There already is an edited version of Live and Let Die, and what’s more it was Fleming approved.
The American publishers were concerned about some of the racism and inaccuracies and asked for them to be changed/toned down and Fleming happily agreed and supervised/carried them out for the American edition of the novel.
It’s probably still not perfect by today’s standard, but it would definitely be better (I’m pretty sure it renamed the chapter ****** Heaven for one) and, as the final approved version by Fleming, it couldn’t be considered censorship to make that more available.
I think it formed the basis of the 2014 Penguin version (I think it had a blue cover), so it is obtainable today outside of a sixty year old american paperback. The introduction to that edition also states there is evidence to suggest Fleming preferred this improved American edition, so reverting to that one, at least partially (I believe the American versions also edited severely the sex and violence) could arguably be done in the name of Fleming.
Amazon lists the 2012 edition as having the original text restored. I’m curious, has anyone listened to the audio book of Live and Let Die? If so, how does it handle the language?
You might be thinking of the Vintage edition published a couple years ago, which claimed Fleming “likely preferred many of these edits to the original British version.” But if Fleming preferred the American edits, why didn’t he incorporate them into the British versions? He had many opportunities to do so, especially after the books became best-sellers.
Fleming was eager to break into the American market and agreed to any edits suggested by American editors. That’s why the first American paperback edition of Casino Royale was retitled You Asked For It, and Moonraker was christened Too Hot to Handle. Fleming approved of those changes too.
In any case, Fleming’s letters suggest that he did not prefer the American edits. For example, there’s the letter sent to his American literary agent Naomi Burton in May 1955 (quoted in Chapter 19 of Pearson’s biography):
“By the way and sucks to you, I had a drink with Raymond Chandler last night and he said that the best bit of Live and Let Die was the conversation between the two negroes in Harlem, which he said was dead accurate. Perhaps you remember that you nearly sneered me into cutting it out on grounds that ‘Negroes don’t talk like that.’”
Chandler’s copy of LALD came directly from Fleming, and thus was the British version. The American edition was published in April, so perhaps Fleming either forgot or didn’t know the conversation had been cut. In any case, the letter makes clear that Fleming was proud of the scene and suggests he preferred the original British version.
To further the case of the prosecution, Vintage states the British and American texts incorporated “one minor factual correction (regarding the manufacturer of a brand of perfume).” This refers to a line from chapter 11 that now reads: “Solitaire called for him. The room smelled of Balmain’s Vent Vert.”
Fleming originally wrote “Dior’s Vent Vert” and was embarrassed by this error, as one of his letters demonstrates: “Alas, attributing Vent Vert to Dior [as opposed to Balmain] was nearly as bad as when, in one of my books, I made Bond eat asparagus with sauce bearnaise instead of mousseline.”
So this correction to Live and Let Die was definitely requested by Fleming, and it raises the question—if Fleming requested this change in the British edition, why didn’t he request the American racial edits as well, if he supposedly preferred them? Given the opportunity to make those edits, Fleming only chose to correct his perfume mistake. I rest my case.
It would be pointless to replace the American text at this point, after it has been circulating for 18 years. Why follow the lone example of HBO, which has already generated a backlash? No book or movie publishers have done anything similar. Kino and the BFI have not removed their Blu-Rays of Birth of a Nation from circulation. Now, if IFP decides to include a contextual note to future editions of LALD I would have no objection (moreover, I would love to see fully annotated editions of the novels), but Fleming’s original text should stand as it is. There’s no strong evidence that Fleming preferred the American edit for anything besides commercial reasons. So why reinstate it? Every Fleming novel contains passages that are now highly offensive. Anyone reading him has to accept that unpleasant fact. The expurgated edition of LALD presents a false picture of Fleming’s treatment of race, and it would be a patronizing gesture to suddenly hide it after nearly two decades in American circulation.
Dr. No: Chinese/German (Canadian actor)
Goldfinger: “He’s British, but he doesn’t sound like it” (Bahamian passport). German actor
Emilio Largo: What’s in a name? (Adolfo Celi was Italian too)
Osato: Kick, chop…(Teru Shimada)
Blofeld: Polish/German. (English with European accent , American, English again)
The issue habitually gets easily trivialised into the killing of joy, rather than the killing of people. No-one has demonstrated about Gone with the Wind or Live and Let Die, or old UK sitcoms that relied on blackface for laughs, but the more it is made to look like that by a media largely dominated by concerns not immediately connected to those without privilege, and with the resources to spew out that this sort of silliness is the concern, the more those blithely absorbing such a message will believe it is. It isn’t. However, that’s the game and it moves in cycles. If one trivialises one’s opponent, one dismisses any legitimate concern into “Now they want to ban Dad’s Army” or some such. Live and Let Die is safe. People might not be.
The films remove countries of origin from the book. Savalas was the only Blofeld (of the 5 at the time) who wasn’t a Brit. Wiseman plays Dr No with a cut glass English accent, whilst Gert Frobe may be German, but the character is stated as British and indeed all his dialogue is done by a British actor. The main threat is only blatantly not a Brit to a casual viewer (and I do mean where neither the character or the actors performance says otherwise) twice.
If I had never read an unabridged copy of the text, I would never have learned that most excellent of words: “Perzackly.” I would be a poorer man for it.
The German translation of Moonraker has been a pet peeve of mine for ages and I believe I’ve written several times about it – not sure if on this one already, but certainly on the old forums.
A few years ago, I even compared the German and the English version by eliminating everything from the English version that wasn’t translated. A simple word count I made afterwards braought the result that the German version was missing about 25 percent. And it wasn’t just the Nazi stuff that was missing or at least toned down. What was also missing were great parts of the Blades scenes, for example. The gambling was there, but the description of the scenery was cut heavily.
The German editors obviously believed that the German audience would be bored by the lengthy descriptions and in total ignorance edited out what was one of Flemings strengths. They thought the German audiences wanted just sex, crime and action and accordingly advertised them as “written in hard American style”. The German editors treated them as pulp, and unfortunately, that’s the widespread reputation the Bond novels still have in Germany today.
I’ve started, but never finished, doing the same with OHMSS. Bond’s childhood musings on the beach are almost non existent. But in this case, it depends on which version you have. There are some early hardcovers from the 1960 which are slightly less abridged. And contrary to all other editions before the new and complete translation, those also have the chapter titles instead of just numbers. Also, the German OHMSS has a whole chapter less than the original version: The chapter “Bond of Bond Street?” is missing almost entirely, what’s left of it is added to the chapter before. When I reached that point, I stopped the project, I had seen enough.
A few years ago, in an interview with a German newspaper, Peter Janson-Smith rightfully put it like this: “Publication-wise, the Bond novels haven’t been in good hands in Germany for decades.”
The toning down of Nazi aspects had some kind of tradition in Germany after the war. German audiences just didn’t want to be bothered with that kind of stuff, and in hurrying obedience, publishers edited heavily in order to avoid harmful debates and bad business.
A prime example for this is “Casablanca”. The first German version of the movie came out only in 1952. In this version, all Nazi elements were edited out with the result that it was 25 minutes shorter. Major Strasser isn’t in the movie at all, Victor Laszlo is “Victor Larsen”, a Norwegian nuclear scientist who had invented some McGuffin which some nondescript bad guys wanted to steal. Capitaine Renault is “Monsieur Laport” from Interpol, etc. It took until 1975 until proper newly dubbed version was shown on German TV for the first time…
If people get offeded by fiction then it’s their issue. They can choose not to read the book, and they can choose to be an adult and see it for what it is: fiction. Fiction rarely hurts anyone.
Hopefully future generations won’t be so offended and sensitive as the current rotten crop.
I agree it shouldn’t but only because of when it was made. But I could make some scary, offensive and damaging fiction that should not be allowed. Not that I would.
To say LALD was a product of its time, is to let it off the hook for how blatantly racist many parts of the book are, especially chapter 7. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, that particular chapter was renamed in the American version further proving that this language was awful and offensive in 1954, let alone today. Racism and racist language should be regarded as such and not dismissed because it exists within a piece of fiction. Unlike say, Mark Twain with Huckleberry Finn, Ian Fleming was a well known racist and he was not making some meta commentary on larger issues. That said, no I don’t think Live and Let Die should be removed from publication (I was posing a question when I started this thread). Like all works of art, it is protected by freedom of speech. Hate speech, no matter how disgusting, is (maybe unfortunately) protected by freedom of speech. So, no I don’t support the ban of LALD or books in general, though I would support a warning and/or forward to give some background at the start of the book.
Live and Let Die depicts its time with everything that entails, especially the racism, casual and outspoken. As such it’s a document of an often found trait of society. A trait that’s every bit as wrong today as it was then. And one that’s increasingly topical and pressing today, as events in our time attest to. We haven’t come such a long way since.
The question though is, does Live and Let Die affect the reader to racism? I don’t think so. It’s not a tractate that preaches racial hatred as such. A racist reader will of course read it with a degree of joyful satisfaction, but such a reader will read everything from the newspaper to the ads in that mindset. Other readers will be put off by the racism as they are by the racism in other ways of life. Life and Let Die doesn’t teach racism.
A variety of current political streamings do just that, teaching hatred and division. Their intent is harm and terror, their results actual people injured or killed. This is an entirely different category of destruction and human pain. And should be the focus of attention.
This. Just because something was “more acceptable” at one time, does not mean it was right. Racism was as wrong in 1954 as it is today. The founding fathers, many of whom were slave owners (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc), knew slavery was terrible, but chose not to address it demonstrating the idea that all we need for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. LALD may not be trying to influence one’s views against a certain people, but it certainly takes a very direct attitude towards race relations. Fleming goes out of his way to portray the black people in the novel as different, right down to his embarrassing attempts to mimic the way he thought black people talked. Something that is very much stereotypical and racist and yet Fleming was proud of it. It’s true that Bond and Felix, whilst expressing some very ambivalent attitudes towards race, don’t come off as intentionally racist. Their attitudes do represent the time the book was written, but that doesn’t make it right. Bond shouldn’t be musing about liking Quarrel because he has white man attributes. The book is racist, plain and simple and being written in another time does not excuse that.