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Ian Fleming
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Inside the mind of a master.
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Disagree if you would like, but I draw a parallel with Ian Fleming and Clive Cussler. I'm sure most good writers use the surroundings and subjects they are are familiar with as each of these guys did, but they way they both did it is very similar to me. Not to mention the longevity and the ability to keep it going (Dirk Pitt) anyway.I am an audiobook person. If you see me I will have bluetooth phones hanging around my neck so I just have to pop them in and hit a button to hear to the story I am listening to. I listened to all of Flemings works one after another, as I love following a character that way.
Thanks for the link. Wanted to leave my opinion as well.
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True. "Write what you know/love", is one of the most common reasons authors use to get themselves started, and Cussler and Fleming embody that with the different subject matter of their work. I've heard a lot about audiobooks. Seems they're quite popular and have advantages over other formats.
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http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articl...
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http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articl...
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In particular, I like how he knows the lore, especially the comment about Ann Fleming's opinion of Bond which is so accurate.
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http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articl...
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http://lecercleclub.com/2012/12/20/th..."
Interesting what he says about professional killers. I wonder what he would have thought if he was alive to see characters like Mitch Rapp.
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http://lecercleclub.com/2012/12/20/th..."
Also amusing is the false modesty regarding whether Bond shares his tastes. Casino Royale was basically a confessional.
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a blunt instrument in the hands of government."- Ian Fleming.
Which beautifully foreshadows the world of Jack Bauer and Mr Rapp.
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http://lecercleclub.com/2012/12/20/th..."
Interesting what he says about professional killers. I wonder what he would..."
The character arc he took James Bond through was starting him off as an anti-hero and then turning him into a more heroic figure, placing him as the Cold War's very own St George who would go off to slay the Soviet Communist Dragon.
There's a whole bunch of James Bond fan-sites out there; I used to frequent just about all of them.But that's no way to live, I found. At some point you just have to stop.
This article here is said to 'no longer be available on MI-6'. Offers links to other sites, but..click..click..click. Nevermind. I'll let it go.
Anyway--more recently--I penned my own appraisal of Fleming. I wonder how my 'take' lines up with what's in that essay.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...-
(scroll down to post #48)
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But that's no way to live, I found. At some point you just have to stop.
This article here is s..."
An excellent analysis. You make an excellent point about how his work is misunderstood. He was trying to parody spy fiction conventions and tropes, with those "calculated exaggerations", as you noted. That desire to "blend the real with the fantastic", is one of his legacies to spy fiction. Even authors who are more down to earth, like Tom Clancy, have continued this tradition.
He has one more legacy. It's creating the appeal of the government assassin template as a character. He wasn't the first but he is the most copied. He made the life of an upper middle class "blunt instrument" look great to his readers. That wish fulfillment, for all the occasional exaggeration live on in characters like Mr Harvath and Mr Rapp. Patriotic professional killers who have solid good and evil world views and go out to slay the new dragons of the 21st century.
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Graham Greene and Mr Le Carre demonstrated but Fleming's clear cut good vs evil is still here. There is no substitute to victory. We Win, They Lose as President Regan put it.
Come to think of it, spy fiction has gone through cycles. We start with Fleming who goes with the binary world view. Then we move on to John Le Carre who writes the definitive morally ambiguous spy thriller "The spy who came in from the cold." In the middle, striking a balance, we have Mr Quiller and the November Man, who while dutifully soldiering on aren't blinded by any idealism or false pretensions of changing the world.
Currently in this age of the war on terror, we're on a second cycle. We have Brad Thor and the late Vince Flynn, who reconstruct the badass gunman on the side of good that Fleming pioneered with Bond.
On the other side, we have a chap named Charles Cummings, a man who rejected an SIS talent spotter who tried to recruit him but was inspired by the incident to go into spy fiction writing. His work is Graham Greene with a dash of Le Carre. In his world, doing the right thing gets one screwed over by the powerful forces which can turn over and squish whoever annoys them like a bug.
And in the middle, taking the place of Adam Hall, we have that Tom Wood chap I posted about on the group you run, and Lieutenant Colonel Brad Taylor.
In regards to Mr Wood, his world is about survival. It's not about what's right or wrong, the only thing that matters, to his anti-hero Victor is who lives or dies. Doing the "morally right" only occasionally factors into his calculations. For starters in the first book, he murders the French RAID counter-terrorist team when they try to storm the apartment he's in, something you wouldn't see a protagonist like Mitch Rapp doing. The characters that survive in his world are the ones who see the complexities with a logical clarity, and have the backbone to accept them, rather than fight them due to some misguided idealism.
Mr Taylor however takes a different approach. He acknowledges the moral complexities, far more than Mr Thor and Flynn did in their work. He did, after all, serve in Afghanistan and unlike Mr Thor and Flynn participated in counter-terrorist work. But his characters try do the right thing even if they get hurt in the process. They're morally clear cut characters disguised as morally ambiguous anti-heroes, who happen to live in a more unpredictable world which reflects this one.
Samuel wrote: "An excellent analysis. ..."Thanks for the kind word!
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Thanks for the kind word!"
You're welcome.
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Thanks for the kind word!"
Found this today. Makes for interesting reading. The man being interviewed is a connoisseur of Bond. Despises the more recent films for starters (except Casino Royale) Also has a preview of a new book he's writing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event...
sorta like F.O. Snelling and Kingsley Amis eh?I don't blame him for his scorn of the new stuff. I'm in his camp. I can't hang with it either. There's just too many items which rub-me-the-wrong way.
I reiterate my earlier idea: as soon as Brosnan's tenure was over, they should have rebooted the series as a period series, set in the circa of the actual stories; with period attire and accroutrements. They could certainly have pulled it off. It would have been fascinating and authentic. The material was there, provided by Fleming himself--kicked aside by EON in the first set of adaptations. So, just delve right back into it. Give us a 'YOLT' with an actual 'Garden of Death'. Give us a 'TMWTGG' actually set in the jungle with a mano-a-mano duel. Raw, just as Fleming wrote it. Drop all the phony gadgets and boobs and car chases.
And they could have done the series in proper order too. Why the hell not? As always, execs underestimate the intelligence of the audience. In many cases this is warranted, but not in the case of Bond fans.
Even the worst of today's dimwit moviegoers would be able to grasp that they are watching a story like yo, set in the past, dude! Freaky! How'd they do that???
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I don't blame him for his scorn of the new stuff. I'm in his camp. I can't hang with it either. There's just too many items which rub-me-the-wrong wa..."
I agree about the Man With The Golden Gun. They didn't need the macguffin. The potential for greatness was there and they blew it.
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I don't blame him for his scorn of the new stuff. I'm in his camp. I can't hang with it either. There's just too many items which rub-me-the-wrong wa..."
I wouldn't say Mr Horowitz is Kingsley Amis. But he is a good writer. He's the author of a series a spy fiction novels. "Young adult" books but a cut above the rest for a good reason. They're a ruthless, brilliant attack on the idea of a "child super spy". Psychologically dark, they take the concept and portray the real, logical conclusion, showing how screwed up a 14 year old boy would become if he was thrown into the world of intelligence gathering. No happy endings and at the end of the series, the main character is a basket case.
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Very insightful and I'm particularly impressed as his appreciation of the character, beautifully summing up Bond. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/09/0...
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- Warren Ellis. Future James Bond Comic Book Series writer.
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- Warren Ellis. Future James Bond Comic Book Series writer.
The drawback to Bond is that there are too many real-world, practical-geopolitical reasons why he can't exist. It has to be remembered that Bond is pure indulgent fantasy. The Brit government would simply never behave in such a reckless manner; Bond would be considered merely a thug in the intelligence community; his airs would be considered insufferable pretensions. No agent would be given the operational leeway and 'free-hand' he receives. The #1 concern of any major power is that of culpability and liability for its deeds. You just don't send a wildcat agent off into a foreign nation to wreak havoc, to play about, no matter what the desired goal or need is. Consequences are too grave. Remember a case like, Gary Powers for instance. Or, 'Bay of Pigs'. The political costs from these brouhahas were staggering.
I second Feliks on this. Today's world, or even that of the 1960s, is no place for a cowboy with a government badge. Also, what goes around comes around, meaning that, if you send some wild agent to create havoc somewhere, there will most probably be a nasty reaction back.
Seriously. Every report he turns in would be questioned and dissected and found unreliable. Political infighters (as in LeCarre's world) would shred him. He would enjoy no prestige at all.He runs no networks--he gets his tips and makes his decisions--on the word of strippers, gunmen, and pimps! If he was working for a bonafide agency they'd probably kill him themselves.
Bond lives in a carefully contrived Fleming fairy-tale where you trust your own side. Sentimental but not realistic. That world was maybe WWII, but not post WWII. Impossible because the Soviets had riddled the west with their agents, if nothing else. They popped up like jack-in-the-boxes throughout the 50s-60s. HUGE security leaks.
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thing, and whatever it is that enables a good killer to function also seems
to defeat him in the end. The killer’s spirit begins to fail, he gets the
seed of death within himself. As I wrote in one of my books, From Russia
with Love, the trouble with a lot of hired assassins such as the Russians
use is that they feel rather badly when they’ve killed five or six people,
and ultimately get soft or give themselves up, or they take to drugs or
drink. It would be interesting to conduct an inquiry to determine who was
the greatest assassin in history – who was, or who is. I have no particular
candidate. But they all do grow a sort of bug inside them after a bit."- Ian Fleming.
Found this quote yesterday. An Interesting observation.
http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articl...