Kingsley Amis Reviews John Pearson's Life of Ian Fleming

Books Other Continuation Authors
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DIAL M FOR MOTHER (The Observer; Oct 23, 1966)

by Kingsley Amis

John Pearson was a journalist for some years, and this biography is journalistic in method: factual, well-documented, thorough in its presentation of surface events. With Ian Fleming only a couple of years in his grave, to fault such an approach would not be easy. The study in depth, like the definitive critical analysis, will have to wait. So it may be unreasonable to complain that this book does little more than fill out the impression of Fleming that can be gained from already recorded interviews and such, and from a close reading of the Bond novels.

The journalist is given jobs, or undertakes assignments, as distinct from the biographer or critic who, presumably, chooses his subject for some more emotional reason. Mr. Pearson’s last book, it seems, was an account of that perennially unburning issue, the activities of Donald Campbell with his motorcar. At times, the journalistic necessity of sharpening, vitalising, jazzing up not very dramatic material, of making a story out of a non-story, lies heavy on this biography. A chapter headed “Enter Chandler” promises more than a short account of an unsuccessful lunch party and an assertion that Chandler’s encouragement helped Fleming to decide against closing the Bond saga after the fifth novel.

One probably expects nothing very much from “Eden at Goldenye,” and one certainly gets it. The positive information in these 10 pages could be boiled down into, and would have been perfectly acceptable as, a catty paragraph about the prime-ministerial couple’s relaxed stay at the luxurious Jamaican home of famed Bond creator Ian Fleming and sparkling hostess Anne Fleming being enlivened by a rat-hunt organised by gallant Sir Anthony and his two detectives—seven rats reported missing. Elsewhere, the gossip columnist’s chronic drizzle of names becomes a downpour.

The interesting, or at any rate piquant, scraps of information here could not be worked up into any sort of story. I read with a sense of shock, as if life had suddenly revealed itself after all as a monstrous charade, that in 1948 or so Fleming was planning a book on Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century philosopher, in collaboration with Edith Sitwell. And yet, reconsidered, the pairing is not so unlikely. The man who had studied Rilke and Thomas Mann as well as Sapper had the markings of a secret highbrow as well as being, quite out in the open, a romantic pessimist with faint Wagnerian overtones; see the poison-garden scenes in You Only Live Twice, the most haunting and vividly realized locale in any of the books, not excluding Dr. No’s Crab Key.

When it comes to what some readers will regard as his main task, that of suggesting links between Fleming and his work, Mr. Pearson is uninformative. Fleming smoked a lot. Bond smokes a lot. Fleming liked cars. So does Bond. And Darko Kerim (From Russia with Love) is partly based on a real person, and Donovan Grant (same book) is named after a real person. The only striking identifications are of Aleister Crowley—whom Fleming tried to call in to interrogate Rudolf Hess—with Le Chiffre (Casino Royale), and of Fleming’s mother with M: get your teeth into that one, chaps.

The trouble is that Mr. Pearson fails to take Fleming seriously enough as a writer. Predictably, he finds the characterization two dimensional and repetitive. This sounds fair enough until one starts wondering how it could have been deepened without distraction and losing pace, and recognizing the powers of invention that gave each successive villain the appearance of frightening novelty, and remembering Honeychile Rider (never mind her name for now), Hugo Drax in his non-villainous moments, Darko Kerim, whether “based on” somebody or not. And, of course, Bond himself is found to be a mouthpiece, a dummy, a zombie, etc., etc., as if that mattered.

Mr. Pearson subscribes, with a modification, to the fashionable view that the universal success of Fleming’s novels is not specially connected with their literary qualities. The standard line is that, by some more or less discreditable—and very mysterious—process, the books appeared at just the right time to seize the collective imagination and all that. (In fact, as is demonstrated here, it took five years and five books for the seed to strike, for Fleming to create the taste by which he is enjoyed.) According to Mr. Pearson what did the trick was the depth of the author’s identification with his hero. Such identification, however deep, would explain and guarantee nothing. Fleming succeeded because within the limits he set himself—and nobody has ever understood that part of the job more clearly—he was a popular writer of genius who, like all such, made no attempt to gauge his public and understood very little about the appeal of his work.

The book has some well-chosen photographs and a hideous plastic-and-floodlight Jekyll-and-Hyde cover illustration.

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Here’s another fugitive item of Amis’s Bond-related journalism, a review of John Gardner’s The Man From Barbarossa.

It’s not quite premium Bond

No tarantulas—and 007’s love life isn’t what it used to be

By Kingsley Amis (The Sunday Express, Aug. 11, 1991)

John Gardner’s The Man From Barbarossa (Hodder & Stoughton, £13.99) is his tenth novel about the further adventures of James Bond—the most famous spy in the world. The fabulous 007 was the original creation of Ian Fleming, whose first book about him was published as long ago as 1953. Fleming’s last was published in 1965, the year he died [sic].

And so far Bond has appeared in 23 novels altogether and 18 films. Gardner has carried off an extremely demanding task—having managed to write one of those 23 novels myself, back in 1968, I have some idea of just how demanding a task it is.

In The Man from Barbarossa echoes of the world of the original Bond are wisely played down—for one thing, the old chap would now be pushing 80 on a strict count. So this Bond is a senior agent of our Secret Service. M is still his boss, Bond is still guarded by Miss Moneypenny, and Bill Tanner is still the Chief of Staff.

That’s about it. And this M has slipped down a rung or two socially and shed enough years to take a full part in the operation instead of just growling from behind his desk.

Barbarossa was the actual code-name for the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941, and this operation concerns a mysterious present-day terrorist group in the USSR, Scales of Justice, who are bent on revenge.

Their aim is to force the trial of a Russian ex-officer for collaborating in a wartime massacre of the Jews, but something larger and more sinister is being plotted. The KGB call in British, French, and Israeli intelligence to give them a hand in crushing this threat to the new order in the USSR.

Bond, who has an easier ride than sometimes in the past (no sharks or giant tarantulas) foils the plot and frustrates the rocket attack on…sshh! He managed more or less without gadgetry too, and his sexual adventures are limited.

Stephanie Adore from Paris has a tinkling laugh and can even nod her head elegantly, and Natasha has legs “so long they seem to reach to her navel,” but they are given little scope.

If this sounds a bit lacking in sparkle, that goes for most of the book. The Russian scene is well described, but the flow of ideas is slack, as is the writing itself. The jacket material keeps the name of Ian Fleming almost out of sight, which is only too appropriate.

Of course, this book will help reprints of the earlier Bonds. And what’s wrong with that?

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I have to agree with Amis here. I remember The Man From Barbarossa being my first solid disappointment with Gardner’s Bond novels.

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Ironically, John Gardner called TMFB as his favorite of his Bond novels.

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Agreed. I like the idea Gardner has a long tenure which is truly his, even if it means there’s some average reads. Apart from Barbarossa, which I couldn’t be bothered with, I don’t think his other books are outright terrible. There are some good ideas in there. I remember being pleasantly surprised just how much I liked Death is Forever, considering what preceded. I think that was Gardner’s last high point.

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I pretty much agree with everything you say sharpshooter. Overall, I like John Gardner’s work although the endless double/triple crosses do get tiresome, and the first half of his tenure is considerably better than the later half. Having said that, Death Is Forever is clearly (for me) the best of the second half of Gardner’s tenure especially after Brokenclaw. Like you, I liked some of his ideas such as the serial killer/political assassin in Never Send Flowers and Cold Fall was an interesting experiment with a four-year interlude between the first and second halves of a connected mission, but CF felt too rushed and not drawn out/developed enough. I think you can tell he was done/burned out with Bond by that point.

But if nothing else, Gardner kept the literary Bond alive for many years and for that alone, I am grateful.

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I was never truly satisfied with any of Gardner’s Bond books, though the earlier ones were definitely better than the latter ones. That said, I welcomed their existence and appreciated getting an ongoing regular Bond literary fix, even if I questioned many of his decisions.

The same could be said for Benson, except I felt he understood the character far better than Gardner ever did. And Benson’s plots didn’t require the unending multiple double crosses and traitorous turns. In fact, I think Benson did a much better job of creating scenarios that could work for film Bond. Also, unlike Gardner, Benson’s output improved over time.

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That’s also the gist of it for me. In 1983, when I first discovered Licence Renewed (and a short time later For Special Services and Icebreaker), I was so hungry for anything Bond, I was much more forgiving where Gardner‘s version was off the mark. If memory serves, Amis trashed that first effort and wasn’t much fonder of most of what came later.

But starved as we were, our generation* still gobbled up the offerings - I used to read every book at least twice - and kept hoping, deluding ourselves this was litBond. And so it was, in spite of those endless briefings in hotel rooms, ‘secret’ compartments and double, triple, quadruple crossings.

Benson was a welcome change as he seemed to understand the character better, also the nature of the Bond tale, effectively an adventure story in espionage drag. Only, here the leaning into EonBond showed how far these two sides of the character reside from each other. Often more entertaining than Gardner’s later works, there was still no doubt these books had little in common with the ones published almost 50 years earlier.

As fans we have to realise all continuations - from Amis to Higson and Sherwood - are re-imaginations. Authors bring their own vision, their own interpretation, to Bond. And the only real aspiration has to be whether they entertain us. When they do it’s perhaps no longer important whether they pass the Fleming test.

*@Jim is another member of our merry club of not-exactly-youngtimers. He’s suffered the same hunger, stuffed it with the same annual Gardner/Benson diet, disagreed sometimes violently, but came back for more each year. As we all did. His splendid 007th Minute/007th Chapter series is an in-depth meditation (sometimes an exorcism) on the nature of our fascination with Bond in its various forms.

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Without reservation, I can say that, as much as I love most of the Bond films, if I made one to entertain myself it wouldn’t look like most of the movies that I love. They’d be much nearer to the literary Bond, boring the hell out of most children, probably only attracting limited audiences, and earning max 18% - 20% return on investment.

There would be a ski chase.

And Bond would drive someone’s 1933 4.5L Bentley in a chase, at least once.

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Like a lot of folks here I read through all of Gardner after no “new” Flemings were left. Reading all of Gardner’s Bonds, and the first Benson, mostly extinguished my interest in continuation novels. Aside from their decline in quality across his over-long run, Gardner’s books had a fundamental blandness that fared poorly next to Fleming’s eccentricity. Gardner wasn’t on Fleming’s wavelength, whereas Amis was. If Fleming’s Bonds were minor art, Gardner’s were product.

Bond continuations are like Sherlock Holmes continuations—fun, but never able to fully recreate the magic recipe of the originals. Holmes was unique because his creator had an odd, unique mind that ran along its own lines. Anyone who tries reolicating its thought processes, as expressed in fiction, will just sound like an imitator. The same is true for Fleming, with his eccentric taste and temperament. He was also a more unpredictable writer than we acknowledge. If Fleming had died in 1960, would anyone tasked to write continuations have written books remotely like TSWLM, OHMSS, or YOLT? A writer like Doyle or Fleming can make or break his own formula when he feels like it, since his characters and their world are extensions of himself and adjust naturally to what the author devises. Continuation authors do not have such freedom. They make an approximation what the original author’s recipe was; if they stray too far from it they get complaints, and the same applies if they adhere too closely. A Bond continuation can try expanding the recipe by adding elements from the films, but incorporating elements devised for use in a visual medium into a novel doesn’t always work, and can even water down the flavor.

So the continuation author has the near impossible task of applying their own individuality to the output of someone else’s individuality. Amis understood Bond deeply enough to step inside Fleming’s mentality while retaining his own, like an actor playing a role, but how many other authors have that capability? And even if they have a good understanding of their predecessor’s mind, they also need the chops of a good thriller writer if their book is to work. That was arguably Benson’s failing and Gardner’s strength. But as writers neither had an individuality as strong as that of Fleming or Amis. And of course authors with a strong level of individuality prefer to deal with their own creations. Amis was fine with Colonel Sun being a one-off, and Fleming turned down the offer of Sax Rohmer’s widow to take over the Fu Manchu novels.

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On that note: Amis’ The James Bond Dossier cannot be praised enough. It’s a true fan’s work and shows why the originals were such a unique experience.

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Amen! The Dossier is now more than 60 years old and has yet to be be surpassed as the best critical study of Fleming. There have been some fine academic essays on various aspects of the books, and some fine general overviews (including Benson’s James Bond Bedside Companion), but when it comes to range, perception, and pure readibility, Amis remains at the top. The Dossier belongs on every Fleming’s fan bookshelf.

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