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I'm now hearing Austin Powers saying "Who throws an octopus? Honestly!"
I wonder, if any of the other books had been chosen for the first film, would we have gotten a different film ending tradition in the series?
It's ironic that Fleming's version of the underwater battle is full of cinematic images, while the cinematic version isn't! Half the blame goes to the screenwriters, and half to Terence Young, whose limitations were made clear by that sequence. Peter Hunt did his best to keep things moving and probably would have done a better job directing it.
Sadly all the octopuses in the film are worn on the fingers of Spectre agents. However, Fleming at least might have been pleased that the filmmakers gave Spectre that symbol. As we'll see in Octopussy, Fleming consistently associated this animal with death.
A great scene, and the second in the canon where Bond is saved from certain death by the girl and saves her in return. The first instance was in DAF.
I doubt it. As Some_Kind_of_Hero notes, the hero kissing the girl was the traditional ending for movie thrillers and adventures, especially in American/British films, and mainstream films have always been more artistically conservative than mainstream literary fiction. Even a narrow majority of Fleming's endings are hero-with-the-girl (LALD, DN, GF, TMWTGG), as opposed to his sad endings (CR, FRWL, OHMSS) and melancholy ones (MR, TB, YOLT). It's worth noting that only one Bond film so far, OHMSS, has had a straight-up sad ending (the film of CR ends on a note of subdued triumph). And for a mass cinema audience a melancholy ending might be even more uncomfortable than a sad one, since it doesn't provoke an unambiguous reaction. Even today I can't think of any action films that end with the hero narrowly failing to kiss the girl and slipping into a drugged sleep nearby.
I've found the deadly significance of octopi in Fleming's stories fascinating. He definitely had a relationship with/understanding of the animals unlike most anyone else and saw them as dangerous predators to be feared. A far cry from Ringo's Abbey Road contribution. I've wondered what exactly Fleming's experiences were with octopi. Whether he had encountered large and dangerous ones himself or simply heard stories from Jamaican locals. Either way, the beasts certainly made their impression on him.
I don't see Thunderball's ending as melancholy. It's certainly not in the same category as Moonraker or You Only Live Twice in that regard. Rather it actually has an uplifting ending and is in my opinion the most romantic of Fleming's finales. Bond falls into a drug-induced sleep beside the bed of his love in his desperate attempt to see her and she pulls up her pillow beside him and goes to sleep herself, comforted by the thought that he's there. It doesn't get much more romantic than that. And of course we know they will both eventually wake and recover from their wounds and go touring around Europe or somewhere, dining on wonderful food and making love endlessly.
Matters concerning alcoholism and heart trouble feature throughout this short in lines such as "'Rum and ginger's the local poison. I prefer the ginger by itself.' The lie came out with the automatic smoothness of the alcoholic," and "He felt the pain across his chest [angina] withdraw into its lair." These were clearly things that had been on Fleming's mind at the time. He was very aware of his own consumption rates and the lies he surely told to himself and to others. I suspect he knew he was destroying himself—and rapidly—but hadn't the will, or whatever it was he needed, to stop his course.
Major Dexter-Smythe offers a most interesting conflict where we meet him. He appears to be in the final hours of his life, yet precisely why is a mystery to the reader. Nonetheless, he is on a final mission to perform a fascinating underwater experiment—the attempted feeding of a highly toxic fish to an octopus—so that he can report the results to the Institute and leave behind a final contribution to science before leaving this world. Death being such a far-off and unknowable concept for so many, it's always interesting catching a glimpse of what a man thinks about in the final hours of his life, and what he chooses to do with those hours. Dexter-Smythe's choice is certainly an unorthodox one, but a fascinating one.
Interestingly, unlike in the film where Bond's act of permitting the Major an opportunity to off himself is regarded with gratitude as a kind one by the man's daughter, here there is much doubt regarding the "kindliness" of Bond's offer. We receive so little from Bond as to why he is there: just that Oberhauser had been "a friend" and "something of a father...at a time when [he] happened to need one." But from this we can deduce that Bond's intention was to simply rid the world of this man who had taken something good from him—from a part of his past—without wasting time and money in the courts. That very likely is exactly why Bond is there. No reason why he should want to extend this man a courtesy or an escape. He simply wants the matter done with. Within the week, as it were.
And though Dexter-Smythe knows he is soon going to his end, Fleming quite devilishly infects him with the toxin of the scorpion-fish, bringing forward the time-table of the man's execution to, say, just a further fifteen minutes. A fifteen minutes full of the most excruciating, back-breaking, heart-crushing, mouth-foaming pain imaginable. Nevertheless, he forges on with his experiment, "screaming all the while into his mask" as he makes for the tentacled beast's lair.
Do octopi really react so strongly, so suddenly, to the scent of blood in the water? Who knows. They do in Fleming's world.
After writing of so many encounters with octopi, so many suggestions of the horrors they might do to a man, Fleming finally delivers. That first bite of the beak is chilling. So too is the thought of the young fellas who eat the octopus for dinner and the obvious factor that said octopus would not be all that they were eating. Is that what an octopus really would do to a man? Again, who knows. But it certainly makes for a chilling and fascinating and bizarre in the extreme embellishment in the world of Fleming's Bond.
There is a sort of Ringo-Fleming connection, which I will explain in my next post...
Octopodes were certainly common around Goldeneye. From a letter by Ann Fleming:
"Today we ate saffron rice with octopus conch and lobster, caught by me; I was sad about the octopus, the entrance to his lair was scattered with exquisite seashells, he had eaten the contents and was holding them with his tentacles as a protective front door. I prized them from him one by one, put them inside my bathing dress, put both hands in the hole and with tremendous courage pulled and pulled, he poured forth black ink which strengthened my resolve, I was the stronger and collected him at the cost of a few scarlet railway lines round the wrist."
And from another letter:
"Yesterday [I found] a giant octopus, he was asleep against a rock, I fetched Thunderball [one of her nicknames for Ian] expecting him to collect it for me but Thunderball was alarmed and would not prod it, he threw a stone and the creature unfurled a five-foot tentacle and explored, then I was much more alarmed than Thunderball and did my Victorian breaststroke for the shore. I dreamt about it last night."
True, it's definitely not as melancholy as the endings of MR or YOLT. But surely a more romantic ending would have involved a kiss. TB's ending is almost anti-romantic--Bond passes out before he can even speak to Domino, let alone kiss her. I wonder if he even hears her say "You are to stay here. Do you understand? You are not to go away." This is especially poignant because we know from past novels that Bond will go away. Domino gives a frustrated sigh and goes to sleep, watching a man who will inevitably slip through her gaze.
Exactly. Bond plays it cool throughout most of the story, but toward the end of the interview his antagonism shows through: "He looked down at the older man. He said abruptly, almost harshly—perhaps, Major Smythe thought, to hide his embarrassment—'It'll be about a week before they send someone out to bring you home.'"
Smythe susses this out: "It was just a version of the corny old act of leaving the guilty officer alone with his revolver. If the Bond man had wanted to, he could have telephoned Government House and had an officer of the Jamaica Regiment sent over to take Major Smythe into custody. Decent of him, in a way. Or was it? A suicide would be tidier, save a lot of paperwork and taxpayers' money." And Smythe proves his moral corruption by starting to fantasize about staying alive and beating the charges in court. Octopussy and scorpion fish end up serving as agents of justice, executing a man too craven to live.
There's an amusing letter from Evelyn Waugh to Ann Fleming where he chides her for using "octopi" and suggests "octopodes" or "octopuses." Waugh tended to use "octopodes," which is my choice--it sounds cooler than "octopuses" and was preferred by Waugh, "the supreme writer of English prose in the twentieth century," according to Clive James: "Nobody ever wrote a more unaffectedly elegant English; he stands at the height of English prose."
These kinds of details from Fleming's life are fascinating, as you can see how his experiences could've impacted his novels and the content in them. I never knew Ann's nickname for him was "Thunderball" either. She sounded like one hell of a woman!
Indeed. Her other nicknames for Ian were Thunderbird (after his car), Thunderbeatle, and BeatleBond (since Fleming had become almost as famous as the Fab Four). Ann's letters were collected and printed in the mid-80s, and they're fascinating to read. She was an extremely intelligent, funny, and often exasperating person. Her misfortune was that she loved Ian but hated Bond. The poor woman suffered greatly as well--within the space of a decade she lost her husband, sister, son, and one of her best friends.
To round out the discussion of "Octopussy," here's a retouched edit of my Artistic Licence Renewed article on "How Autobiographical is Octopussy?." The promised Ringo-Fleming link is at the very bottom!
***
Philip Larkin is perhaps was the first critic to connect Major Smythe to Fleming, and at first glance, Smythe’s similarities to Fleming are obvious. Both are in their mid-50s and dealing with a sagging belly, heart trouble, and a soured marriage. Either could be described as “the remains of a once brave and resourceful officer and of a handsome man who made easy sexual conquests all his military life.” Both are propped up by pills and lost in a melancholy fog of drunkenness.
Though “still a fine figure of a man at a cocktail party,” Fleming/Smythe is “in the process of drinking himself to death,” having been eaten away by the “termites of sloth, self-indulgence...and general disgust with himself [that] had eroded his once hard core into dust.”
Both men have found material success, only to realize that it tastes like ashes. Having arrived “at the frontier of death wish,” they live in a state of profound accidie--the sin Fleming knew and hated most. Smythe is “bored to death, and, but for one factor in his life, he would long ago have swallowed the bottle of barbiturates he had easily acquired from a local doctor." A decade after “Octopussy” was published, Fleming's son Caspar took his life with the same drug.
Smythe and Fleming both adore Jamaica for being “a paradise of sunshine, good food, cheap drink, and a glorious haven from the gloom and restrictions and Labour Government of postwar England.” Each has a small villa from where they swim daily, finding a refuge from daily life in the underwater world and its denizens. Major Smythe even considers becoming an author, though in far more heinous circumstances.
When Bond confronts Smythe and awkwardly gives him a chance to commit suicide, one recalls John Pearson‘s assertion that 007 drove his creator into the grave–-Fleming having also decided “to oblige the Bond man.” The association between Smythe and Fleming seems overwhelming. But let’s remember what Conan Doyle wrote in a poem to a critic:
So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle
The doll and the maker are never identical.
Unlike Ian Fleming, Major Smythe was a genuine man of action. The Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau (MOB) is a clear analogue for Fleming’s the 30 Assault Unit, and this links Smythe to the commandos that inspired Bond, rather than Bond’s creator. What’s more, Smythe betrays his country, becoming a “cop turned robber.” In “Octopussy” Fleming always identifies the character as Major Smythe-—a reminder of the rank he so vilely abuses.
There's another reason to believe that Fleming despised Smythe. “Throughout all Bond’s adventures nobody English does anything evil” wrote Kingsley Amis in The James Bond Dossier. “Octopussy” seems to be the exception to the rule--until we remember why Smythe spoke excellent German: his “mother had come from Heidelberg.” So, not fully English after all!
As anyone familiar with Fleming’s world knows, any sign of German ancestry signifies inherent evil (as with the “American” Milton Krest). The only good German in the Bond books is actually an Austrian–-Hannes Oberhauser, who Major Smythe treacherously shoots in the back, ironically justifying his crime with British bigotry (“After all, it was only a bloody Kraut.”)
Oberhauser is a parental-figure to the orphan Bond: “He taught me to ski before the war, when I was in my teens. He was a wonderful man. He was something of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one.” And he is clearly based on a father-figure of Fleming, Ernan Forbes Dennis, who tutored the teenaged, fatherless Fleming in Kitzbühel–-the same town Oberhauser hails from. Fleming revisited it throughout his life. “He clings to youth and dreams of the days when he was the Kitzbühel Casanova,” Ann Fleming wrote to Evelyn Waugh while vacationing there with her husband in 1961.
Smythe defiles Fleming’s beloved Kitzbühel with his crime. He marches in, abuses his authority, and murders Bond (and Fleming’s) father figure. With his MOB background, one might be tempted to call Smythe a James Bond gone to seed, but this idea fades when Fleming brings in the real Bond, who shares Fleming’s background through an act of autobiographical transference. So “Octopussy” is far more than a self-portrait of its author in decline. As in The Spy Who Loved Me, Fleming artfully draws on his life, reworking and distributing his attributes, memories and experiences among multiple characters.
“Octopussy” makes use of three of Fleming’s greatest interests–-gold, the underwater world, and physical pain. The last two are combined in Major Smythe’s agonized trek to feed Octopussy after his scorpion fish encounter. She becomes an instrument of vengeance. Ann Fleming’s letters suggest that Octopussy was based on the octopodes that lived off Goldeneye. Though Mary died before Major Smythe, it was Ian who predeceased Ann. Her involvement in readying the story for posthumous publication led Waugh to teasingly addressing her as “Octopussy.” But it was another octopus that brought Ann solace, in a letter from 1969:
Sounds like she was quite the woman. Where did you find these letters? You mentioned they were published together somewhere? I'd love to read them all.
Hmm. You're certainly coming at the scene from a whole different angle than I am—and I do see where you're coming from with the inevitability of Bond and the girl eventually separating, as always happens. The biggest arguments against your interpretation I'd say are Bond's desperation to get to Domino, our brief, almost whimsical, journey into the head of the doctor ("...may do her some good. It is what she needs—some tenderness"), Bond falling asleep beside her bed rather than in her bed, sans lovemaking, as more of a gentlemanly gesture, and the two of them falling asleep together in close proximity, both of their intentions before losing consciousness clearly demonstrated as being a desire to be with one another—and they are, remarkably, despite the conditions of their bodies. I think you can read into the ending a certain melancholy over the idea of their inevitable separation, but just reading it as it reads, I find it an unusually romantic portrait from Fleming, especially during a time when he'd begun regularly sending off his Bond novels with Bond taking the girl in carnal pleasure.
I may have to take a page from Waugh myself. Henceforth, octopodes it is! Auto-correct be damned!
The letters are from the book The Letters of Ann Fleming, published in 1985 and edited by Mark Amory. It's hard to find in stores but Worldcat can indicate a nearby library that carries it. Keep in mind that many of the letters are not Bond or Ian-related but describe her busy social life. That said, many letters from Ian and Evelyn Waugh 9one of her best friends) are included.
Our differing interpretations certainly attest to the richness and ambiguity of the scene. Bond's desperation to get the Domino is romantic, but his falling asleep before he can do or say anything to her is much less so--a deliberate frustration of expectations on Fleming's part. The Doctor believes Bond will give her "some tenderness" but he falls asleep before giving it. He doesn't even get to answer Domino's "Do you understand?", which frustrates her expectations as well. That sense of frustration might explain why this sort of ending will likely never appear in a Bond film--it gestures toward romance but doesn't grant it. Perhaps it's better termed an ambiguous ending?
Fleming was similarly unkind about the rest of America in Thrilling Cities. It's clear he'd fallen out of love with the country, though some of his reasons ("Momism"??) are a little dubious. Perhaps the real explanation was growing age and resentment over Britain's waning power. I wonder what his attitude toward the Vietnam War would have been--an anticommunist for or anti-American against?
And a good one--the final paragraph is the best part of the story.
A few years back I persuaded a friend to cook that recipe. We even ate the eggs with (cheap) pink champagne. They taste delicious and will make the ensuing coronary a pleasant experience.
I'm not so sure, but then again I liked "Take it Easy Mr. Bond," so what do I know?
Yes, I agree there is an ambiguity there. After hearing your interpretation I reread the ending and noticed the detail of the shadows falling over the room from the light spilling through the jalousies. The mention of shadows certainly supports a less than perfect ending. Perhaps Fleming wrote the scene intending both readings: a romantic picture of Bond and Domino asleep together in their hospital garb and the shadow of the inevitable breakup—the tears, the fights, the angry words—that has come to be part and parcel with Bond's love life. I like that.
(The thought also occurred to me that, given how ravaged both of their bodies were, there was no way Fleming could have had them actually engage in lovemaking, and perhaps having them fall asleep together was simply his most natural solution to an ending. Even so, having landed on that ending, he certainly put thought into how he would orchestrate it and what he would say through it.)
I can hardly wait. Gonna whip me up a big ol' plate of scrambled eggs, Fleming-style, while I read.
Not so sure either. But then I like No Deals, Mr. Bond, so what do I know?
I like that title too! It was the first Gardner novel I bought, mainly because the title sounded good.
Edition I read: 1963 Pan paperback with Raymond Hawkey cover; a particularly cool one with real 'bullet' holes. The cover image was originally going to be a bare male chest, but this was considered too racy, so it's a back!
Where I read it: Partly in a tea room in Sussex, although mostly at home. I also took it up in a light aircraft with me, but didn't get any reading done...
James Bond
Bond starts the novel run down (by his own fault entirely) and ends it run down (by the effort of saving the world) - a cycle indicated by the first and last chapters sharing a title.
In fact, he just about remains unchanged from first to last. Does he learn anything? Does he grow as a person? Nope, he brushes it all off as easily as he renounces healthy eating. Well, we all need a break sometimes.
The villain
Largo, if you will forgive a terrible joke, just doesn’t float my boat. On the heels of larger-than-life characters like Goldfinger, he simply doesn’t come across as much of a threat - in keeping with the fairly peaceful time Bond seems to be having on this particular outing.
We do know, however, that Largo is not the alpha villain. The tantalising glimpse we get of Blofeld and SPECTRE is far more intriguing, but we’ll have to wait before we can experience that in more detail.
The girl
Quick mention here for Miss Patricia Fearing. She’s kind, she’s competent, and she drives a bubble car, which is Just The Coolest.
I feel a bit sorry for her if the spaghetti was as garlicky as Bond wanted it, and he consumed it immediately before their tryst.
(When I first read Thunderball I was very pleased with myself for knowing what a left and a right was - because it’s explained in My Family and Other Animals.)
Now on to Domino, who is, for me, a standout Bond woman. (She's basically a gold-digger, but Fleming somehow makes this a good thing.) I love her confidence, her humour, the slight imperfection of her limp, and her energy (Domino Vitali...vital...life), but above all I love her fantasy of the Players sailor.
I, too, you see, have been a teenage girl at boarding-school (not far from the location of Shrublands, in fact). And who was the cardboard hero I made up stories about so I'd feel less lonely, bored, and trapped? The '...first man I ever sinned with. I took him into the woods, I loved him in the dormitory, I spent nearly all my pocket money on him. In exchange, he introduced me to the great world outside the Cheltenham Ladies College. He grew me up. He put me at ease with boys of my own age. He kept me company when I was lonely or afraid of being young. He encouraged me, gave me assurance'?
It was James Bond, of course, in the form of the cheap paperbacks I picked up whenever I could and read at every opportunity. He was frequently my companion after Lights Out, when I read him aloud to my friends and we all giggled helplessly over the naughty bits.
I'm sure Fleming knew this sort of thing was going on and is being self-referential. Didn't he even call Bond a 'cardboard hero' at some point when he was a bit fed up with writing him?
Other cast
Welcome back, Felix! I love the life and humour he always brings, lightening up Bond's rather dour outlook. I wonder if he introduced himself as 'double O O' or 'triple O' or what? It's not clear from the way it's written. And I'm guessing 'N or M' is a joke on the catechism.
May gets her finest hour here, knowing, or guessing, far more about Bond's job than he thought, and obviously caring a great deal about her employer. I'm glad he has someone at home to keep an eye on him.
Petacchi is an interesting one. We’ve talked about Largo, but for my money it’s Petacchi who represents what Bond could have been if he’d had similar skills and desires, but none of the morals.
Even though he betrays the men he’s been living and working with for months, condemning them to death for his own profit without a second thought, I feel a little sorry for him when he’s killed so abruptly himself; I know what it’s like to have a carefully-prepared witticism go down like a lead balloon, though luckily my audience has never reacted in quite such an extreme way.
The plot
A syndicate of villains holding the world to ransom. It's one of the first images most people come up with when they think of Bond movies, and it's been endlessly spoofed. We've seen a similar gathering in GF, but not on this scale. A trope is born.
Of course it’s far-fetched that Bond should end up in the right place to find the villain. But that’s why this story is about Bond and not about one of the other agents dispatched to other locations. Presumably there have been plenty of times when Bond has been sent off on a false trail; we just don’t get to read about them.
Fleming invents an aircraft, the Villiers Vindicator (unusual, since he tends to be so specific about branding), undoubtedly based on the V-bomber fleet with nuclear carrying capability: the Handley Page Victor, Vickers Valiant and Avro Vulcan. Using the Vulcan, with its iconic appearance, for the film was a masterstroke.
The location
For the first part of the book, we venture outside London and into Sussex. I always like to see Bond out and about in England; here, both the clinic and the surrounding area are lovingly, humorously described.
It's a glimpse of a lost England; tea shops today are twee and chintzy still, but in a self-aware, Pinteresty way, and offer so many gluten-, sugar- and dairy-free options Bond would think he was back in Shrublands.
Then to Nassau, a sunny holiday paradise with a seedy underbelly. You can feel the sunshine, and all the scenes here are a pleasant read for an English autumn. I especially enjoy Bond and Felix just flying around and chatting idly while they look for the missing aircraft.
Fleming's writing really shines in the underwater scenes, as usual. I love the 'white explosion' of the moon on the surface of the sea, and the musing on how sea life needs to be symmetrical to survive. And the Vindicator's interior is pure horror.
The American nuclear submarine gets such a detailed, convincing description, I suspect Fleming read the sales brochure.
Food & drink
1. Vodka and tonic with a dash of bitters? That sounds nice.
2. Hang on. I have a bottle of bitters.
3. It is nice! Thank you, Mr Fleming!
Poor Bond only gets one decent meal in the whole book, and that's breakfast in his own flat. The rest is all vile medicinal stuff in Sussex or overpriced and awful in Nassau. Good to see CR hasn't put him off feeding caviare to girls in casinos, though.
All the stuff about health food is very interesting. Life really has moved on from the war, and rationing, and encouraging people to feed their kids Mars bars precisely because they pack in so many of those vital calories.
This attitude of treating healthy eating as a bit of a joke was still prevalent when I was growing up in the '80s with vegetarian parents who insisted on stoneground wholemeal bread. (The joke's on them, because it made me regard ordinary cheap sliced white as a huge treat, and I consume it gleefully as a grown adult who can make her own decisions.)
Of course, today everyone's all about the probiotics - but there's also a school of thought that would regard Bond's protein-laden breakfast as the healthy option.
(A friend of mine is addicted to Lee Child novels and was overcome with delight to learn that Jack Reacher is unsure what yoghurt is. Bond is far ahead of his time!)
Miscellany
Bond is probably thinking of Damon Runyon with regard to the heap of six to four against. One for the very short list of authors he reads? (Actually it's six to five, but Fleming didn't have Google.)
His initial appraisal of the young taxi driver sounds exactly like current complaints about millennials.
I like the running gag about the herb garden; they really played this up in the recent radio adaptation.
I've been thinking about getting a tattoo for a while (I'm taking this midlife crisis thing very seriously) and under the watch is currently top pick for position.
That occurred to me too—that Largo doesn't actually do a whole lot until he goes into total beast-mode on Bond at the end. I actually wondered if perhaps that's why Fleming gave us that business before the climax—with Largo first shooting No. 10 dead and then going to torture Domino—just to make him, at the eleventh hour, read a bit more like an actual villain we're meant to root against.
Nice catch!
Wonderful story, @Agent_99. It's great to hear the different ways James Bond has played a part in our lives at different times.
Certainly one of the better of Fleming's short stories. Maybe the best. There's a streamlined nature to the whole thing despite Bond's day-wandering about Berlin in the middle, him getting food (smothered in onion rings!) and picking up his trashy thriller (so Bond likes the escapism of pulp fiction too...). He's given a bad job. "Murder," way he sees it. But he takes it without making a fuss and gets on the inevitable. And much as Marc Forster described his Quantum of Solace, it really is a kind of bullet shot straight through to the gloomy conclusion.
Bond's conference with M plays out in an almost polar opposite manner to their meeting in FYEO. In FYEO, Bond can tell M is struggling with his request, which concerns a grayness between murder and assassination, and Bond helps him out, making the call himself. Here Bond "perversely" wants M to spell the matter out to him "in black and white." He wants M to have to call it what it is: "This was to be murder. All right. Let M bloody well say so."
It can be difficult to tell sometimes why Bond gets hung up over certain killings and not others. Fleming doesn't always spell it out clearly and you're sometimes left with this confused picture as to what exactly Bond feels about killing. I suspect in this case he dislikes killing the other "man," the sniper, not merely because it's in cold blood—because he has gladly killed in cold blood before under other circumstances—but perhaps because the other man is just doing his job, same as Bond is doing his.
The setting of Berlin, bombed out, weed-choked, squalid, and simply overall unpleasant with its smells of cabbage and cheap cigar smoke, fits this story perfectly. It's a dirty job Bond's on and he gets wrapped up again in thoughts over whether the 00 job's even worth it. In the end, the nastiness of the job and the squalid setting of Berlin stand in stark contrast to the futile, yet very real, affections Bond develops for his mystery girl with the cello.
Scrambled eggs with bacon and buttered toast—"a vast dish." Fleming always puts me in the mood for breakfast.
Interesting, almost creepy detail about Bond's hooded black garb resembling that of an executioner from the Spanish Inquisition. More on the idea of murder.
The girl with the cello actually appears to resemble Maryam d'Abo with her "long, straight, fair hair, falling to her shoulders, [that] shone like molten gold."
"Strawberry jam." Great visual line plucked by the film.
More details incorporated into the film: Sender being a stiff-arse, threatening to report Bond because he downed a whiskey, and Bond replying: "I'd be quite happy for you to get me sacked from the Double-O Section." ("If he fires me, I'll thank him for it.")
Wonderful build-up to the sniping. And then I particularly like Sender's giddy celebration and Bond's immediate harsh admonishment as he throws himself clear of the window to avoid the return fire that comes thundering in. Wish we could've seen that in the film.
In the end, Sender goes softer on Bond than Saunders does, but admits he'll report Bond just the same.
We suddenly see a very human side of Bond here in the second to last paragraph. Amidst all the horror and gloominess and "dirty work" of his job, he has developed over three days a "long-range, one-sided romance with an unknown girl." He'll never see her again. She's gone, like a Gala Brand, yet he doesn't want to leave that "stinking little smashed-up flat" if it means abandoning the attachment he'd formed for her over those three days. He spared/saved her life at least, and that'll have to be enough for him. Onward he goes back to London and on with the rest of his life. "Let's go."
Total scrambled eggs count: 1
I'm glad this is a safe place where I can get that kind of thing off my chest!
I do think the Bond novels often resonate with kids at boarding-school, because they're so filled with independence and escapism. I should write something about that sometime.
When I saw William Boyd speak about Solo he mentioned reading Fleming to his classmates after Lights Out, which gave me a kick because I did exactly that. (Incidentally, I now know that @Some_Kind_Of_Hero was at the same talk, which is awesome!)
How appropriate!
Well, he does learn that healthy food and healthy living are the spawn of the devil and have no place in the working life of a Double-O agent.
I suppose the Shrublands scene--and Bond's adoption and renunciation of its ethos--is an apologia for Fleming's failed attempts to live a healthier life and his decision to burn the candle at both ends.
Yes, Fleming doesn't judge her for being a gold-digger. There's even a scene where he inwardly takes offense at how other men talk about Domino:
"'Whore,' 'tart,' 'prostitute' were not words Bond used about women unless they were professional streetwalkers or the inmates of a brothel, and when Harling, the Commissioner of Police, and Pitman, Chief of Immigration and Customs, had described her as an 'Italian tart' Bond had reserved judgment."
Full circle! How pleased Fleming would be to read that.
She definitely deserves importing into the films. If Batman can have Alfred, why not a May for Bond?
Petacchi also has flashier taste than Bond. He dreams about buying a Ghia-bodied 3500 G.T. Maserati--as Kingsley Amis noted, this exact choice of brand name and model tells us a lot about Petacchi's character.
And Nassau is now even more of a tourist hell than it was in the 60s. I went there a decade ago and have no desire to return.
The scene under the Disco Volante is another winner, going from horrific to poignant after the barracuda is nerve-damaged: "He felt somehow sorry to see the wonderful king of the sea reduced to this hideous jiggling automaton. There was something obscene about it, like the blind weaving of a punchy boxer before he finally crashes to the canvas."
We have the makings for a Fleming Reading-Drinking game...
Ha! Though to Bond's credit he does start conversing with the driver on the latter's own terms and shows he can be hip with the kids.
Somehow, for some reason, poor Loelia Ponsonby has been replaced by one Mary Goodnight who serves no greater role in the story than to incur the authorial ejaculation "damn women!" One wonders whether The Man with the Golden Gun might have packed greater emotional weight had the Bond lady been Loelia Ponsonby instead. I'll see what I think on that when I get there.
There are several almost comical turns of phrase peppered throughout the early pages of this story—perhaps Fleming spicing things up for his own interest. Things like the aforementioned "damn women," Bond putting on his mind along with his coat, the succinctness of Bond telling Goodnight "M" on his way out the door, the way Fanshawe reacts to Bond as if he's a "Gila monster," and so on and so on and so on.
Fanshawe, who is introduced and utilized solely within the scene in M's office, is such an impeccably described character I wonder whether he could not have been used to accompany Bond to the sale rather than the perfectly nondescript Mr. Kenneth Snowman. Not something worth losing sleep over. Still...
Interesting that Fleming would describe the prose of the description of the Fabergé "terrestrial globe" as "as stickily luscious as a butterscotch sundae" when I distinctly recall him allowing Bond disparaging thoughts toward butterscotch sundaes, as immaculate as they genuinely are, in one of his earlier novels—Live and Let Die I'm quite certain.
Bond on Bond Street. Sure, why not?
Quite a long story for one in which not much of anything really happens. Perhaps the greatest legacy of this story is simply how superbly it was adapted into Octopussy, leading to other great sequences in the film like the post-titles forest chase with the twins. Now that's how you adapt Fleming.
Total Fabergé egg count: 1
Yes, that was a cool discovery! Got my copy of Solo signed and personalized at that very event.
Thank you for posting this. I missed it while reading "The Living Daylights," but I do really like those opening two minutes (before the opera singing begins—big orchestral fan, not so big on opera). There's a sense of drama, danger, darkness, and even some pathos that feels so appropriate for the tone of the story itself. That would be quite the cool little easter egg if it appeared in some future Bond film.
After the Movieathon and the Bookathon, the Drinkathon? Not sure any of us would survive CR, though (book or film).
Short stories this weekend. @Some_Kind_Of_Hero's reviews have got me stoked about rediscovering them.
Yes, for anyone wondering, I did make myself a wonderful plate of scrambled eggs today. Done in my own style, not Fleming's. My own style involves four eggs thoroughly whisked and a great helping of butter in the skillet, cooked over low heat to ensure moisture, combined with wonderfully meltable slabs of cheddar, and finally topped with cracked black pepper. Enjoyed with high-pulp orange juice.
Interestingly, though Fleming describes this story as a more positive counterbalance to his own "grim feelings" on the city, which he suspects "may shock or depress some of my readers," he still lays into New York a fair deal, remarking, for instance, that "the flavour had gone from all American food except the Italian. Everything tasted the same—a sort of neutral food taste." That'll bring the Americans a more favorable opinion of you!
Indeed not much at all happens in this briefest of Bond stories. But the premise is an interesting one: Bond flying to New York to warn a former Secret Service girl she's unknowingly rooming with a KGB agent and that the FBI and CIA are closing in on them. Fleming certainly makes the stakes seem interesting and the mission an unusual and sort of personal one—personal for the Service at any rate—and Quantum of Solace even managed to work the setup into its coda with Corrine and Yusef. And the stuff about Solange and visiting the "blue" pictures for sexual inspiration and the S&M bars just for the fun of it all makes for an interesting read.
The real payoff (and it needs one in a story this short and uneventful) is the humorous, even playful, final paragraph undermining the gravity of the mission and the girl's tears and suicide threats with the embarrassing phone calls to London over Bond's blunder that he had set up the rendezvous at the nonexistent Reptile House in Central Park Zoo. The Rockefeller Center skating rink at midnight, at any rate, makes for such a more perfect setting for a breakdown over a deceitful romance. They could sure use the Rockefeller Center skating rink in a future film some day for some other midnight rendezvous.
Not my least favorite of Fleming's short stories actually. I think that goes to "The Property of a Lady," which I found far too long for all that it does. "007 in New York" is short and sweet and pays off in the end by putting a big ol' smile on the reader's face over 007's otherwise inexcusable blunder.
Oh yes, and...
Total scrambled eggs count: 1 serving SCRAMBLED EGGS 'JAMES BOND' (that is, enough for just one individualist)
And that brings me to the end of Fleming's short stories. Think I probably liked "The Living Daylights" and "Risico" the most this time around. And like I mentioned, "007 in New York" always puts a smile on my face.
Looking forward immensely to delving into The Spy Who Loved Me over the long Thanksgiving weekend.