It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
The film definitely improved on the original by making Bond obsessed with hunting down Blofeld, which gives further momentum and purpose to the storyline.
I read Tracy's desire to be used that way as part of her depression and self-destructive tendencies. Bond's going along with it is questionable, but presumably he didn't really treat her like a whore and instead seriously thought he could perform the sort of sexual therapy her performed with Tiffany. But in Tiffany's case Bond had to first prove his devotion to her at length, so the scene in OHMSS is disquieting.
Very good point. Riggs's Tracy is a tougher, steelier version of the character, and it would be difficult to imagine her having the sort of shouty outbursts Fleming's does. She's more self-contained. While I miss literary Tracy's volatility, her vulnerability and pain are conveyed just as deeply in Diana Rigg's eyes and manner.
Very irresponsible behavior, especially in light of what happens to Campbell. It's also jaw-dropping that M is fine with his one of his chief agents marrying the daughter of one of Europe's greatest criminals! Does no one realize the security risk? As with Darko Kerim, Fleming is a little too affectionate toward Draco.
Ha! I think the bitchiness is more in motive than manner. After Tracy Bond "had dropped out of the field and now regarded himself as a rank outsider," but continues flirting anyway, which is a bitchy thing to do to Goodnight and the other Double Os.
Could be, but the prime motivation might be to include otherwise unusable but interesting genealogical research. Fleming did a huge amount of in-depth research with the Rouge Dragon of the College of Arms ("Sable Basilisk" is a fictional version of the title) and some of it undoubtedly was on the possible genealogy of the name Bond. Most of it didn't really fit James Bond, but Fleming thought it too good to not use in some way.
Perfect casting. It's funny that in the book M is ghastly ("And who the hell are you supposed to be?") in the first part andmuch nicer in the second, whereas the film does the reverse: Bond has a nice visit with M at Quarterdeck in the first part, but in the second M flat-out refuses to help rescue Tracy, in the coldest possible manner.
Yes, this is an instance where the film could have used more of the book's restraint. I don't blame viewers for finding Bond's gleeful bedhopping a bit crass, though he hadn't yet proposed to Tracy. The Bond films had from the start amplified the number of Bond's bedmates and OHMSS--an otherwise back-to-basics film--succumbed to that trend.
Apparently Fleming's notebooks contained an idea about Bond killing a fellow agent in order to keep his cover from being blown. OHMSS presumably represents this idea, in way more wrenching than a direct murder.
True. The film rectified this by adding three scenes of Bond and Tracy--Draco's Birthday party, the "We Have All the Time in the World" montage, and the short but very sweet scene of them in the limo heading to Gumboldt's office.
Agreed. The one distinctive element in her character--her neurosis--is tidily disposed of halfway through. She doesn't undergo a moral or sensual awakening in the way that Fleming's best female characters do.
That speech needs to be used in a Bond film. It's a great way of reminding folks that Bond isn't interested in mere hedonism or empty wealth. And perhaps it was Fleming's way of telling himself to beware of all the wealth he was starting to accrue.
Yet another great observation. In YOLT Bond goes on to blame herself for being unable to help Tracy. Of course there was no way he could, but since he's James Bond he can't feel otherwise. The other element of pathos in the ending is seeing Bond completely unmanned. He doesn't do something obvious like cry--he completely denies that his wife is dead: "It's all right,' he said in a clear voice as if explaining something to a child. 'It's quite all right. She's having a rest. We'll be going on soon. There's no hurry." This isn't the reaction of a hero, but of someone in a state of utter helplessness and mental collapse. It shocks with every reading. Lazenby played the scene to perfection, and adds, at the end, a suppressed sob as he buries his face in Tracy's headdress. Denial cannot withstand the tragic horror of reality.
I did not know that! What a lovely fact.
Right, and you kind of know that all the way through - it can't last, it's never lasted from one book to the next before, this is Bond not The Thin Man. The more I think about it, the more cruel it seems of Fleming - but he's never shied away from torturing his protagonist, right from the start, and it's a successful formula.
Oh, this all sounds wonderful. Is it bad that my takeaway learning point was 'I should give bourbon a try'?
Well...he saves her life, and then she saves his. You can see why the circumstances of their first meeting would stick with Bond, whose protective instincts are then superseded by gratitude. I bet plenty of marriages have started on a flimsier premise.
We know she's on his mind while they're apart; I don't think any of his other relationships have included a lengthy phase of being penpals, and maybe that, rather than leaping into bed and staying there until it all falls apart, is part of the trick to this one working out.
Or maybe I'm working hard to justify this because it needs to be convincing in order for the ending to deliver the proper wham! effect.
What is this referencing? I googled it and it's a book..but i don't see the Bond connection (unless it's some line in LALD?)
Also...do you have these?
Now on topic....is this title referencing last year's June? :D I just saw this thread now :D
It's chapter title in Live And Let Die that was changed for the American edition. Nowadays the original British text is sold in America, but some editions--such as the recent Vintage release--still use the censored text.
Yes. You're welcome to join in--we're tackling the last two novels in the series but reactions on earlier entries are welcome. Or perhaps after we finish we'll start the Bondathon all over again for new participants!
A good observation and very likely what Fleming was going for.
Another good observation! Fleming sure loved his "rascals" and—as @Revelator points out—sought to make angels out of some characters we would probably think very differently of were they real-life people (Columbo, Kerim, Draco).
Yes, I do think there is great nuance in Rigg's performance. She may not be portraying Tracy with full-fledged neurosis, but there is great inner pain that shows through in her performance.
I figured "bitchily" had to have held a different meaning in Fleming's time than it does now.
I believe I'd heard that somewhere before—probably from you!—and yes, that does sound like a fascinating idea. Something like that made its way into Skyfall with Bond (with knowingly spoiled aim) being forced to shoot at the Bond girl, and also in Solo I believe it was where Bond is undercover with the bad guys and is asked to execute a man.
Yes, and when Bond communicates those thoughts, as if to a child, it is in fact to his own stunned self he is explaining these things.
Not at all! You really must give bourbon a try. LALD Bond would approve. (So would Judi's M!)
True, true. The greater problem for me I guess is that Tracy is supposed to be the love of Bond's life—in theory more important to him than any other girl—and Fleming doesn't make me, the reader, fall in love with Tracy the way he's made me fall for any number of his other, better-drawn Bond girls.
@Birdleson, you nicely summarize some of the greater problems I've found with Golden Gun in the past. There are however parts of the book I really like and I hope I can experience and enjoy the novel's suspense as you have. I'm flying through YOLT at the moment and coming up on it soon.
And Old Grand Dad is still being made today, so no excuses! The 100 proof variety is very good and remains drink of choice for connoisseurs wishing to pursue pirate gold and kick criminals into the jaws of sharks.
I admit I've developed a taste for Black & White whisky since we did Moonraker, though, so perhaps a Bond booze cabinet is a worthy endeavour?
I know, I'm very dedicated.
Well, this was perhaps the fastest I've read any of these books this time around. I nearly finished the whole thing over the weekend (then had to gradually get the last few chapters in this week). Fleming’s prose is on fire here. It just reads. It reads beautifully. You Only Live Twice has long been my second favorite Bond behind Moonraker and this read is probably the closest I've come to wanting to place YOLT first. I can't quite bring myself to set it above Moonraker, but this is one damn fine book.
Some thoughts:
Following OHMSS's horrific ending, Fleming throws Bond and reader immediately into a bizarre world of strange customs and rituals and people with black-lacquered teeth. The thought's occurred to me in the past that placing the story in a land/culture so alien to Bond was a way for Fleming to externalize his sense of displacement in the world after the loss of Tracy. However much of that really exists in the story, Fleming puts the setting to use in all sorts of wonderful ways.
In the opening chapter, he trades his usual cards at the casino for Paper-Rock-Scissors. A children's game. But of course, it's an exciting read nonetheless with Fleming delving into the psychology of the game: how you either try to read your opponent or subvert all the mind games, as Bond does, by playing totally at random.
Ahem...after the events of OHMSS, the Universal Export cover is still in operation??!
Sir James Maloney picks the Romeo y Julieta at Blades. A good choice. I won’t pretend to be a cigar connoisseur, but I've had them on occasion and have found Romeo y Julietas enjoyable.
Bond is in worse shape than I recalled starting out: not showing up to work, careless on missions, etc. Even Moneypenny regards him with hostility, evidently having by this point lost any patience she might have had for him. Poor James. While Fleming does little (wisely) to directly address Tracy, the effects of OHMSS are to be found all throughout this book.
This has to be one of the warmest depictions of MI6 staff out of any of the Bond novels with both M and Tanner (in their own ways) looking out for Bond and reassuring him anyone could make the mistakes he has. I also find something rather sad about the way Bond says he'll request his old number back when he's done with this caper, knowing how it all nearly ends for him. And for all we know, knowing Fleming, perhaps this was tentatively planned as Bond’s end. It certainly reads like a final novel to me—and as I’ve said before, this really would have been an exceptional and quite perfect novel for Fleming to end on.
I love Dikko. He’s wonderfully brash and speaks his mind, even calling Bond a “pommy poofter” to his face. He’d be insufferable to deal with in real life, but as a character he’s fantastic to read. I actually kind of picture him as a middle-aged Tom Hardy. Love the part where he says, regarding Tiger's eavesdropping, "He ought to have learned by now that me and my friends don't want to assassinate the Emperor or blow up the Diet or something" and then it's mentioned that "Dikko glared around him as if he proposed to do both those things." Ha!
And how he drunkenly leads the way out with “massive dignity.” He sure is a character! Fleming appears to have had a wild time writing him.
This is the second time Fleming has Bond say “Tell Mother I died game," when he's on his way to meet Tiger. (The first was just before he went swimming with sharks.)
So Bond is the year of the Rat. And Tiger, naturally, the year of the Tiger.
Knowing what it all adds up to in the end, the clues pointing to Blofeld (and Bunt) really are quite obvious: nefarious couple transplanted recently from Switzerland, little known about them, a hideous frau, practice of hiring guards from criminal secret society... You wonder why it doesn’t all raise a giant flag for Bond. But greater contrivances have occurred elsewhere in Fleming. Such is the way of his adventures.
A lot of Fleming’s writing in this book suggests the idea of starting over again, recovering from past failures, etc.—even Bond’s response to suicide as a means of regaining honor after an academic failure: "...we readjust our sights, or our parents do it for us, and have another bash."
The tanka Bond finds on the wall of the whore-house actually sums up the idea nicely: “Everything is new tomorrow.”
When Tiger rants about the decline of England as a great Empire, he puts Bond to the test not only for the sake of proving himself, but to uphold his entire country's reputation!
Tiger has a good point about the vulgarity of blowing snot in your handkerchief and keeping the result in your pocket. Thank heavens handkerchiefs went out of fashion!
Live food. I recall being in a sushi place and seeing langoustes being served on ice. The upper halves of them anyway—they’d been severed. They were sitting on the counter in plain sight of me for a good few minutes, waiting to be picked up and brought to somebody's table. Occasionally you’d see one of their claws quest out a bit or their antennae twinge abruptly. It was the most horrifying thing to witness while you’re eating. The worst part of it was when one of their black eyes dropped out of its socket about half an inch and just hung there inertly on its optic nerve. It was positively grotesque.
One of the best parts of Bond’s tour through Japan is all of Bond’s smart-alecky comments to Tiger, like about the poetry-writing samurai losing his patience at the whore-house: "Then he threw his pen away and reached for his sword and shouted, 'When is room No. 4 going to be empty?'" These chapters are full of jokes from Bond like this. For a follow-up to OHMSS, this is actually probably the most "jokey" Bond has ever been. But it's a snarky kind of jokey that fits perfectly well with Bond's state of mind.
Whether by coincidence—Fleming simply wanting to write about the country—or by design, Japan proved the ideal backdrop for Bond's final confrontation with Blofeld, allowing Fleming to drop such tantalizing phrases as "It was ancient feud."
We see little—nothing?—of Bond’s thoughts on Tracy, yet his reaction to Blofeld’s photograph tells all. This tale transcends plain revenge and enters the realm of vengeful mania: the loud, harsh laugh that shocks even Bond himself; the fact he is determined, against all odds, to extinguish the man himself rather than turn him over to the authorities and simply end it. Bond is in a dark place here. This is Bond as we’ve never seen him before. And it’s fascinating.
And I find it no coincidence that Bond’s confrontation with Blofeld takes place exactly nine months after the assassination of his bride. Nine months—precisely when Bond’s first child should have entered the world.
Bond's remark about saving Tiger's joke about the girl throwing herself off the bridge for London provides yet another moment of poignant knowing for the informed reader. Bond usually does succeed in his missions and return, eventually, safely to London. These little details make the unaware reader think the story is destined for the same, while the story actually leaves Bond’s fate completely open. Of course, Golden Gun changes all of this—rather too succinctly in my opinion—but I still reap the pathos in the sense of finality that accompanies this tale.
Simply marvelous prose throughout Bond's time with Kissy in and around her village on the sea. Some of the most gorgeous chapters Fleming penned.
Bond has an escape into fantasy: thinking how wonderful it would be to spend the rest of his days rowing Kissy out to sea. He shrugs the whimsical thought aside, knowing he must return to “the dark, dirty life he had chosen for himself.” He doesn’t give a very convincing reason why he shouldn’t leave it all for the sake of his own simple happiness however.
I like Kissy as a character—particularly the detail about her decision to forgo what she found to be a disgusting life in Hollywood (the honorable David Niven aside) for her simple Ama life.
The slightly fantastical anthropomorphism of having David the bird peck Bond’s hair in approval for retrieving another shell—Fleming’s world existing in a reality just slightly that side of fantasy from our own.
References to Bond and Scotland. Earlier, Bond’s boast to Tiger about honoring Scotland, and here, rowing like a Scottish gillie.
Perhaps You Only Live Twice calls to me above most other Bonds because its content aligns so well with my interests: Asian culture, the ocean and swimming, medieval tales of knights and dragons. But beyond all that, I just find this a damn great book.
The name Tiger gives Bond means "Thunder."
Didn't take too many specific notes on the final chapters. Perhaps I was just so engrossed in those long, long paragraphs that accompany Bond's journey through the Castle of Death. There are some truly wonderful details here. I especially like Bond spotting the pink dragonflies that inspired the delirious poem recited by Tiger's man: "Desolation! Pink dragonflies flitting above the graves."
Blofeld is a beast in this story. A massive, hulking beast in his samurai gear and his dragon-embroidered kimono. He even has his Fu Manchu-esque mustache in the making evocative of the look of Japanese dragons. My favorite Blofeld moments are when he pauses outside Bond's shed, sniffing like an animal, like a cat with claws sprung, and when he asks of Bond: "Do you want to be hacked about in a vulgar brawl, or will you offer your neck in the honorable fashion?"
Once captured by the oubliette, Bond, knowing he can't possibly win against the however many men Blofeld has on him, nevertheless attempts to do what damage he can, echoing a similar scene in Casino Royale where he throws himself, hands-bound, upon the man leading him to his torture.
Lieber Ernst? Irmchen? A sickening display of love—or whatever it is—between these two monsters. A true mockery of the love they stole from Bond.
Fleming grants Blofeld a classic, grandiose speech in the moments before his death by strangulation. For some reason—maybe it's the part about the "liver, kidneys, heart" all failing in middle-age—the mind of Fleming curiously seems to come out quite strongly in Blofeld's final—what would you call it? "mission statement?"
Strangling is a fairly non-bizarre way for a Bond villain to meet his end, but really there's no other way Fleming could have had Bond do the job.
Things happen fast after that. Much faster than I'd remembered. And Bond, almost unnecessarily it seems, makes his own escape rather hairy—too hairy—by setting off the volcanic explosion. The escape by weather balloon from the castle's black-and-gold winged tiers is marvelously fantastical, however.
M's obit: a great little chapter and a great false ending. I'm particularly fond of Goodnight's proposed epitaph: "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." That is indeed rather how Fleming lived.
Back in Ama-land, despite the enormously questionable morality in what Kissy does with Bond, she is not wrong in arguing to the priest that Bond was perfectly happy fishing with her at sea. He was.
For a time, Bond lives a blissful sort of dream. But he is Bond and Bond, as we know too too well, can have no happiness without a shadow. The shadow is himself. His own drive to do something with his life. To have a purpose to his days. His purpose is also what prevents him from ever capturing any lasting happiness for himself.
There is terrible, terrible irony in Bond's line: "Surely they would do no harm to a fisherman from Kuro?"
Such a wonderfully moving ending—the double whammy of Kissy's heartbreak over losing Bond and the combined fear and awe you feel over Bond heading directly into the heart of the enemy without a clue as to who he is or what he means to them. Suspecting Bond may indeed have died outside Blofeld's castle would have been a bad enough ending. This ending is almost worse. A fate potentially worse than death: Bond handing himself to the Russians. One of Fleming's best.
Total scrambled eggs count: zero-zero, but several references to eggs including a double portion of eggs Benedict, Kissy beating up an egg in Bond's rice (something I came to really enjoy myself after my time living in the East), and the fib that Bond was evidently attempting to retrieve seagull eggs (presumably for dining purposes) when he lost his memory
A good point that easily bears repeating. And Fleming himself was also undergoing his share of personal despair. Bond has steadily become more human with each book since Casino Royale; in YOLT he becomes human to the point of dysfunction. I wonder why Sir James Molony has never appeared in the movies--he would be perfect for the Craig era, when Bond is supposed to be damaged inside. Skyfall missed a trick in not making him the doctor who headshrinks Bond
To me the "Blofeld trilogy" is the height of Fleming's achievement.
As do I. But the travelogue often gets used a stick to beat Fleming's novelist skills with. One hostile academic dismissed it as "boring" and claimed his students did too. Perhaps they didn't want to upset their bore of a professor.
She's Fleming's most self-sufficient heroine, and one of his strongest. She certainly has a strong will--though she lies and manipulates to keep Bond by her side, her actions are forgivable, because Bond really does find happiness by her side. It says a lot about Bond that he would be perfectly happy as a hardworking fisherman in rural Japan.
More time with Blofeld would certainly have been appreciated. As written, Blofeld has turned into a stereotypical mad German, and feels very much like a Bond film villain--perhaps seeing the films of Dr. No and FRWL influenced Fleming more than we'd have guessed!
I've always found it hard to wrap my head around that section (as if the book wasn't weird enough!). After all those books insisting on Bond's anonymity and the secretness of the secret service, we find out that Bond is a fictional hero in his own universe and that Ian Fleming was his friend?? Metafictional overload! But at least it inspired John Pearson's James Bond: The Authorised Biography.
The first time I read YOLT I was shocked by how badly Bond had fallen apart. He's a pathetic, drunken wreck (even if "Who's M.?" is meant as a defiant question). Even now, none of the movies has dared to take Bond to such a level of degradation. As Fleming later makes clear, Bond must decline and die in order to be reborn.
Yes. Superb as the opening and ending bits of TMWTGG are, YOLT would have been an equally fitting finale, with a reborn Bond wandering into the unknown.
He's based on the Aussie journalist Richard "Dikko" Hughes--there's a good article on him here. He also inspired a character in John le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy. Hughes wrote about Fleming in his memoir Foreign Devil, and says Fleming was extremely interested in visiting the Panama Canal. I have little doubt that a future Bond adventure would have taken place there if Fleming had enjoyed better health.
It's interesting that Dikko and Tiger appear together for only a few scenes, and toward the middle Tiger eventually takes over as Bond's buddy--as if Fleming decided not to have two larger-than-life friends "on stage" at the same time.
And emotional logic conditions us, after OHMSS, to thirst for Bond's revenge. So we're wiling to forgive the contrivances.
Eeeeek! I'm one of those pussies who has trouble eating anything with its head on, even when definitely dead.
Yes, and though one might point to the influence of the first two Bond movies, Fleming's wisecracking humor is different from the groaner puns of the films.
I'd never thought of that, but wow. And then Bond gets Kissy pregnant!
In Niven's autobiography The Moon's a Balloon he describes a WWII visit to Boodles, one of London's most exclusive clubs, where he commits the faux pas of sitting in the favorite armchair of the club's oldest member. Much harrumphing ensues, and a nearby naval commander with a "pleasant ruddy face and a broad tells Niven "I enjoyed that very much." Niven writes:
"Over drinks and luncheon he told me he was in Naval Intelligence 'probably stuck in the admiralty for the duration.' Ian Fleming was his name and we laughed together at the same things for years to come."
Strangely, Niven doesn't feature much in either Fleming biography, but they were obviously good friends, as shown by a letter from 1962 where Fleming responds (gently but negatively) to his Niven's request that Fleming create a character for him to play onscreen. Note the YOLT connection at the end:
The Niven-Fleming friendship seems like a good subject for further research...
I also like Blofeld's dissing of Bond: "You are a common thug, a blunt instrument wielded by dolts in high places. Having done what you are told to do, out of some mistaken idea of duty or patriotism, you satisfy your brutish instincts with alcohol, nicotine and sex while waiting to be dispatched on the next misbegotten foray."
I bet Fleming enjoyed putting the words of his critics in Blofeld's mouth!
Excellent point. Those two making love is sight far more hideous than anything in the Garden of Death! I hope they enjoy safe sex, since Blofeld has syphilis...
The superb and otherwise faithful comic strip adaptation of YOLT changes the method of Blofeld's death:
And also a very weird and sometimes shocking one: he forgets how to make love to a woman! Fortunately his skills are revived...through toad sweat and porn mags. It all feels so ineffably strange, but again is part of Bond being broken down and rebuilt for his second life.
I'm of the opinion that one cannot be a real Fleming fan without liking You Only Live Twice. I know it's a terribly unfair thing to say, since there are real Fleming fans who dislike the book, such as Steven Jay Rubin and Charlie Higson, but it's their loss. Like TSWLM, YOLT is a more divisive book than other Bonds--some of its most upvoted reviews on Goodreads are among the worst (and I invite YOLT fans to upvote the better ones).
I'm inclined to agree with you. That such notable writers on and related to Bond—Rubin and Higson—dislike the book is somewhat astounding to me. But I suppose we all have our unique likes and dislikes that don't always make sense to everyone. One man's From Russia With Love is another man's Die Another Day, and so forth.
Also interesting to read of Dikko's source and the Niven-Fleming relationship. You are a wonderful resource on all things Fleming!
I'm not sure that he did forget her, unless she was wiped from his memory during the brainwashing and subsequent recovery. I don't believe Fleming ever really makes that clear.
Thank you for the wonderful compliment--I aim to edify!
That's one of the things I find frustrating about The Man With the Golden Gun--Bond has gone through enormous trauma in his previous two adventures, but he never thinks about them. Bond recalls Maria Whats-her-name from "Property of a Lady" and Honey from Dr. No, but we never get a clue to his emotional state regarding Tracy and Kissy. Maybe he doesn't have one, since it feels like Bond's memory has been wiped clean of everything since 1958. This certainly isn't the contemplative Bond we'd gotten to know and love.
Getting back to Kissy, I think YOLT leaves us with one of the greatest unanswered questions of the Bond saga. Since Kissy is pregnant at the end of the book, would Fleming have ever used Bond's child in a future tale? We'll never know, alas.
This is how I like to read it too. There’s more sadness in the idea—and severing Bond from any hope of happiness in the world feels truer to Fleming to me.
Quite true. I've never thought about it like that you know but obviously Raymond Benson (and John Gardner) had other ideas. However, Glidrose forbade a Bond child until Raymond Benson came along with the 'Blast from the Past' short story, published in Playboy in January 1997.
In Benson's defence it was the first Bond thing he ever wrote. Some of his Bond novels are very good.
A couple of years ago I devised my own account of Bond's child--I apologize for inflicting fan fiction on everyone but I hope the outcome will please you.
***
Kissy had a son who enjoyed a happy childhood among the Ama, though he must have missed his father, described by Kissy as a brave foreign policeman who killed a wicked foreign dragon and converted the garden of death into a garden of Eden. Eventually the boy--named Taro after his father of course--left his hometown and ended up a policeman in a rural area outside Fukuoka. Despite the community's initial unease at his mixed-race status, the young man became accepted and well-liked, and though his district was small and provincial he occasionally handled an interesting case.
His most exciting case involved capturing a foreign criminal with the help of a policeman who'd been sent all the way from England. The gray-haired but still handsome foreigner was semi-retired but employed by his country on occasional missions, since he liked to travel. The foreign policeman told Taro he'd requested this case because the criminal was an ex-member of an organization called "Spectre," and because he had fond memories of Japan and was eager to return.
He and Taro worked together for only two days but got along extremely well. On the
foreigner's last night in town he and Taro enjoyed a splendid dinner and sake. As he got up to leave, the foreigner said before leaving Japan he wanted to travel north to see some Ama girls. Taro thought the foreigner was joking, so he didn't mention his mother had been an Ama girl before she retired to live with him in Fukuoka.
The two men shook hands, said their goodbyes, and never saw each other again. Had James Bond known he'd left Kissy with child, he might have put two and two together. Had Taro Suzuki known his father's real name, he might have done likewise. But all these things were, in Tiger Tanaka's phrase, of as little account as sparrow's tears.
I'm very glad you liked it! I understand what you mean about waking up sleeping dogs, but Bond seems like a character permanently cut off from family life and whatever happiness it might bring. To switch animals, he is the cat that walks alone.
Incidentally, mention of dogs recalls one of Fleming's most memorable phrases, about Darko Kerim having "the eyes of a hound who lies too often too close to the fire." That's stayed in my head since my first reading of FRWL.
That's very kind of you, but I definitely couldn't, partly because the whereabouts of Fleming's notebook are now unknown. With it goes any further information we might have had about those tantalizing unfinished short stories. I'm hoping the notebook might be an unlisted part of the Fleming collection at the University of Indiana, but without a visit to the Hoosier State I'll never know.
Could you describe that edition again? I have blurry photos of the section Murder on Wheels but really ought to own a hard copy.
They're not Bondian, but I recently acquired all of Fleming's Atticus columns. Anyone interested can send me a PM.
Thank you for the very kind words! That imagining would be my candidate for the "very last Bond story," if it wasn't for my suspicion that Bond would never live to see old age, which Fleming made pretty clear in Moonraker.
Oh, that's a nice one. I also like the recurring description of Bond's nerves balling up inside him like cat fur. Hmm, there may not be many actual animals in Bond, but there are a lot of figurative ones.
That's the edition I have, too. It was exclusive to the Waterstones chain, with a black dustjacket instead of grey. The inside of the dustjacket features a plan for a model rocket you can cut out and make, if you're some kind of book-destroying monster.
(I had no idea there was a special edition at the time; I asked a friend for the book as a birthday present, and she came through with this one.)
Thanks! I found the cover image:
It has the same ISBN as the normal hardcover, which makes finding it more difficult. I should have taken @007InVT 's advice and picked up a copy when I visited Britain in 2015--he even took me inside Waterstones and pointed out the book!
Ick ick ick! I can't even stand dog-ears on book covers. My tomes must look pristine. A book with a creased cover is dead to me.
I'll send you a scan of it for now so you can read the treatment, @Revelator. I sent it to some others members some time ago.