [Fleming, I am told, wanted the censors to allow calling Goldfinger Goldprick! They allowed Pussy Galore, though American publishers debated this, finally caving to Fleming.
Things I liked:
*Bond is a bit more complex in this book than any of the previous 6 Bond novels by Fleming:
“James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.”
*The premise is almost always ludicrous, with cartoon characters for female leads and villains, and crazy fifties (1959) pulp thriller plots, and this is still the fun part. Bond saves the world and America’s Gold and gets the Girl (why am I typing with all these caps?!) (more on the problem with the girl-getting part, later).
*I like what critique there is here of capitalism and greed, even implicated as Bond is in the process (until the end). I mean, Fleming is not critical at all of getting rich, but he ramps it up to ridiculous level in Goldfinger.
Things I didn’t like:
*Bond (and, I learn Fleming) goes out of his way to make a point about lesbians, in what is now a tired fashion: He assumes that Pussy Galore, a lesbian, and Tilly Masterson, a lesbian, just need the Right Man to “turn” them. A product of the time? Sure, but Bond has sex with both Tilly and Pussy, “changing their minds.” Fleming feels that lesbians are a product of women’s suffrage, which creates confusion about sexual identity:
“Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality.' As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits--barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.”
Until he does:
“Bond felt the sexual challenge all beautiful Lesbians have for men.”
And so Bond “stoops” to have a brief (and we are told intense) “affair” (for one night) with Tilly. It’s a sign of righteous pity; Bond can heal a lost lesbian soul with his. . . body. And according to Fleming, he does!
Later, (lesbian gang leader) Pussy Galore (one of several offensive names for women Fleming invents, including Honeychile Rider, Octopussy, Holly Goodhead) comes on the scene and tells Bond: “You can turn off the charm; I’m immune.” But apparently she’s not. ( Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery features a character named Alotta Fagina, making fun of Fleming. But are these names funny, or misogynistic? I thought funny, as a clueless teenager; but do we have many such dismissive names for men in Fleming? I call this misogyny.
*I continue to find it fascinating, Fleming’s obsession with torturing Bond; in this one, Goldfinger’s assistant, Oddjob, is the guy for the job. Okay, a little sadistic cruelty, sure, why not, it’s an adventure story. But in every book?!
*Bond’s racism. In this one it is all about the “savage” Koreans, who are not really fully human.
*All the villains are physical “freaks;” Dr. No had prosthetic hands, after amputation, and this detail is to add to the fact that trans-humans are less than “normal,” they are monsters. Goldfinger here is very large, bald, a “freak.”
*It is interesting that Goldfinger is British, rather than American, because Bond hates the crude tasteless American style, Viva Las Vegas, but Goldfinger embodies the rich American greed here. But! Goldfinger isn’t really a “true” British citizen; he’s naturalized, actually Baltic, so he fails to meet the standard for the one-drop rule for white British superiority.
Okay, so I am done with Bond, and my juvenile fascination with him (oh, maybe for fun I’ll still rewatch some of the movies! This movie in particular I once loved, and will watch again soon, maybe. But the things that at one time for me made Bond attractive--the sex, the sadism, the vulgarity of money for its own sake—are not quite so fun anymore....more
with Bond fighting spiders and squids to defeat the villain.
So the films are less offensive than the books. In the films Bond is charming, debonair, amusing, but in the books he is edgier, nastier. If you are going to get all picky about it, Fleming and Bond reveal in this book their typical misogyny, racism, colonialism and so on; sure, burn the books, but do that later; come on, let’s say what we like about the book, please! A little positivity here!
The (1958) story: Secret Agent Man James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate two missing MI6 operatives, mainly a mysterious, reclusive, cruel German-Chinese trans-human, Dr. Julius No, making a fortune on a small (fictional) island, Crab Key, off Jamaica. His goal is to disrupt American missile launching at Cape Canaveral. Visiting the small island Bond meets a girl, Honeychile Rider who accompanies him. The assignment of course gets to be a stickier wicket than he anticipated, but don’t worry, things will work out for the couple, whew. I know you’re happily surprised and relieved to hear that no white beautiful people die in the making of this story.
Things I liked/found amusing/interesting:
*The story is pretty lively—it’s a thriller with fifties pulp foundations—silly, but at key points, especially 1) when we meet “the girl” and 2) when the action gets going, Fleming earns his money.
*Dr. No is one of the most formidable of Bond nemeses, smart and powerful. As with almost every Bond villain, he is sadistic. For some reason Fleming was particularly interested in torture of various kinds, but here he has Dr. No researching the limits of human capacity to withstand pain and fear. Here Bond and Honeychile face poison centipedes, tarantulas, a basket of poisoned fruit, and so on. Honey is staked naked on the beach, anticipating murderous crabs will slowly eat her alive; Bond is (for no reason other than “scientific inquiry”; why not just kill him?! But then it wouldn’t be an adventure story, would it) forced to go through an obstacle course of tortures in order to escape and conquer his foe.
*Dr. No gets rich from the (surprisingly) lucrative international market in Roseate-Spoonbill
*Dr. No may be sadistic because he was himself tortured. His hands were cut off when he was discovered stealing from his Chinese boss. He was shot in (apparently) the heart and left to die, but lucky for him, No was born with his heart on the right side, so he survived! ☺ No No? Yes!
*The ludicrously named Honeychile Rider (okay, it’s not as ludicrous as Pussy Galore, but close) is of course supermodel-beautiful, whom Bond finds, conveniently, almost completely naked (she’s wearing a belt with a knife attached) (in the 1962 film Andress is wearing an almost chaste—by today’s standards—bikini) on a deserted beach. Despite the fact that she had been raped years ago, she becomes almost instantly infatuated with Bond, and she becomes his eye candy for the rest of the adventure. Is this side-stepping Honeychile's trauma into the arms of a "sexual healer" Bond offensive? Of course it is, but read on.
Honeychile's naïve goal, she tells Bond early on, is to get rich in New York City some day as call girl. Lucky Bond, to have met her, eh? Naked girl on a beach, call girl "in training," James? But we also learn Honey killed the rapist by visiting his bed with a tarantula, so she seems to have some skills. And maybe she isn't as simple as I assumed above. Fleming otherwise depicts her as a female Robinson Crusoe, a nature child, a waif, a naïf. Precursor to sixties love child.
*This is Fleming’s second book set in his beloved tropical island, Jamaica. He wrote it at his Goldeneye estate there. The tone of Fleming’s Bond can be violent and nasty, but nowhere else is Fleming as lyrical in describing natural vistas as he is here, basically describing what he can see from his own window overlooking a cliff.
*Honeychile says she has seen and is afraid of dragons. What?! Well, in order to discourage visitors, the doctor's "dragon" is a flamethrowing, armored swamp buggy.
*Of course to defeat the notorious No, Bond must at the climax of the action wrestle a poisonous squid, and find a way to turn the doctor’s own guano machine on him: Yes, death by bird guano! Nice touch? As I have said before, Fleming’s best writing is in the action sequences: Bond Must. Find. The. Will. To. Survive! Yes! Yes! Yes! He’s alive!
Escapist fun on a tropical island with “exotic” (i.e., non-rich white Brit) elements. Ludicrous, silly, and occasionally a little offensive, but nevertheless (for me) pretty enjoyable. Oh, give me a little credit, it’s not just the scenes with Honeychile Rider! Am I that obvious? One of my favorites so far....more