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But did you dislike it for the same reasons she claimed? If not, the relation probably wasn't a deep one, especially since we have no convincing evidence that Ann actually read the book. Nothing she wrote suggests familiarity with its contents.
Yes, and for reasons that have very little justification, since, as you admit, "Amis didn't do anything radical with Bond." Ann's fears were therefore unjustified. Ann's rage against Amis is hard to understand--why would she object to a Bond novel being written by the only major author who had written a loving, book-length defense of her husband's work? My bet is that she never actually read the Bond Dossier--in one letter she even had the gall to claim Amis wrote it to boost his sales.
Actually, she was wrong. By 1968 Amis had already publicly come out in support in the Vietnam War and was moving to the right. Any perusal of his essays and commentaries from this period quickly dispels any notion of Amis being either a communist (as Ann seemed to think) or a far-leftist. Not that Ann would have been arsed to make such a perusal.
I don't think so. Like many anti-communists in the late 60s he was alarmed by Mao and the Cultural Revolution and thought the Soviets might be used against the Chinese. Throughout the book both Bond and Litsas poke fun at Adriadne's communism, and every Soviet aside from her is portrayed as either a fool, murderer, or pederast.
I can relate to Ann Fleming only to the extent of her being angry that the decision to commission a Bond continuation was forced through with little regard for her feelings. But since a commission was practically inevitable, Amis was far and away the best man for the job--who better than the author of the Bond Dossier? Ann's reaction was neither rational nor justified--it was that of an over-protective widow who had loved her husband but never liked Bond.
Yep. She openly admitted to having never liked Bond, which suggests she wouldn't have liked Amis's Bond regardless of its merits.
I can't quibble with anything above.
I didn't like the book though (mind you I didn't hate it) simply because it felt off.
Not in a big way, but enough that I noticed. Parts of it I liked, especially when Bond was in action and on the job.
I don't care about the politics, because its kind of hard to pin down anyway, and what's there does kind of spice things up.
Most important though, is that we got a good Bond.
Re Amis versus Fleming.
Fleming, I I found to be a hoot.
Fleming like his wife, IMO, was kind of unhinged. Fleming would go off about all sorts of crazy stuff in his books.
I don't find myself so much agreeing or disagreeing, but rather being entertained. Fleming was whacked, but in a readable, redeemable way.
Amis' throws a lot of himself into his Bond book too, but here's the difference, I didn't find him as interesting or readable, in the same sense I did Fleming.
Amis' was a long-time communist, who as you say, by roughly the time of CS, had moved to the right and become very anti-communist.
But Ann wasn't going to let him off the hook.
It's not crazy that she'd throw his Marxist past in his face.
Not everyone embraces or trusts the convert, the floor-crosser so to speak. Especially not her.
But you are right, I don't actually relate to her, as she is coming from her own place, but I can surely understand her.
Hers was a volatile, tumultuous, nutso world. She and Ian reportedly had raging battles.
One was as mad as the other I fear, and I do mean that in an empathetic way, so her going off on Amis, strikes me as rather par for the course, and probably no less than what Amis, an eccentric himself, might expect.