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Bond also showed qualms about killing in From Russia With Love, For Your Eyes Only, "The Living Daylights," etc. Bond is happy to kill those who try to kill him, but otherwise he shows a normal respect for human life.
It's aggravating that when a major media outlet runs a piece related to Fleming, they tend to hire a blowhard who doesn't know how to write without relying on sweeping and usually wrong-headed generalizations. And so the well is continually poisoned...
***
Moving on to TriggerMortis's points regarding the relations between Fleming's Bond and movie Bond--I've often thought that if you threw all the movie Bonds into a blender, you'd get something close to Fleming's Bond. Granted, you'd have to remove a few bits before throwing them in--Roger Moore would need some pruning, though he encapsulates Book Bond's charming side perfectly; and Brosnan, since he mostly pastiched Connery and Moore, might be redundant to the mix--but it helps to see each film version as accentuating (and often over-accentuating) different facets of the original through their screen personas.
Found this on the Book Bond website (I don't use twitter) :
https://twitter.com/sophpainter
Lucky you!
With the exception of the even luckier Bondologists who received pr-release editions some weeks ago, you have stolen a march on us.
I assume it's the large format airport paperback edition that Easons have broken the embargo on?
I'll be getting mine on Monday night and will doubtless get through the first few chapters
on the train home. I did the same thing with SOLO and felt quite depressed by the time I disembarked. Hopefully, this time I'll be elated!
I think these days they tend to publish the hardbacks and paperbacks together for that extra sales push. They certainly did this with the Raymond Benson Bonds which towards the end had quite small print runs and little in the way of publicity. I recall getting a paperback of Solo (in Waterstones) soon after I got the hardback in Tesco.
Going by the ISBN number on the back (ISBN 978 1 4091 5953 7) that tallies with the "Export Trade Paperback". An E-book and Hardback edition are also mentioned. I bought the Trigger Mortis paperback for an offer price of £11.99 but its actual price is £13.99 on the back cover. It must be an advance "export" paperback edition.
The window display looks fabulous. Roll on Monday!
In a novel, you can make your main character as unlikable as possible because a 'hero' with many unlikable traits makes for a far more interesting character. There are more layers to peel away.
The difference between the Bond of the novels and the movies is, as always, because of money.
James Bond novels (of course) cost far less to produce than a movie, so there is less of a gamble for the publisher and tbh the James Bond name alone is enough to shift enough copies to turn a profit, regardless of quality.
But as Bond movies are terribly expensive to produce you have to soften the edges so as not to offend the audience and risk losing paying punters through word of mouth. I don't think they'd want to make the figurehead of their franchise (along with all the merchandising and product placement) so potentially controversial. Can you imagine if SPECTRE featured a scene like this, where Bond complains about the lack of rooms in a Japanese whore-house?
I find it kinda hilarious and definitely 'of the time.' But his prejudices and vices also make him a lot more interesting than the bland 'goody' that he sometimes is in the films.
Don't get me wrong: I am on this forum because I love the cinematic Bond and grew up watching the movies. I read and fell in love with the novels much later. I think that the reason the older Bond movies seem closer to the novels' tone is that pop culture in general was a lot more sexist and generally insensitive back then.
But unless the producers and fans of the Bond movies would be willing to dial the budget right back - removing the action sequences, cars, glamour etc, we are not doing to get Fleming's Bond on the big screen any time soon.
Take away the last two lines and the scene would be acceptable enough as an example of cross-cultural teasing--Bond is ragging on Tiger for being pretentious about an old whorehouse. But even then the scene wouldn't make it into Spectre, mostly because the dialogue is too long. Having a character speak an entire paragraph in an action film would take time away from the explosions.
At Easons by any chance? :D
early supplies.
Indeed. I came across it quite by accident. :)
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/trigger-mortis-by-anthony-horowitz-and-ian-fleming-review-a2926741.html
The reviewer, Nicholas Lezard, is a Fleming fan and wrote an introduction to the Blofeld Trilogy.
The New York Times also weighs in:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/books/review/trigger-mortis-a-james-bond-novel-by-anthony-horowitz.html
And the New Zealand Herald:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11508036
this is why if we are going to get new Bond novels... please for the love of god set them in today's world... trying to retrofit modern acceptabilities to the past - especially when it's being unceremoniously plopped into Fleming's timeline just doesn't sit right to me... if you are going to make a PC Bond, then make him a man in today's world - not the 50s..
wait... didn't he (Horowitz) just go on about how Bond shouldn't be self-doubting or weak??
thats not the point i was getting at... it would actually be a nice change of pace if Bond got turned down by some women - instead of being able to bed any woman he finds.
That already happened with Gala Brand and Tilly Masterton.
forget about Tilly.. at least from the film of GF
in all fairness, i haven't read much Fleming.. i've made it through CR and LALD and only part of MR - so i didn't know that about Gala..
There in lies the problem!
I was wondering if they would have posters in the subways. I remember seeing them for Devil May Care when I was living in London at the time. Did they have them for Carte Blanche and Solo? "Pussy Galore is back". Love it! :
http://www.thebookbond.com/
They need to have this advertisement outside a recently renovated brothel.
One of the reasons why I find the novel GF in many ways superior to the movie, in spite of the absurdity of Goldfinger's plan. Bond is more active in the novel.
That said, I don't mind a Bond that makes mistakes. He can mess it up sometimes. In the movie, he is however a bit too passive.
Couldn't agree more old chap. I remain her most ardent admirer!