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Comments
I wonder if Red Grant may also qualify as a henchman who was also the main villain?
He could, although I think he shares it with Rosa Klebb. Scaramanga is very unique: he is a gun for hire, but the main antagonist of the novel. Something that was never truly done in the movies, not even, ironically enough, in TMWTGG, where Scaramanga kills his employer.
Add me to that list, MR for me is certainly one of Fleming's best and I'd easily rate it among his top 5 Bond novels.
I am partial to YOLT, FRWL, and DN. I read all these while I was in college and really enjoyed them. Even GF.
I agree here on Red Grant. I'df like to author an article on the Scaramanga-as-a-henchman-yet-he's-also-the-main-villain angle. Would you care to co-author with me at all, or give me your thoughts, @Ludovico?
Plus, I suppose that Sol 'Horror' Horowitz and Sluggsy Morant were the main villains in TSWLM in place of the latent villain, Mr Sanguinetta.
I will happily give you some thoughts about it.
True, the antagonists in TSWLM were also henchmen, but the novel was a very atypical Bond novel, in fact much closer to classic hardboiled fiction.
Well, that's true on both counts. Please send me a PM of your thoughts on the Scaramanga thing or you can email me at [email protected] and we can take things from there.
I really dont get this whole debate.
How is Scaramanga the henchman? Hes the main villain isnt he? Just because hes a bit handy does not make him the henchman.
You could say that hes working for the KGB but if you say that you have to say that Mr Big and Goldfinger are henchmen too.
Red Grant is certainly a henchman being subordinate to both Klebb and Grubozaboyzhikov (I know the spellings wayward there).
I would define henchman as someone who is secondary to the main villain. As no one is secondary to Scaramanga he is therefore the main villain isnt he?
Does this post need me to get the 'BOOK' out? :)
I would rather have thought so, yes.
Right then is it Red Grant, Nick Nack,Scaramanga? Anyone else?
You've obviously NEVER read the books, have you really?
No only Dr. No and currently reading Casino Royale he's been captured.
Well, at least that's a start. No Nick Nick in the TMWTGG novel, though there is a character called Nick Nicholson. Perhaps that's where the inspiration for the film henchman's name came from? Could be.
Well as we are debating about the film ones or the book ones?
I think the term 'Literary 007' next to the thread title alerted most people to what is being discussed.
Indeed. Saves us all from much confusion and we don't want that.
You are confusing role in the plot and hierarchy in an organisation (although Scaramanga is independent from it). Yes, Scaramanga is the main villain in TMWTGG, just like Figaro is the main character and hero in The Barber of Seville. Yet, Figaro is the help of who would otherwise be the protagonist (that was one of Beaumarchais' great inventions, turning one who was a supporting role into the main character). Same thing with Scaramanga in TMWTGG. Bond is after him, not because Scaramanga has a great scheme like Blofeld, or Goldfinger, or Drax, but because he killed many British agents and is probably going to kill many, many more if he is not stopped. As a function Scaramanga is just a gun for hire, a henchman. In the plot, he is at the center of it. And this is one of the novel's originalities. It is so simple, so brilliant and so inventive.
=D>
Good book. Quite readable. If Fleming had continued it might have served as an interlude entry, kind of like Spy Who Loved Me, pending another meatier offering.
Dr No was the Eurasian son of a Chinese girl and a German missionary.
Red Grant being the product of a "quickie" between a German weight lifter and an Irish tart...
Goldfinger not actually British but a refugee from Riga and probably Jewish...
Anyone else notice how in literary Bond, the English were never the bad guys? Villains were Spanish, German, Russian, American, Blacks etc. I always found this tidbit interesting.
Hardly a surprise really when one considers a) Bonds job is to stop people who want to destroy England and b) the inherent xenophobia and sneering superiority of the English upper classes at the time.
Yes, Kingsley Amis noted this fact in his The James Bond Dossier almost fifty years ago. It goes back much further than Fleming, though. Goldfinger was British, but of Jewish descent, so therefore an immigrant foreigner.
But lets be fair - Germans and Russians do make the best baddies don't they!
Well, yes. The Russian spy novels have the British and Americans as villains so it all fits, doesn't it really. I imagine its the same with German spy thrillers of the pre-war and inter-war periods. It would be interesting to read a study on all of this. The foreigner as 'other' and all that jazz. It's as old as time itself, I'd imagine.