Do you prefer the 50's or the 60's Fleming novels?

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  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Well, MR is my favourite novel, but OHMSS is the one that most vividly stays with me. So, umm.. both.
  • edited June 2017 Posts: 170
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  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,158
    Interesting.
    I was under the impression that most people truly love that one. But hey, to each their own. ;-)
  • edited June 2017 Posts: 170
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  • Posts: 15,106
    I think Fleming achieved true greatness in the 60s, see my posts here. it is a cliché to say one author transcends the genre, but it is true of Fleming.
  • edited May 2017 Posts: 676
    sunsanvil wrote: »
    I just finished another read through all of them and, interestingly, I like the short stories the best. Someone wrote a forward which suggested that at heart Flemming was a short story writer and struggled with "filling out" the longer books. Not to discount any of them, they are all good reads, but I think its a fairly astute observation.
    Agreed.

    If we're just talking novels, I'll go with the '50s. My favourites are the quieter, tighter stories (CR, MR). And the only real missteps are found in DAF and GF. The '60s stories get quite a bit hairer, and I find more missteps here as well. TSWLM is my least favourite Bond book, and I find YOLT and TMWTGG rather thin (the latter for obvious reasons).
  • DoctorNoDoctorNo USA-Maryland
    Posts: 755
    I agree with someone on this post long ago about the 50s being grittier. SMERSH is more compelling than SPECTRE because it's real and Fleming hates it (the same way he hated the Nazis). That hate is reflected in the books and is always an undercurrent driving Bond and the stories.
  • Posts: 15,106
    SMERSH was no longer real when Fleming wrote his novels.
  • ClarkDevlinClarkDevlin Martinis, Girls and Guns
    Posts: 15,423
    Ludovico wrote: »
    SMERSH was no longer real when Fleming wrote his novels.
    Definitely. It was disbanded in 1946 with no successor on the surface. Presumably merged with KGB.
  • Posts: 15,106
    And in any case Fleming's SMERSH is pure fantasy, no more no less than SPECTRE.
  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,244
    Perhaps, but the sheer notion the Russians had such a 'death squad' programme worked wonders. The whole charm of his writing is in putting these magnificent fantasies in the real world.
    Oddly enough the short stories i find the most compelling, but I love the grandeur of the sixties' novels as much. I love TMWTGG too, it's one of my favorites and I never understood why people don't like it.

    To be honest, I don't think I can devide the books in fifties and sixties and chose 'the best era'. I love them all, in many different ways.
  • ClarkDevlinClarkDevlin Martinis, Girls and Guns
    Posts: 15,423
    If I remember reading correctly, however, Fleming created SPECTRE in order to avoid being a continuous target by the Russians because he used too much material under SMERSH's umbrella. It's pure fictitious perhaps, but it may have given the world an idea to what it was and that must've nettled the Russians.
  • DoctorNoDoctorNo USA-Maryland
    edited May 2017 Posts: 755
    Fiction based on real is not the same as pure fiction. The cold war, if you're living in it or through it, adds tension that is otherwise not there unless you've experienced some wave of terror Spectre inflicted.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    If I remember reading correctly, however, Fleming created SPECTRE in order to avoid being a continuous target by the Russians because he used too much material under SMERSH's umbrella. It's pure fictitious perhaps, but it may have given the world an idea to what it was and that must've nettled the Russians.

    If I recall correctly SPECTRE was a creation that began life in the 'James Bond of the Secret Service' scripts. They wanted a more cinematic, one might say 'fantastical' threat, that took the best of Fleming's earlier musings on SMERSH but wrapped them in a slightly sexier skin.
  • ClarkDevlinClarkDevlin Martinis, Girls and Guns
    Posts: 15,423
    RC7 wrote: »
    If I remember reading correctly, however, Fleming created SPECTRE in order to avoid being a continuous target by the Russians because he used too much material under SMERSH's umbrella. It's pure fictitious perhaps, but it may have given the world an idea to what it was and that must've nettled the Russians.

    If I recall correctly SPECTRE was a creation that began life in the 'James Bond of the Secret Service' scripts. They wanted a more cinematic, one might say 'fantastical' threat, that took the best of Fleming's earlier musings on SMERSH but wrapped them in a slightly sexier skin.
    It did, yes. But, there's a reason why they changed the antagonists from SMERSH to SPECTRE in From Russia With Love, trying to avoid the wrong message to the wider audience.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    RC7 wrote: »
    If I remember reading correctly, however, Fleming created SPECTRE in order to avoid being a continuous target by the Russians because he used too much material under SMERSH's umbrella. It's pure fictitious perhaps, but it may have given the world an idea to what it was and that must've nettled the Russians.

    If I recall correctly SPECTRE was a creation that began life in the 'James Bond of the Secret Service' scripts. They wanted a more cinematic, one might say 'fantastical' threat, that took the best of Fleming's earlier musings on SMERSH but wrapped them in a slightly sexier skin.
    It did, yes. But, there's a reason why they changed the antagonists from SMERSH to SPECTRE in From Russia With Love, trying to avoid the wrong message to the wider audience.

    The film? I think it was always the intention to build in SPECTRE, hence the reference in DN, plus a fear of SMERSH feeling dated.
  • Posts: 15,106
    DoctorNo wrote: »
    Fiction based on real is not the same as pure fiction. The cold war, if you're living in it or through it, adds tension that is otherwise not there unless you've experienced some wave of terror Spectre inflicted.

    Fiction is pure fiction. Yes there's a context, but there is very little in common with Fleming's SMERSH and the historical one. And I might add that Blofeld is one of the greatest villains in all fiction. Fleming's later work is just as great as his earlier one.
  • suavejmfsuavejmf Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
    Posts: 5,131
    Without a doubt the 50's novels are far superior......fresher, well written and taut thrillers. DN being my favourite due to the amazingly vivid exotic locations and gripping plot.
  • suavejmfsuavejmf Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
    Posts: 5,131
    RC7 wrote: »
    RC7 wrote: »
    If I remember reading correctly, however, Fleming created SPECTRE in order to avoid being a continuous target by the Russians because he used too much material under SMERSH's umbrella. It's pure fictitious perhaps, but it may have given the world an idea to what it was and that must've nettled the Russians.

    If I recall correctly SPECTRE was a creation that began life in the 'James Bond of the Secret Service' scripts. They wanted a more cinematic, one might say 'fantastical' threat, that took the best of Fleming's earlier musings on SMERSH but wrapped them in a slightly sexier skin.
    It did, yes. But, there's a reason why they changed the antagonists from SMERSH to SPECTRE in From Russia With Love, trying to avoid the wrong message to the wider audience.

    The film? I think it was always the intention to build in SPECTRE, hence the reference in DN, plus a fear of SMERSH feeling dated.

    With regards to the films. I believe Eon wanted to avoid political references.
  • edited May 2017 Posts: 2,914
    The scripts that became Thunderball originally used the Mafia as the villains, perhaps because the filmmakers wanted to sell the film in the Iron Curtain (the EON Bond films similarly refused to antagonize the Russians). Eventually it was decided the Mafia were not grand enough villains, so Spectre was created--the perfect apolitical adversary.
    Fleming used Spectre only in Thunderball--though the organization is named in OHMSS it functions only as Blofeld's personal army, not a corporation of international criminals. In YOLT Blofeld has even lost his army and lives as a retiree in the garden of death.

    After disposing of Blofeld, Fleming reinstated the Russians as his villains--in TMWTGG the KGB brainwashes Bond in TMWTGG and employs Scaramanga. Fleming acknowledged Smersh's disbanding and used the KGB as its replacement. It probably would have continued as the villain of the next few Bond novels, though by 1968 the Cultural Revolution and the rise of China might have convinced Fleming to use the Chinese as villains, as Amis did.
    But one should also consider that Fleming was visibly influenced by the Bond movies, and since Spectre was the recurring adversary in the films, Fleming might have resurrected the organization under a new leader--perhaps Irma Bundt or a surviving member of the Thunderball-era group.

    As for whether the 50s or 60s Bond novels are better, I think it makes more sense to divide the saga into the early (CR, LALD, MR, DAF), mid-period (FRWL, DN, FYEO, GF) and later (TB, TSWLM, OHMSS, YOLT, TMWTGG, OP) books. Early Fleming has an unmistakable freshness, while Middle Fleming shows an author at full confidence and at his best as a prose stylist. But Late Fleming, though marred by ill-health and sagging energy, is the richest era in characterization (especially Bond's) and has an epic scale. I rate the Blofeld trilogy as Fleming's masterpiece, and thus regard his late period as his greatest.
  • suavejmfsuavejmf Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
    Posts: 5,131
    Great post. To be fair the whole era is brilliant. TB being another firm favourite of mine.....an absolutely outstanding novel in everyway.
  • Posts: 676
    Revelator wrote: »
    As for whether the 50s or 60s Bond novels are better, I think it makes more sense to divide the saga into the early (CR, LALD, MR, DAF), mid-period (FRWL, DN, FYEO, GF) and later (TB, TSWLM, OHMSS, YOLT, TMWTGG, OP) books.
    I agree.
  • Posts: 520
    PussyNoMore finds this the most fascinating of questions albeit IPNSHO (In PussyNoMores Not So Humble Opinion), the answer is clear - the '50s
    This was the decade that gave us all but one of his gems.
    The gem in question being OHMSS which was probably a concerted effort to get back on track after the commercial and critical belly flop that was TSWLM (unjustly IPNSHO).
    One has to remember Fleming's failing health in all of this.
    Although writing isn't a contact sport, authors probably produce their best work when they are in the pink and FRWL and Moonraker was certainly his best work.
  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,244
    I think I'd agree with @Revelator . I find the story arc with Bond deteriorating, getting back on his feet, then falling even deeper fascinating. His personal struggle makes him more human, while his advisaries are even more outlandish. Blofeld's transformtion inot the maniac Shatterhand is fascinating.

    And, to promote the lovely TMGG again: even though Scaramanga is a 'small time' advisary, he's far more intimidating then the Spangs.
  • RC7RC7
    edited June 2017 Posts: 10,512
    suavejmf wrote: »
    Great post. To be fair the whole era is brilliant. TB being another firm favourite of mine.....an absolutely outstanding novel in everyway.

    The problem with TB, for me, is that you can tell it's not just Fleming sitting down and allowing the ideas to spill onto the page. The fact he'd toyed with the basics via committee shows.

    It does exactly what the film does for me, starts out excellently and then meanders (albeit in exotic fashion) towards a completely predictable conclusion.

    I still really enjoy reading it, but with a critical head on there are around 7 novels better than it imo.

    EDIT: A further issue I have, which I think pushes it down the list is the general lack of the bizarre. To me it seems to miss those weird little flourishes, almost Flemingian ticks; the momentary unplanned little sparks of imagination that you feel only happened when he was just 'writing'.
  • Posts: 520
    Revelator wrote: »

    The scripts that became Thunderball originally used the Mafia as the villains, perhaps because the filmmakers wanted to sell the film in the Iron Curtain (the EON Bond films similarly refused to antagonize the Russians). Eventually it was decided the Mafia were not grand enough villains, so Spectre was created--the perfect apolitical adversary........



    As for whether the 50s or 60s Bond novels are better, I think it makes more sense to divide the saga into the early (CR, LALD, MR, DAF), mid-period (FRWL, DN, FYEO, GF) and later (TB, TSWLM, OHMSS, YOLT, TMWTGG, OP) books. .............

    I rate the Blofeld trilogy as Fleming's masterpiece, and thus regard his late period as his greatest.

    Revelator is completely correct about the origins of SPECTRE.

    With regard to his segmentation into 'early...mid period... later,although PussyNoMore understands his thinking he doesn't agree with it.

    Although all Fleming is good Fleming the quality of his output was uneven and by the time the '60s dawned he was out of puff (not surprising given his prodigious consumption ) and it showed in his work.

    What's more, although the '60s saw peak Bondmania, it was largely on the back of the movies as literary Bond was starting to look a little dated.

    For PussyNoMore the '50s will always represent a high water mark for literary Bond.



  • edited June 2017 Posts: 2,914
    RC7 wrote: »
    The problem with TB, for me, is that you can tell it's not just Fleming sitting down and allowing the ideas to spill onto the page. The fact he'd toyed with the basics via committee shows.

    I don't think it does. A comparison of the script summaries for the film project (printed in The Battle for Bond) and the novel shows that Fleming took the plot elements he needed, discarded everything he didn't, and breathed life into the results. Working with a pre-arranged plot allowed Fleming to concentrate on characterization, and Thunderball excels in this department: Largo, Domino, and Blofeld are among his best-drawn characters, and even M and Leiter seem more fully developed.
    It does exactly what the film does for me, starts out excellently and then meanders (albeit in exotic fashion) towards a completely predictable conclusion.

    But the very beginning of the novel--the Shrublands sequence--is a meander, since it slows the plot (not that I'm complaining). The remainder of the novel has the structure of a detective story, with Leiter and Bond trying to figure out who's stolen the bombs and where they are. Not much meandering there. Nor do I see anything predictable in the conclusion--I think that reaction might result from having seen the movie first. I lent the book to a friend who'd never seen the film, and he said the scene of Bond and the navy men swimming into the darkness to intercept Largo was incredibly suspenseful.
    A further issue I have, which I think pushes it down the list is the general lack of the bizarre. To me it seems to miss those weird little flourishes, almost Flemingian ticks; the momentary unplanned little sparks of imagination that you feel only happened when he was just 'writing'.

    There are plenty of Flemingian aspects though--the exercise-torture battle between Bond and Lippe (the rack versus the sweat box) has that touch of the bizarre, along with Bond sucking sea-egg spines from Domino's foot. And the following is one of the greatest weird horror scenes in all the Bond books:
    Inside, Bond’s torch shone everywhere into red eyes that glowed like rubies in the darkness, and there was a soft movement and scuttling. He sprayed the light up and down the fuselage. Every where there were octopuses, small ones, but perhaps a hundred of them, weaving on the tips of their tentacles, sliding softly away into protecting shadows, changing their camouflage nervously from brown to a pale phosphorescence that gleamed palely in the patches of darkness. The whole fuselage seemed to be crawling with them, evilly, horribly, and as Bond shone his torch on the roof the sight was even worse. There, bumping softly in the slight current, hung the corpse of a crew member. In decomposition, it had risen up from the floor, and octopuses, hanging from it like bats, now let go their hold and shot, jet-propelled, to and fro inside the plane-dreadful, glinting, red-eyed comets that slapped themselves into dark corners and stealthily squeezed themselves into cracks and under seats.
  • RC7RC7
    edited June 2017 Posts: 10,512
    Revelator wrote: »
    RC7 wrote: »
    The problem with TB, for me, is that you can tell it's not just Fleming sitting down and allowing the ideas to spill onto the page. The fact he'd toyed with the basics via committee shows.

    I don't think it does. A comparison of the script summaries for the film project (printed in The Battle for Bond) and the novel shows that Fleming took the plot elements he needed, discarded everything he didn't, and breathed life into the results. Working with a pre-arranged plot allowed Fleming to concentrate on characterization, and Thunderball excels in this department: Largo, Domino, and Blofeld are among his best-drawn characters, and even M and Leiter seem more fully developed.

    I've read the book several times (Battle for Bond) so I'm certainly not saying Fleming transposed the earlier work, but I do feel like it has an undeniably cinematic thrust to it that wasn't present beforehand. In terms of characterisation, I wouldn't say it was anything extraordinary. Largo is nowhere near as richly drawn or interesting as many of his predecessors - Drax, Grant, Dr. No, Goldfinger. Blofeld is certainly excellent, but in a narrative sense his 'characterisation' amounts to an info dump, so while I do love it, he's not given the same level of intrigue as he's afforded in the SPECTRE follow up, OHMSS.
    Revelator wrote: »
    RC7 wrote: »
    It does exactly what the film does for me, starts out excellently and then meanders (albeit in exotic fashion) towards a completely predictable conclusion.

    But the very beginning of the novel--the Shrublands sequence--is a meander, since it slows the plot (not that I'm complaining). The remainder of the novel has the structure of a detective story, with Leiter and Bond trying to figure out who's stolen the bombs and where they are. Not much meandering there. Nor do I see anything predictable in the conclusion--I think that reaction might result from having seen the movie first. I lent the book to a friend who'd never seen the film, and he said the scene of Bond and the navy men swimming into the darkness to intercept Largo was incredibly suspenseful.

    Perhaps it boils down to personal preference, but I don't find the intro meanders. It extrapolates on the Fleming trait of juxtaposing Bond's accidie with the implied promise of an exotic adventure. I really enjoy a slow build that then bursts into life, but TB never quite delivers on the promise for me. Like I said, its personal preference, so I can understand if other like the pacing.
    Revelator wrote: »
    RC7 wrote: »
    A further issue I have, which I think pushes it down the list is the general lack of the bizarre. To me it seems to miss those weird little flourishes, almost Flemingian ticks; the momentary unplanned little sparks of imagination that you feel only happened when he was just 'writing'.

    There are plenty of Flemingian aspects though--the exercise-torture battle between Bond and Lippe (the rack versus the sweat box) has that touch of the bizarre, along with Bond sucking sea-egg spines from Domino's foot. And the following is one of the greatest weird horror scenes in all the Bond books:
    Inside, Bond’s torch shone everywhere into red eyes that glowed like rubies in the darkness, and there was a soft movement and scuttling. He sprayed the light up and down the fuselage. Every where there were octopuses, small ones, but perhaps a hundred of them, weaving on the tips of their tentacles, sliding softly away into protecting shadows, changing their camouflage nervously from brown to a pale phosphorescence that gleamed palely in the patches of darkness. The whole fuselage seemed to be crawling with them, evilly, horribly, and as Bond shone his torch on the roof the sight was even worse. There, bumping softly in the slight current, hung the corpse of a crew member. In decomposition, it had risen up from the floor, and octopuses, hanging from it like bats, now let go their hold and shot, jet-propelled, to and fro inside the plane-dreadful, glinting, red-eyed comets that slapped themselves into dark corners and stealthily squeezed themselves into cracks and under seats.

    I don't deny there are excellent passages. As always Fleming's descriptive prowess is second to none and keeps me hooked at all times, even when I feel like the plot isn't ticking, but for me it's still just missing a certain sensibility that the earlier books were layered with.

    I do particularly like the scene on board the Disco Volante, under the red light, when Largo dispatches the SPECTRE Agent (Sciacca?).
  • Posts: 15,106
    RE: working with a prearranged plot. Shakespeare did this his whole career. Nobody complained.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    Ludovico wrote: »
    RE: working with a prearranged plot. Shakespeare did this his whole career. Nobody complained.

    I prefer Fleming to Shakespeare.
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