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Thank you for the heads-up!
I've got the strip and I'm going to read it after I've finished the Flemings. :)
Expect my OHMSS review soon.
The definitive anthology of Space opera and military scifi.
I love these Scifi short story/novella collection they are so often full of amazing ideas.
I also recommend the comic strip versions of YOLT (the only faithful adaptation in a visual medium), Colonel Sun (ditto), Octopussy (which takes the original in a more action-like direction but retains much of the source), and TMWTGG (which improves on Fleming in several parts).
Those works are masterpieces like no other, but it all hinges on the translations.
I love those two "books". I've had to translate many excerpts back in my school days and was in utter shock when I saw Troy and discovered the filmmakers hadn't cared too much about keeping some of the most essential details correct. There's a 1997 television miniseries called The Odyssey, starring Armand Assante, which, for its time, is a praiseworthy effort to adapt that book, and a far better attempt for sure than Troy.
May I recommend you read Virgil's Aeneid, a "sequel" to The Illiad, parallel to The Odyssey.
I have fond memories of that miniseries and agree: it was a faithful and workmanlike adaptation. It's odd that there has never been a great or at least really good film made from Homer, despite all the great visuals lurking in the Iliad and Odyssey. But in a few weeks I'm going to watch a two-part German silent from 1924 on the abduction of Helen and fall of Troy that I've heard good things about.
That's true, and the same applies for foreigners reading English literature: they will never fully "read" Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Joyce, Tennyson, etc. But a good translator can take them close to the heart of the matter, just as Dryden's translation of The Aeneid or Chapman's Homer can for English readers. Since there isn't enough time to learn all the major languages, translations are a necessary evil--and sometimes a very pleasurable one. I recently enjoyed the hell (and heaven and purgatory) out of Clive James's translation of The Divine Comedy.
Traddutore, tradditore.
On a side note I really enjoyed The Odyssey miniseries.
Yes, read The Aeneid, also Metamorphoses and The Voyage of the Argo, all in the late 80s I think. And the film of The Odyssey was such a let down, really looking forward to it, but was seething by the end of it! Have the Armand Assante miniseries on DVD, really like it. There is on BBC TV at the moment Troy: The Fall of a City miniseries. Oh, dear…I caught part of episode 3 or 4. Fair Achilles with the flowing locks is played by a bald black guy, as is Zeus! And the language is just awful, not saying it should be as is in the actually poem but need it be so 'modern' sounding. And I watched for about 40 minutes, and nothing happened! Awful.
Strangely drawn to Icelandic Noir.
Brian Blessed or Tom Baker would be good choices.
originally written in 1509/10
Blessed would have been perfect casting for Hugo 'Hugger' Drax in a faithful film adaptation of Fleming's Moonraker. He'd have played the ogreish loudmouth Drax with much aplomb I am certain. Sadly, we'll never see it...
Mr. Bond... MAY I PRESS YOU TO A CUCUMBER SANDWICH?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Yes, that would indeed have been perfect casting. At least he got to play another role practically written for him, Porthos of the Three Musketeers, in the BBC's mid-60s serial (which starred Jeremy Brett as d'Artagnan).
It's taken me a lot longer to put this next review together, but I hope you'll enjoy reading it. ;)
BOOK 11
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
by Ian Fleming
What builds the quintessential Bond story? To some, it is the card table tension of CASINO ROYALE. To others, it is the thrilling Cold War politics of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. Others still may nominate the fantastical wilds of THUNDERBALL. The book that usually springs to my mind is ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. Combining delicate romance, electrifying action, nail-biting suspense and an unconventional villainous masterplan, this story is, at least in my opinion, what Bond is all about. Perhaps I’m drawn to it even more because of the much talked about 1969 film of the same name. A rather faithful adaptation, “the one with George Lazenby” continues to polarise Bond fans of all generations but has since its release assembled a very loyal following. Commanding respect, among many things, is the somewhat atypical plot, lifted straight from the pages of the book. After the absurdly larger-than-life film adaptation of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and CASINO ROYALE’s unique spoof debacle, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE submitted the cinematic Bond to a soft reboot in terms of style and class. Even the book presented something of a tone shift from its immediate predecessors, i.e. the global nuclear threat of THUNDERBALL and the doggedly bizarre experiment of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. Ian Fleming returned Bond to his former form, but with a few unexpected twists. Possibly his last great novel, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE is a book I’m always pleased to revisit. I’ve got Barry’s ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE and Newman’s SKYFALL playing in the background, and a warm blanket within reach for when the cold, snowy mountain tops of Switzerland welcome Sir Hillary Bray Baronet.
“Operation Bedlam” has kept James Bond occupied for over a year now. Tasked with tracking down SPECTRE’s criminal mastermind Blofeld, who completely disappeared since the THUNDERBALL affair, Bond is frustrated that his mission so far has been to no avail. Despite several requests to be taken off this fruitless case, he is still told to commit all his efforts to it and consequently, he’s grown somewhat resentful. Presently in France, Bond is contemplating resignation from the Secret Service, convinced that his talents are wasted this way. But then 007 has a chance encounter with an irresistibly beautiful young lady who ostensibly enjoys gambling with her own life. The truth of the matter is that Contessa Teresa “Tracy” Di Vicenzo isn’t in the best of places, mentally speaking, and her suicidal tendencies become progressively more pronounced. Immediately drawn to her, Bond ends up as Tracy’s guardian angel twice, thus coming to the notice of Tracy’s father Marc-Ange Draco. Draco is the head of Europe’s largest crime syndicate, the Union Corse. He has Bond and Tracy brought to him and almost on the spot secures a good rapport with Bond. Cutting right to the chase, Draco offers Bond an impressive dowry if he agrees to marry Tracy. She could use a man like Bond, caring and wise but also strong and tolerably dominant. Draco wants his daughter supervised, guided and possibly cured of her staunch dejection by someone with apt resilience. Bond doesn’t mind courting Tracy for a while, but marriage is very much out of the question for the time being.
Fleming kicks this story off with a few emotional tremors. Bond visits Vesper’s grave, feels neglected by his superiors and takes an interest in a woman who is clearly damaged goods. That last element is especially interesting because while we have met troubled girls before in the Fleming novels, this one is downright ready to kill herself. In CASINO ROYALE, Vesper would eventually take her own life, but that act came very much as a surprise to Bond and so to us as well. With Tracy, we receive actual glimpses of the psychological vortex leading up to the fatal deed. Perhaps it makes sense that Vesper gets brought up by Fleming and that we’re so close to where the CASINO ROYALE events happened long ago because Bond can now see in Tracy a chance for him to cathartically dispel all the demons that have stuck with him since then. The fact that death is constantly lurking in the shadows of this novel, right from the beginning, in fact, could also be seen as Fleming growing ever more consciously aware of his own weakened state. The author would, in fact, have only two more years to live after writing this novel. Death would play an even bigger part, and in a more expressed form, in his next novel. But while CASINO ROYALE had ended with an unexpected suicide as a shocker, as a collateral stain on Bond’s otherwise perfect record, as a final “gift” from SMERSH in some sense; in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, death symmetrically envelops the entire story. The threat of catastrophic death will set the events of the story in motion; death will seem effectively beaten with the completion of the second act; but death will strike back hard and fast at the end of the book. This is the opposite of what stories usually bring: we start with our protagonists in a good place, reach a dangerous and potentially lethal highpoint, and end with a satisfying “all-is-well” conclusion. ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE offers no such conventional tale of good vanquishing death; it would seem that Tracy, regardless of all her charms, is intimately tied to the Grim Reaper.
And yet, we discover fairly little about Tracy at first; most of what we learn comes from how an unusually reflective and meditative Bond reacts to her. Most women in Bond’s life so far have brought their share of complications to the game, but Tracy is a bit of a unique case. We never completely understand her, even when certain details from her recent past are spelt out to us. Her initial interactions with Bond give us few clues concerning how she feels about him and whether or not she is to be trusted in the first place. She’s an ambiguous element, a variable, set on destroying herself and possibly, by association, those who are willing to take care of her. Bond may be facing a threat of a different sort this time, and unlike in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, where he was superior to Viv in every possible way, he doesn’t have too many answers regarding the girl this time. She’s an enigma, and we know how attracted Bond can be to good-looking enigmas. Accepting Draco’s offer on his own terms -- to romance Tracy rather than marry her -- can mean two things. Perhaps Bond isn’t ready to commit just yet. One might even say he simply isn’t the marrying type. While that may hold true for the cinematic Bond in the early ‘60s, Fleming’s Bond has contemplated marriage a number of times already, going back, in fact, to his first real love, Vesper. Either Bond has since then learned to be more careful, seeing how complicated a love history he’s built so far, or he isn’t quite confident about this girl just yet, showing a more reserved or possibly more “mature” side of him. Bond may just be unwilling to go on a limb in matters of love. Or maybe Fleming himself has, from personal experience, learned to regard marriage as a much more complicated construct than what our romantic, naive notions about it would let us think when we’re younger. However, another possibility may altogether be that Bond wouldn’t mind marrying the right girl but finds Tracy’s suicidal leanings both strangely intriguing and also uncomfortably dangerous. Maybe his interests in her are more paternal than romantic. At the start of the novel, I’m still somewhat undecided about Bond’s feelings towards Tracy. All the more reason, of course, why the scenes with Tracy are such page-turners. Say what you want about sexism in Fleming’s writing, at least his depiction of disturbed women can be quite thought-provoking and, in an odd way, captivating.
Very fascinating, furthermore, is Bond’s letter of resignation, not yet delivered but written nevertheless. Though hardly as cynical about his job as he will be by the time we get to some of the later short stories, Bond is clearly annoyed by his lack of progress with the Blofeld hunt. More than that, Bond is bored and in Fleming’s universe, boredom is an unjustifiable sin. The notion that Bond might leave the service out of irritation or disillusion is fairly new considering Bond’s loyalty as celebrated by Fleming in almost all of the previous novels. It opens up a potentially suspenseful subplot of a rogue Bond or a fired Bond, and even though we will eventually forget all about it, I applaud Fleming’s bold writing and audacity. Fortunately, Draco can provide helpful information about Blofeld, readjusting Bond’s course. We learn that Blofeld may very well have sought refuge in the Swiss Alps, taking on the persona of Comte Balthazar de Bleuville, a title that has yet to pass official recognition by the College of Arms. And so we enter the unique world of heraldry, coats of arms and besants, a world in which we also learn that the world is not enough. In order to come strategically close to Blofeld, Bond will pose as Sir Hillary Bray and travel to Switzerland. He’s quite relieved to be back on track, and we can sense that. The spy plot picks up momentum fast, like a storm. For a while, the gloom of the early chapters seems gone; with a realistic chance to get to Blofeld and Tracy in a better place than where she was when he had first met her, Bond is finally prepared to spy the hell out of this adventure.
Thus begins a strong and very tense middle section during which Bond meets the hideous Irma Bunt, the cold and surgically altered Ernst Stavro Blofeld and a good dozen beautiful young girls atop Piz Gloria, Blofeld’s mountain lair. Also there, at Piz Gloria, is Ursula Andress, who had impressed Fleming so much during the production of the film adaptation of DR NO, that he dropped her name in this book. While at first, it’s quite unclear how Bond must proceed, two exciting episodes introduce a sudden sense of urgency. Firstly, Sir Hillary Bray is recognised on the guest list by someone who is then quite shattered to see Bond rather than the real Sir Hillary. Secondly, a colleague of Bond is caught and brought before Blofeld. Desperate, the poor bastard is about to identify Bond as a fellow British spy, so Bond must deny any knowledge of who this man is, effectively signing his death warrant. Sometimes the simplest threats prove to be the most shocking ones; by placing the ultimate moral dilemma in Bond’s hands, Fleming delivers one of the biggest throat grabbers of his entire book series. Bond has no alternative but to condemn his “teammate” to death in order to save the mission and of course also his own life. Ironically, the first painful demise in the book doesn’t come from Tracy, but from this anonymous non-character; yet Bond will struggle with the fact that through his inaction, he is the primary reason behind the man’s passing. Not that it would have helped either of them, of course, if Bond had confirmed the man’s story. Thus, he tries to satisfy himself that the condemned man knew the risks, that he, 007, should remain professional about all of this, and that the mission matters more than a human life. But Blofeld flat-out asks Bond if he is in some way connected to the British secret service, so his suspicion was clearly raised – and no doubt more than enough to execute a direct attack on Bond very soon. It’s clear to Bond that he must swiftly leave Piz Gloria as discretely as possible.
With that comes a remarkably exciting action thriller, including a fast ski chase and several vicious attempts on Bond’s life. The fact that Bond’s pursuers want him dead so badly, lends his escape something more than merely the typical excitement of a race. Underlying the entire descent from the mountaintop is a cold and bleak horror, emphasised by the brutality of Blofeld’s men and a life-threatening avalanche. But lo and behold, none other than Tracy awaits Bond at the foot of the mountain after his death-defying checkout from Piz Gloria. Impressed with how she took the initiative to come and look for him, helping herself to the few bits of information about Bond’s whereabouts that Draco must have been able to supply, Bond asks Tracy to marry him. And with that decision, her fate is sealed. At this point, the second act of the book has been a cascade of thrills, starting with Bond’s identification by Campbell, peaking with a tense escape attempt and ending at a satisfying romantic height. Fleming had of course written exciting action with a distressed Bond at the centre before. The obstacle course in DR NO and the stopping of the rocket launch in MOONRAKER come to mind easily. But ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE adds a few special flavours, including the challenging mountainous setting and Bond running away from certain death rather than attempting to thwart the villain’s plan. Fleming accepts the notion that Bond isn’t going to pro-actively stop Blofeld just yet; right now he’s more concerned with getting away alive. The rest can be dealt with later. That his successful escape is celebrated in Tracy’s arms, is narratively speaking a very effective choice made by Fleming. This romantic moment, ultimately, takes us back to the beginning of the novel, but the characters and overall situation have since drastically evolved. Tracy appears fully recovered from her miserable condition, no doubt due to Bond’s intrusion in her life. Once again, Fleming has chosen to diagnose the troubled girl as suffering, in an abstract sense, from an illness which James Bond is perfectly capable of curing. Bond himself has changed too, and in two ways I might add. Not only is he again the dedicated, busy and determined spy, he’s also willing to marry Tracy.
This story’s two most pivotal characters have clearly gone through an unusual transition from a place of doubt, grief and melancholy to one of willpower, renewed happiness and hope. Fleming previously allowed, at best, only a meagre few bits of character evolution, yet in this novel he wants us to feel the change of heart our protagonists have undergone. Sadly though, the story’s fast pace is curtailed immediately after Bond’s proposal to Tracy. In a room full of well-dressed men operating from the political corner of society, Bond contemplates Blofeld’s evil intentions. Several pages of speculative dialogue interrupt the sensational narrative flow of the previous chapters. But at the same time, they matter, because we can finally put Blofeld’s strange clinic in the proper perspective. Post-WWII Britain greatly relies on an agricultural economy which Blofeld hopes to destroy. For that purpose, he has been curing a group of young British and Irish girls of their allergies, though secretly he has also been programming them through hypnosis to carry biological agents back home designed to eradicate entire crops. The villain’s plan really is a very peculiar one this time, more sophisticated and less profit-driven than usual. There’s an element of revenge involved but also of apocalyptic madness, with Blofeld as the megalomaniac engineer behind it all. Death has also come back to the forefront as dead livestock and failed crops will threaten many innocent lives.
Bond plans an attack on Blofeld’s lair and with the help of Draco mounts an effective assault. The only problem is that Blofeld gets away, so we’re technically back at square one. Except that this time, Bond has a wedding to arrange. The rest, as they say, is history. In the final few pages of the book, Fleming makes two people very happy, only to immediately deprive them of their happiness in an exceptionally cruel way. Blofeld and his minion Irma Bunt shoot Tracy. With barely any lines of text left to process the shock, Fleming gives Bond a strangely calm response to the situation. He won’t shout in terror or kneel down and yell “nooooo!”. Instead, Bond cherishes the few moments he has left with Tracy’s warm body, something that translates to me as a fatalistic attitude. Was this bound to happen? Is Bond not allowed the indulgences of long-lasting romantic bliss? Or have his actions only postponed rather than averted Tracy’s premature departure from this world? Either way, Bond seems to accept the facts virtually immediately, and Fleming dedicates no further prose to forcing him through the hard shock that naturally follows. For that, we have all the time in the world. Just not in this book. With Tracy gone, an emptiness has formed, penetrating our soul like a bullet wound. Perhaps the one true chance Bond would ever have to get over Vesper and find real love is crushed in a few seconds of violent enemy action. Fleming does more than conclude Tracy’s story here; he makes a statement about Bond’s destiny. Once is bad luck, twice reeks of inevitability.
The final chapter of ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE leaves us wondering about Bond’s future, much like the ending of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE had done way back when. And even though most of us know well enough how things will proceed in the next novel, it remains a chilling sensation that Bond has fallen apart even more at the end of this book than at its start. The British agriculture may have been saved but Bond must now deal with the loss of yet another loved one and Blofeld has once again shaken off his hunters. Between Bond’s grief and his failure to apprehend the head of SPECTRE, that whole business about the biological attack feels less personal to us and thus also less important. Bond loses in this book, hard and dramatically, and as such, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE is one of the darkest chapters in Fleming’s Bond series. Working from the hypothesis that the mood of a Fleming novel mirrors his own mental state at the time of writing, one can only surmise that the author was himself trying to exorcise some private demons when penning ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. At the same time, it’s a multi-layered story, full of memorable moments and wonderful character development. Several themes were worked into the story by Fleming, well-balanced and avoiding unnecessary bleakness despite the overall doom. Had Fleming written all his books this way, it would have been exhausting to go through them back-to-back. Yet ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE is one of the only books in the series to leave us upset, unsettled and emotionally unpurged after the fact. And that’s what it indeed does. Tracy had wanted to take her own life, Bond had stopped her, and now her life was taken by someone else. Cold irony, indelible misery, severe misfortune.
So, the quintessential Bond then? To me at least, it is. Featuring Blofeld, an isolated lair, an outrageous threat, a problematic girl and a burdened Bond, the mix feels complete. Fleming’s prose is, as usual, fast and very matter-of-fact, a delight to read. The novel taps new depths in Bond’s inner universe and gives him a few tense instances of high-speed action. Whatever condition Fleming was in, he wrote a phenomenal book with this one, sharp and edgy, full of highlights and captivating moments. Leaving the awkward experiment of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME very far behind him, he not only returned to the style of the first couple of books but added spice, gravity and meaning to the world of Bond. The book is one of the most unforgettable entries in the series, a high peak and no less gratifying than its film adaptation. I rank it amongst the very best of the Bond books, between CASINO ROYALE and MOONRAKER in fact. It’s also one that always leaves me emotionally drained afterwards, even more so now than when I was first confronted with the upsetting ending. Knowing very well how things will wrap up, I’m constantly in a state of desolation, wanting to warn Bond for what’s coming but knowing full well that I can’t. I want him to be happy in the arms of an interesting woman, but then again, isn’t Bond the eternal bachelor? And on that note, I put down one of my favourite Bond books, satisfied but also bushed. My eyes start to feel heavy and so my journey to Japan will have to wait at least a day. Three more novels in Fleming's series -- but hey, we’ve got all the time in the world.
9.5/10
DD's 2018 book ranking
1) Casino Royale - 10/10
2) On Her Majesty's Secret Service - 9.5/10
3) Moonraker - 9.5/10
4) From Russia With Love - 9/10
5) Dr No - 8.5/10
6) The Spy Who Loved Me - 8/10
7) Live And Let Die - 8/10
8) Diamonds Are Forever - 7.5/10
9) Goldfinger - 7/10
10) For Your Eyes Only - 7/10
11) Thunderball - 6.5/10
1913 edition
PussyNoMore finds this review of OHMSS by DarthDimi to be quite extraordinary.
It is so insightful and a delight to read.
Pussy first read this literary pearl in 1963, at the tender age of ten, and has re-visited it on multiple occasions since then.
Of course, one can always question what a ten year old could possibly get out of Fleming?
The answer is, actually quite a lot. It was really the Bond books that got him reading for pleasure and for that, amongst many other things, Pussy owes Fleming a huge debt.
PussyNoMore mentions this because the thing that struck him about OHMSS back then, although he wouldn’t have been able to articulate it, but which holds true to this day, when he can - is that the book has great ‘balance’ - this is something that shines through in DarthDimi’s review without him actually saying it.
All Bond books have extremely strong sections but, when a discerning aficionado, narrows it down, comparatively few maintain the absolute highest of ‘Fleming’ quality throughout.
Exceptionally OHMSS has. It has a phenomenal beginning, an extremely strong mid section and an explosive and unexpected end. This is what makes it quintessential Bond.
The others that can boast this ‘balance’ are FRWL, MR and CR but, even if it can be argued that even these gems don’t have the absolute consistency of OHMSS, it probably explains why many fans put them at the top of their favourites list.
As a blanket statement, PussyNoMore has always derived the most satisfaction from the first third of the Bond novels. The part that can probably be referred to as the set up.
Pussy used to think it was because he didn’t engage with the fantasy Fleming elements as much as he did with the straight spy stuff that typically dominated the first third of his novels.
On reflection, after fifty five years of reading them, he isn’t sure this is correct.
The truth maybe, as the actress said to the bishop, that Fleming just had problems keeping it up.
This could have been down to his writing style.
The fact that he wrote from the gut, sitting down behind his type writer and spontaneously writing without reviewing until his return to London, is doubtless what gave him his page turning pace. It also must have been incredibly exhausting and particularly given his failing health, may explain his sometime lack of consistency.
It also could explain why his writing style is so suited to the novella and why FYEO and O&TLD are so enjoyable.
That said, for OHMSS, this longest of Bond books, Fleming found literary viagra and gave us something that was truly consistent and that had real balance.
PussyNoMore congratulates DarthDimi on his review and thanks him for making the Pussy think about this. Hopefully we’ve got “All The Time In The World” to reflect and discuss.