Ian Fleming (Counterpoint: Penetrating Comments on Life And Living, Writers and Writing By 63 Leading Authors, Critics, and Playwrights, by Roy Newquist. Rand McNally, 1964; interview conducted Oct. 1963)
In 1952 James Bond was born—full-grown, suave, dashing, with a taste for fine food, women, and liquor. Since then he has become a giant in the world of contemporary letters, changing little from the day of his spectacular birth, though claiming an ever-widening audience. Perhaps no single character in the loosely-defined area of the suspense novel has captured a market so boldly and held it with such consistency. (Sherlock Holmes is the only counterpart that springs to mind, but he was a sleuth, not an adventurer, and we never did really know whether or not Mr. Holmes ate, drank, or bedded down.)
In speaking to Ian Fleming, the creator of the fabulous James Bond, the first natural question would be the origin of Mr. Bond. Who is he?
Well, it’s almost entirely imagination, but of course I used various people I’d known during the war, spies and commandos and so on, because working in Naval Intelligence one came across these people quite a lot. And I didn’t want him [Bond] to be a glamorous figure at all. I wanted him to be an extremely uninteresting man to whom extraordinary things happen, and that’s why I chose the very dull name “James Bond,” which when you come to think of it is a very dull name, instead of calling him “Peregrine Caruthers” or something even more romantic.
Now the name James Bond I borrowed, without his approval, from a very famous American ornithologist James Bond, who wrote Birds Of the West Indies—which is one of my bibles and remains one of my bibles when I’m out writing in Jamaica, where I write every year—and I thought “well, that’s a jolly dull name, let’s use that one.”
And so the character, which in the first book was a fairly simple straightforward one, has gradually become encrusted with mannerisms and belongings and perhaps individual characteristics and so forth simply in the writing of the stories. But I think if you’ve read the books you’ll find that there’s absolutely no discussion anywhere of Bond’s character—some of his mannerisms of course—but no character study in depth, excerpt perhaps by the Russian secret service, the KGB, which goes into him fairly closely in a book called From Russia, With Love. But I, the author, make no comment really about James Bond, whether he’s a moral person or immoral person or anything of that sort. Just straightforward, quickly-paced stories.
Do you think you’ve put any of your own personality into him?
I couldn’t possibly be James Bond. First of all, he’s got much more guts than I have. He’s also considerably more handsome and he eats rather more richly than I could possibly manage to do. As to quirks and tastes, likes and dislikes, bits of me probably creep in. But not important bits.
The only real criticism of your books that I’ve come across made some reference to the fact that “James Bond novels are studies in sex, snobbery, and sadism.”
I don’t think they are studies in anything, not even in those quite proper ingredients of a thriller. Sex, of course, enters all interesting books and all interesting lives. As to snobbery, I wonder how much it isn’t a very common motivation, perhaps a spur. Wouldn’t all of us like to eat better, stay in better hotels, drive faster motor-cars, write better books? James Bond is lucky; his life is both cushioned and exciting. As for sadism—frankly, the old-fashioned way of beating spies with baseball bats and truncheons became obsolete during the last war. It’s quite permissible to give them a rougher time than we did in more gentlemanly days. But as to “studies in sex, snobbery, and sadism,” I’m certain they are nothing I attempt, want to attempt, or could do properly should I attempt them.
In considering both the character of James Bond, and the general pace of your novels, can you think of any writers who have influenced you?
Two splendid American writers, the great masters of the modern thriller, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. I was influenced by these writers, by their extremely good style and the breadth and ingeniousness of their stories. I suppose, if I were to examine the problem in depth, I’d go back to my childhood and find some roots of interest in E. Phillips Oppenheim and Sax Rohmer. Perhaps they played an important part.
In creating the situations in which Bond finds himself, do you pay a great deal of attention to the authenticity of background?
Yes, I do. I don’t think I’ve ever written about a part of the world which I myself haven’t visited. But you see, I was a reporter for a long time. I have a reporter’s eye and sense of locality, and I add to this by taking notes and buying road maps wherever I happen to be.
Could you describe the ascent of James Bond on bestseller lists?
Well I can’t really imagine [how], because the sales of the books [have] just gone on progressively upward. Actually today I was just getting the sales of my softcover books from America, the New American Library, and also from Pan books in England, and it is an absolutely steady progression, taking a sudden leap in the past two years, both in England and America. That’s partly because of the fact of the first film being made and now the second—Dr. No was the first one, which did very well—and of course the paperback publishers took advantage of the films to increase their prints. I see that my total American sales have gone up to something over eight million—that’s over 10 books I think—and in England about six and a half million, which probably represents more or less the population difference between our two countries. The only interesting point, at least which interests me very much, is that an Englishman should have been chosen by the Americans as a popular hero, because I don’t think it very often happens.
I think there are a few twists that make James Bond seem very American. Likes and dislikes, brand of cigarettes, and his rather full sex life.
There is some American detail. Of course, three or four of the books are set in and around America, and there’s a subsidiary hero, an American named Felix Leiter who’s with the CIA and later with a detective agency.
Of course I get into trouble with my Americanisms. People write in and say I’ve got things wrong here and there. Recently, in fact, I got an assistant librarian at Yale who helps me out if I have an American scene. I pass the book over to him, and he very kindly goes through it and suggests where the American language could be improved, or some of the other usage improved. So I try and get everything correct—it annoys me as much as it must annoy Americans to find America so badly depicted in English books and similarly the mistakes about England made by American writers. It’s irritating, and one as an author really ought to do one’s best to try to get the lingo more or less correct. Particularly the sort of gangster language of which we have an exaggerated idea over here, due largely perhaps to Damon Runyon. But of course gangster language changes with the times, just like beat language, and it’s very difficult indeed, if one isn’t living for instance in America, to keep up with it. But as I say, I do my best, and I’m pleased to find that too many Americans don’t complain.
I still have a feeling that throughout your stories you use Bond, or other characters, to take verbal potshots at certain people or institutions you, as a person, have negative feelings about. Are you aware of this?
Now, I have potshots at a lot of things, including things like American food, which I think is over-frozen, or any [other] kind of food. Quirks I may have I very often put in the mouth of one of my characters. And I unashamedly rag on the Russians because even now they’re up to their old tricks. Only a few months ago we had that big spy case in Stuttgart in West Germany where a Russian assassin, sent by their Secret Service, confessed to the murder of at least two West Germans with a liquid cyanide water pistol, which he fired in their faces when they were going upstairs, so when they fell dead immediately from the effects of the cyanide no trace of it were found on them, and the verdict in fact in both these cases was “heart failure.” So all that’s pretty ingenious, and if the Russians go on doing that sort of thing I’ll have to go on ragging them about it. Much as I think it would be a good thing if we turned off the whole espionage heat and saved us all a lot of money. But still that’s neither here nor there.
Do you think you’ll ever tire of James Bond?
Unfortunately, it isn’t a matter of tiring of James Bond. It’s a question of running out of inventiveness. One can’t go on forever having blondes and guns and so forth in the same old mixture. I do try to find a different milieu for each story and a very different plot. I hate the idea of short-weighting my audience by giving them the same stuff all over again. In fact, I should be too bored to write it myself.
Somerset Maugham, who is a great friend of mine, once said: “Ian, I’m very amused by your stories, but your great trouble will be in running out of invention.” I think that’s probably correct, so how long it will keep going I just don’t know. When I feel the situation slipping, I’ll simply stop writing James Bond stories.
Last year—in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service—I finally became annoyed with your disposal of a heroine I liked. Bond actually married her, then pffht—she was dead. How important is his bachelorhood?
Well, James Bond can’t really be married. He couldn’t settle down, I think. His wife would be very irritated with his constantly going abroad, she’d want to change all his friends and his way of life, and Bond would worry about the measles epidemic back home and his own faithfulness and—no, it can’t be done.
This same problem faced Raymond Chandler. In the last book he started to write, just before he died, he was going to have Marlowe marry a French countess. Well, he was very amusing when he told me about this, about how it really would be the end of Marlowe because she’d change all his habits and friends, he’d take to the bottle, and between her wealth and his faults the personality of Marlowe would be quashed. So in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service I took the easy way out. Tracy is no more.
To turn away from James Bond for a bit. Your career obviously started long before James Bond took it over. Could you outline it?
Well I didn’t start writing James Bond until 1952, [when] I think the first book came out, and before then—mark you, you’ll find this in Who’s Who—I’d been at Eton and Sandhurst and then I went into Reuters, which is a big international news agency and had a great deal of fun there for three or four years. Then I went into the City to try and make some money, but I wasn’t very good at just plain making money, although the city of London is a wonderful club to be a member of, and great fun.
And then I went back to Moscow, where I had worked for Reuters for some time, for the Times of London in the beginning of 1939. And from there I was more or less drafted straight into Naval Intelligence, although normally I would have gone into the army, but they wanted somebody with languages and an alleged knowledge of the city. And I found myself there, where I remained assistant to the director of Naval Intelligence, two directors actually, throughout the war until I was demobilized. Then Lord Kemsley, who owned the Sunday Times and a very big string of provincial newspapers, asked me to come along and organize his foreign service, which of course was great fun to do, and I did that until about two years ago. I was Foreign Manager of the Sunday Times and I’m still on the Sunday Times editorial board, but of course journalism is now completely subsidiary to running the James Bond factory.
You’ve more or less incorporated, haven’t you?
I’ve had to. I am a company, and it’s perfectly legitimate, but it’s the only way to keep all ends straight and to save money from the tax people. However, I am British, and proud of being British, and I’m not going to dodge fair payment by making a dash for Switzerland or one of the other tax paradises. I’ll continue to divide my time between England and Jamaica and save a bit less. But even if the tax thing wasn’t in the picture, I’d have to have a company. There are always too many Bond projects at hand.
In the realm of theory, when you’re writing the Bond stories, do you feel any definite obligation to the hero you’ve created, the situations you employ, the public for which you’re writing?
I think I find more of an obligation to myself. I write the sort of books that I, personally, would like to read if somebody else would write them for me. They’re the sort of books to while away an airplane journey or a plane journey, or if one was ill in bed, the sort of things to take one’s mind off one’s troubles. And I from the very beginning have set out to try and entertain and stimulate the reader through all his senses, even down to his taste buds and the meals that are eaten and so forth, which I find entertains people. Previously you’ll find in books the hero has a meal but you never know what he eats. And certainly in English detective stories people are always just drinking interminable cups of tea or pints of beer and that’s the end of it. It amuses me to put together good food and things I happen to like myself for James Bond to eat them for me.
As far as locations and logic are concerned, I think we have discussed these before. I try to make everything credible, as related to what I know about the rather improbable world of espionage and the parts of the world I’ve visited. A glaring inaccuracy, or a stretching of plausibility, would bother me more than it would any reader.
Again, theory: What advice would you give the talented youngster who is seriously concerned with making a career of writing?
Well, I would tell him to write more or less as he speaks. To try to get an accurate ear for the spoken word and not, so to speak, put on a top hat when he sits down at his typewriter. He must not think that literature has to be literary. I talked over this very subject with Georges Simenon not too long ago, and he made the same point – not that we should write in a less literate manner, but that we should avoid pretentiousness. This may be an oversimplification, but I’d tell the youngster to learn to type well and to avoid literary myths.
In looking at literature and theater at the moment, what do you find that you most admire, and what do you most deplore?
I’ve gotten very tired of this “kitchen sink” period and in fact I haven’t seen any of the kitchen sink plays nor read any of the kitchen sink books, with the exception of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, which I thought was amusing enough but not all that shakes. And I must admit that the sort of boiled cabbage school bores me to tears. It isn’t necessary to wallow in filth to know what filth is. Things go altogether too far when filth is viewed as beauty and obscenity becomes accepted communication. The world is drab enough, and sometimes horrifying enough, without having this desolation monopolize our theater, books, and films.
I’m even old fashioned enough to disagree with the findings of the Lady Chatterly case. I think it would have been much better not to push that work out into the world, though I dare say the world will digest it and get used to it as it’s absorbed Miller’s erotic excursions to the tropics. We’ll take any four-letter word without a flinch, and I suppose that those words will ultimately lose their shock, then their meaning. I think that they rather strike an attitude on the page, however, and I refuse to use them.
I’m rather glad that there is, I think, a return to what I might call romantic writing—a sort of story with a beginning, a middle, and an end seems to be returning to favor, and this should be good for everyone.
Note: An 11 minute audio excerpt from this interview can be heard here. Comparing the audio to the printed interview, I noticed several differences. Though Newquist never changed the meaning of Fleming’s words, he changed several of the words themselves and rephrased various sentences during the transcription process.
With that in mind, I have restored Fleming’s original words and phrasing whenever possible. The process remains incomplete, since only an excerpt of the original audio is available and the complete copy is either lost or unlisted. Nevertheless, this interview can be regarded as reliable, if not perfectly exact.