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@Beatles, I agree - Fleming's vivid descriptions are certainly key to enjoying his writing.
I'm still under imressed by the Spang brothers, mostly, exactly as you stated, because of Fleming himself, or rather Bond, giving them little credit on the criminal-scale. But the book itself is very good indeed. One of the intersting passages, I think, is that simple trick the guy from MI5 plays to show mister Rufus isn't a diamond trader after all. It's such little gems that make reading Fleming so interesting.
The first point that I’d like to make is that Mr. White seems to be expecting trouble coming from more than one direction. He just didn’t expect it to be coming from Bond. This suggests to me that Quantum and Spectre are competing organizations…or at the most, competing factions of one fragmenting organization…and that both have reason to want to kill White. I have heard some fans suggesting that with Spectre now under Eon’s control, Quantum is no longer a necessary entity in the Bond universe. I would urge the filmmakers to take a different path, and I think they have: Spectre is a criminal organization while Quantum is an organization of highly connected plutocrats intent on nothing more or less than further enriching their already wealthy members. This puts the two organizations in obvious conflict: Quantum is perfectly happy with the status quo as it is, while the terrorists of Spectre want to shake up the status quo so that they can take a larger share of the spoils. The question in my mind is how did Mr. White manage to fall afoul of both of them at the same time? I trust the upcoming movie will address that issue.
There is only one other important point raised by the trailer in my mind, and if I were willing to read the spoiler threads I’d probably know the answer to this question: how exactly does Christoph Waltz fit into the storyline? Is he indeed Blofeld, as some have suggested? We are shown a (chared) photograph in this trailer, with two boys depicted alongside an adult male. It’s easy to deduct that the adult male is Oberhauser, who we know from Fleming’s short story Octopussy to have been an important figure in Bond’s life after the death of his parents. Again, some fans have suggested that the other boy in the photo (perhaps Oberhauser’s own son and therefore a sort of brother to the young Bond) grows up to be the character portrayed by Waltz (an easy suppostion to agree with) and that Waltz will be revealed as Blofeld by the end of this picture. While I would have no problem with the earlier suggestions noted here, I think much of Bond fandom would be dead set against a plot twist which essentially makes Blofeld into Bond’s surrogate brother. Luckily, there is one point to the trailer that argues strongly against Waltz being revealed as Blofeld.
Waltz’s character is allergic to white cats. We can see this clearly in….No, No, No. I’m just kidding there. Actually, in this trailer, we hear a voice which is clearly Waltz’s speaking to “James.” This is only natural if he is indeed the second boy in the charred photo. Waltz’s character shares a long personal history with Bond. But if there is one change from established Bond procedure which I simply cannot envision the folks at Eon signing off on, it is the manner in which the Villain of the film refers to Bond. He is, and always has been, referred to by every villain from Dr. No to Silva, as “Mister Bond.” Sometimes 007, sometimes just Bond, as in “Kill Bond! NOW!!!” Sometimes even “Commander.” But only Alec Trevelyan...and Silva once or twice...call him “James.” That level of familiarity just isn‘t assumed on the part of a Blofeld, and I don’t see it happening now. So if I had to put money on the topic, I’d bet that Christoph Waltz is NOT Blofeld. He might be a member of Spectre, or more likely involved in some way with Quantum…but I don’t think James will be calling his childhood friend “Ernst” in Bond 24.
Of course, for future Bond films, all bet are off…at least until the director is signed. Personally, I think the top man at Quantum is probably named "Tamahori."
@Birdleson, thanks for that review! i think you're absolutely right. I now regret not reading FRWL for the other thread, but I couldn't find it in my book collection (found it later though).
Live and Let Die B-)
As @BeatlesSansEarmuffs and @Birdleson have mentioned, this story sets the template for future Bond novels. We have Bond being reunited with Leiter at the beginning, much to his pleasure, and we have his basic mission laid out. We meet Quarrel later, who is described with affection and clearly matters to Bond. Indeed Bond's interactions with Leiter and Quarrel are pure pleasure in this story; Fleming gives us some genuine depth with those.
The action commences with rather a slow build, and Fleming really tries to give us insight into Bond's feelings and thoughts as he goes along. This story is highly atmospheric, drawing the reader into the world of three separate, and seemingly quite distinct, environs: New York City and Harlem (circa 1954), sleepy old St. Petersburg Florida (with a brief nod to other parts of Florida), and lovely Jamaica ... but, unusually, these places and the entire story is intertwined with the heavy, deadly spirit of voodoo throughout. Not your typical spy adventure or detective story by any means! Was there any other story being written quite like this in 1954? I doubt it.
A unique and palpably threatening villain: Mr. Big
Ominous warnings, cryptic messages, and as Bond reads up on voodoo, this enables the reader to feel the bloodiness, spooky spiritualism of the villain's world. It becomes apparent to Bond that by using voodoo as the ultimate weapon to keep people in line, the well protected and publicly low key Mr. Big, is a smart criminal of the first class. Physically imposing, with a diseased heart and also a huge head. Make no mistake: the lighter, playful and funky jive element of the film is nowhere in this quite deadly, serious story. Mr. Big is a fantastic villain, portrayed in depth and vividly. Through his talks with Bond when he first captures him in Harlem, Mr. Big does show his madness and megalomania, making him far more dangerous an enemy. As Bond thought,'He's a raving megalomaniac. And all the more dangerous because of it. The fault in most criminal minds is that greed was their only impulse. A dedicated mind was quite another matter. This man was no gangster. He was a real menace.' Bond being pitted against this villain is a great, enthralling part of this story.
Solitaire is shown to be psychic, surreal and yet real; however, not a fully fleshed out character by any means. She is referred to in the novel as a "damsel in distress" and she is.
This film oozes and breathes atmosphere. That is the strongest element I take away from it. Harlem captured in that time, from Fleming's experience. Jamaica in its glorious natural beauty, with deadly charms lurking in the deceptively tranquil looking water. And Florida. So let me just say that is the reason why I have a mix of emotions and a feeling of utter strangeness with this story - because all of the scenes that take place in Florida (where I grew up). I read this story at about age 14 and had not seen a Bond film yet (DAF came soon after). If you can imagine picking up a Bond novel with no previous knowledge of the story at all, becoming enthralled from the first page, enjoying the character of Bond and Fleming's writing - and then suddenly have this exciting story arrive (by train) to your home state and indeed your own sleepy hometown - it was so weird! In a good way; but decidedly odd. I was familiar with every single street and scene he described (except not having been in a fish warehouse after hours myself). St. Pete was not huge, it was not remarkable, as far as I knew it was not well known for anything! Miami, sure, and Palm Beach. But my hometown? Nah. But here is James Bond prowling my streets (by name, so I knew those exact routes!), my downtown, my Treasure Island - my entire small, sun-drenched and boring personal world. His description of it at that time, chock-full of "oldsters" and their activities (shuffleboard ruled!), the afternoon paper that was free if the sun had not shone for the past 24 hours, everything was spot on! No offense to anyone else from St. Pete, but by the time I was a teenager, I started to feel that it was (for me) like an elephant graveyard (I remember using that phrase as a teen). There was more to it than old folks by then, of course; but still ... like many teens, I dearly wanted out of my hometown (and that took far too long for me to achieve!). Re-reading LALD took me right back to those initial feelings of incredulous wonder as I read Fleming writing about my own backyard. In a thrilling James Bond novel. Go figure!
The final confrontation, with Bond and Solitaire being dragged behind the boat as shark bait, was extremely well written I thought. As was all of the Jamaica descriptions. I have not yet visited Jamaica, but I have been to the Bahamas a few times; I've water skied (badly), swam with sharks and barracuda, found conch shells, etc. I could vividly picture all of Bond's adventure there. I'm happy that particular scene - Bond and Solitaire tied together and dragged through the water - was later portrayed in FYEO.
So that is my personal experience with this story. Live and Let Die is a great Bond adventure, and I think it is very well written and splendidly vivid. One of the ones I always recommend reading early on.
@4Ever fantastic review and I can only imagine what it would've been like finding your home town in a novel. Funny thing is, I've been there once, in 2003, but didn't realise it was in LALD. I might have payed more attention. as it was, the only interesting bit was the Aston Martin dealer.. ;-)
But I'm still finishing up Moonraker now - a great, different, and revealing Bond novel for sure.
:-bd
My primary level of disappointment has to do with a fundamental structural flaw in this novel. Let’s face it: the first third of Moonraker is taken up with…a card game. And a very nice meal. Admittedly, the card game and the meal take place at a posh London club, but still: it doesn’t really measure up to the level of menace and violence that one finds in LALD, now does it? Sure, Hugo Drax is established as a thoroughly detestable individual, cheating at bridge when he really has no particular reason to other than an outsized ego, but the reader is led to believe that Drax’s overall intentions are actually charitable and beneficial to England. In fact, Bond tries to convince himself, OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN that Drax is actually innocent of any wrongdoing…and if there is any threat to the Moonraker project, that Drax must be unaware of the plot. Now, let’s think about this for a minute: ALL of Drax’s employees (save Gala Brand, our romantic interest for this go round) are German rocket scientists. That means that they had to be (at the very least) low ranking members of the Nazi party less than a decade earlier. One of them publicly gave the stiff armed salute and a verbal “Heil Hitler” before blowing his own brains out, just after he has killed a British security officer, whose death Bond is assigned to investigate. And yet Bond tries his best to find innocence everywhere he looks when investigating the Moonraker base, save for one obvious baddy who Drax himself endeavors to defend at every opportunity. Now, I’m not a highly trained espionage officer or anything, but even I had this figured out early on…James, please, take a note here: THEY’RE FRICKIN’ NAZIS, OKAY? They’re members of the most detestable regime ever to goosestep their way across the face of the earth! They were aiming bombs at the city of London less than a decade before this novel takes place, and YOU’RE TRYING TO GIVE THEM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT??? I’m sorry, but let me introduce you to my good friend Gustav Graves. His story isn’t any more believable than theirs, but at least he’s got the saving grace of a lousy director and a Madonna theme song to blame for his antics. Moonraker the novel is solely the product of Ian Fleming, and as much as I enjoy Fleming’s prose I have to say that this novel isn’t one of his stronger efforts. Structually, as I have noted, this novel really doesn’t hit the ground running…the first third is taken up with a nice game of cards (during which Bond exposes Drax as a cheat) and the second third has Bond trying and trying and TRYING to ignore the fact that a gang of “former” Nazis has been given free reign to build a big ol’ rocket in a site near the English coast…and oh, while we’re at it, let’s have Bond kind of vaguely trying to seduce an English policewoman (the aforementioned Gala Brand) while he’s investigating the vaguely suspicious goings on at the rocket base. What do you have to have happen before you’re willing to get serious about this, James? Does the roof have to fall in on you? Okay, then…how about if we have a cliff fall down on you while you’re sunbathing with the attractive young policewoman? Sure, let’s do that…and after they’ve crawled out of the chalky rubble caused by the falling cliff, Bond and Brand STILL don’t come after Drax and his mustachioed troop of ex Nazi scientists with guns blazing! It’s enough to make me want to revoke his license to kill…
Luckily, the final third of the novel is jumping with action on every page, as Brand FINALLY realizes Drax’s true intentions and Drax holds her hostage for long enough that even James the benevolent can’t make any more excuses for him. There’s a nice car chase and Bond & Brand are nearly incinerated by the takeoff of the Moonraker rocket…Drax is presumed killed when the Moonraker returns to its approximate point of origin, hitting the submarine he had intended to escape in…and M informs Bond (and the reader) that the British authorities are “going to try the biggest coverup job in history” in explaining the whole thing to the rest of the befuddled world. The one thing no one needs to explain to ME is why Cubby Broccoli et al. needed to substantially rewrite this overall storyline before turning it into a movie. Whether or not their rewrite succeeded is another matter…but suffice it to say that, to me at least, those who wish the movie version of Moonraker had been a straightforward adaptation of the novel really need to have their gyros recalibrated.
There are plenty of praiseworthy elements to this novel, of course; it is, after all, Fleming. Say what you will about Fleming, but even when he wrote unrealistic twaddle he made sure it was INVOLVING twaddle. The bridge game at Blades is absolutely absorbing, and the tantalizing glimpses of a routine day at the office of the British Secret Service early on in the novel go a long way towards making up for the lack of action in the majority of the book. Gala Brand is a well realized creation, not least because she chooses NOT to cling to Bond in the novel’s closing sequence; as she had maintained all along, she has a fiancee’ waiting in the wings, and she fully intends to make a future with him rather than tossing those plans aside for the sake of a brief fling with 007. Despite its flaws, the novel is quite enjoyable in its own right…but Fleming is clearly casting about for the definitive direction in which he should be taking his hero. While he seemed to have a solid take on that direction with his second novel, his third seems less assured. His fourth novel awaits…and *SPOILER ALERT* not many Bond fans consider Diamonds Are Forever to be one of Fleming's best either...
My biggest gripe with Moonraker, really, is that Bond is just too slow to recognize and take on the Nazi plot... but in thinking about it, I wonder if this was just Fleming's way of satirizing the easy acceptance of German scientists into the rocket programs of both the East and the West? I am reminded of a satirical song from the early sixties by Tom Lehrer (I believe the actual title of the song is "Werner Von Braun," who was of course a leading German rocket scientist enlisted into the American space mission during the Cold War): "When rockets go up, who cares WHERE they come down? That's not my department!" says Werner Von Braun....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953
@Birdleson what I find funny as hell is that Bond's rant basically is reacting to Tilly's dismassal of him. He is just hit in his ego. Even Bond is human ;-)
@Birdleson: We are very much in agreement when finding the movie version of Goldfinger far superior to the novel. I also agree that Fleming retreads many elements of Moonraker when crafting the plot of Goldfinger. Still, the fact remain that GF contains some of the most memorable villains, henchmen, and female NAMES, of the entire series. I'd dare say that if one asked the general public to name a Bond villain, henchman, and leading lady, the names of Goldfinger, Oddjob, and Pussy Galore would all rank highly in those responses. Whatever the failings of GF the novel, Fleming was still onto something potent here!
To my mind, the question before us at this point is: what was Fleming thinking when he decided to reuse so many elements from MR in crafting GF? Was he consciously striving to develop a "Bond formula" at this point? Was he simply unconscious of the repetition? Was he running out of fresh ideas? Did he think he hadn't quite hit the mark with these ideas in MR, and was he hoping to "get it right" with them this time around? Did he think his readership had increased so dramatically since the success of FRWL and DN that most of them would be simply unaware of the repetition? I suspect that his internal process had elements of all these points at work to a greater or lesser degree in the course of crafting the design of GF...but if anybody can offer some other suggestions, I'd be greatly interested in hearing them!
And a hearty thanks also to @CommanderRoss, @Thunderfinger and all who chime in here. All comments welcome on the novels, even if you are not currently reading them. Cheers! :-bd
thanks for those reviews and good music @Birdleson!
What I find interesting is that those short stories seem to be far more ingrained in my brain then the novels. FAVTAK is one of my alltime favorite stories. It captures the cold war, espionage and Bond's personality in such a, how do you say, holistic way. FYEO has simnilar qualities, but with British colonialism as backdrop instead of the cold war. And even The Hildebrant Rarety, which is just a 'fishing tale' is told with such qualities it still gives me the same tense feeling it did when I read it the first time.
I'm afraid I won't as yet be able to write proper reviews of the novels, my life is too much of a mess right now. But as things smoothen out I'll look into it.
Oh and @4Ever, i am, but I know I'm not alone, always looking foreward to your reviews!
https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/literary_per_fine_ounce_extract.php3
The short stories are indeed fine examples of Fleming's talent. The selection from Per Fine Ounce, on the other hand, shows no evidence of Fleming's style at all, in my own humble opinion. Just as well that it never saw the light of day, perhaps...
Dr. No was telling his backstory. Bond may hardly 've been listening, concentrating on what would really matter, surviving and getting the mad man destroyed.
The fault here is not with our female lead, Tiffany Case. She is one of my favorite women in the series so far. Funny when appropriate, tough without a doubt, resourceful just when Bond needs her to be, Tiffany ends the novel ensconced in the spare room in Bond’s flat. Of all the women to enter his life prior to the Contessa Teresa Di Vinenzo, Tiffany Case comes the closest to capturing Bond’s heart on a long term basis. We have another encounter with Felix Leiter in this novel, and the dedicated reader is very happy to see him again, hardly the worse for wear after his encounter with a shark in Live And Let Die. Sure, he’s got a hook now in the place of one hand, and his recurring limp has removed him from eligibility for service with the CIA, but his new gig with the Pinkerton detective agency makes him even more helpful to Bond for stories set within the bounds of the USA. Leiter’s wry sense of humor is still firmly in place, and as welcome as ever in the deadly serious world of James Bond. This novel also presents our first really memorable henchmen in the Bond series, Wint and Kidd. These two are scary as hell, amusing enough in a twisted manner, and utterly unique in all of literature. They are, in fact, just the sort of thing the Bond series has been needing…a suitably evil “warm up act” before Bond can get to the headline villain of any given novel. Sadly, it is here that DAF fails to deliver.
The Spangled Mob, for all its ruthlessness and wide ranging power, seems to consist of a few underlings, a hunchback named Shady Tree…and two brothers, Jack and Seraffimo Spang. Two more of the mob’s members, Rufus B. Saye and the mysterious ABC, are evidently pseudonyms for Jack Spang himself. Aside from Wint & Kidd, Shady Tree, and the poorly delineated Spang Brothers, we don’t really see much more of the mob. A few ineffectual gunsels and nothing more. Ladies and gentlemen, this doesn’t look like much of a mob to me. They scarcely look like a match for Our Gang. Over and over, Bond’s internal monologue tells us that he doesn’t think much of these American gangsters…then Felix or Tiffany tell him how powerful and how deadly they are, and Bond agrees that he needs to take them more seriously…only to turn around and describe them for the reader as something out of an American horror comic book. More fateful than Bond’s contempt, however, is that of the author. At a crucial “showdown” with Bond, Seraffimo Spang shows up dressed in a ludicrous cowboy costume that Fleming informs us “should have looked ridiculous, but it didn’t.” In point of fact, the entire segment of the novel which takes place in Spectreville, a once thriving mine community now turned into a ghost town wholly run for the amusement of Seraffimo Spang, is surprisingly weak and ought to have been substantially rewritten before the novel ever saw print. Potentially one of this book’s high points, it reads as if Fleming himself were tiring of the whole business and intended to just get past it and wash his hands of this particular incident. Bond’s stomping at the hands…no, sorry, the feet…of Wint and Kidd happens between chapters. Did Fleming uncharacteristically turn squeamish at this point? Or was he just tired of this scenario and determined to move on to the next one? With all the bad guys asleep and Bond just barely conscious, Tiffany hustles him out to a waiting railroad handcar so that they can make their getaway, followed in best movie serial fashion by S. Spang in his gleaming black Locomotive. If only Seraffimo had a handlebar mustache that he could twirl while laughing maniacally, “BWAHAHAHA! It‘s no use, me proud beauty!”…
The deaths of both Spang brothers are handled almost perfunctorily. Serafimo is shot by Bond as his train streaks past the wounded agent and onto a side route that ends up crashing into a mine a little further down the line. It’s an almost miraculous shot, considering that Bond is still very nearly unconscious from the stomping given him a few hours earlier by Wint and Kidd, and considering further that Spang is at the controls of a locomotive rushing past Bond at top speed…but we’ll take that as a given, knowing as we do that Bond is indeed a miraculous shot when the chips are down. Jack Spang’s fate is even more lackadaisically presented. Bond is informed by a telegram from London that they have concluded that Rufus B. Saye (which we know to be a pseudonym for the sole remaining Spang brother) is ABC (for reasons shaky at best.) He hustles down to Sierra Leone just in time to blow Spang’s helicopter out of the sky as the mob leader attempts to get away after killing the dentist/smuggler and shutting down the diamond pipeline. Here, Bond is reduced to IMAGINING “the scene in the narrow cockpit, the big man holding on with one hand and wrenching at the controls with the other…” Ian…if I may be so bold…here’s something your editor should have told you: we don’t want to have Bond imagining the hideous death of a villain that he hasn’t really come to hate (although he and you may pretend otherwise)…we want to SEE these things through Bond’s eyes. We want him to truly come to hate the main villain of the tale, but you can only really hate a foe that you do have reason to fear and respect. In Diamonds Are Forever, the respect is never really there on Bond’s part, not for the Spang brothers…and so we don’t really feel much of a victory at the deaths of the Spangs in the same way we do for the deaths of Wint & Kidd.
And please don’t get me wrong, this novel has plenty of excellent aspects to it: the race track at Saratoga is memorably delinated, and the mud baths nearby are the location for a scene that will stay in my imagination for a long, long time. Las Vegas is a far more fascinating place in the novel than it is in the resulting movie. The rescue of Tiffany Case from Wint & Kidd’s cabin on the Queen Elizabeth is substantially more riveting than the final fates of the Spang brothers…but Wint & Kidd aren’t the main villains of this piece. They are only the henchmen, and while they prove the importance of a memorable henchman in a great James Bond caper, the fact remains: a memorable VILLAIN is even more important to that caper in the final analysis, and the Spang brothers simply aren’t memorable villains. This failing, more than any other, is the primary weakness of Diamonds Are Forever. Perhaps we should give Tiffany Case the final line to both this review and this novel, “It reads better than it lives.” But no, another line from late in the novel seems more indicative of the author’s mood and intent as this book limps to its climax: “Bond looked up in the spangled sky and thought of M, and of Tiffany, and hoped that this would really be the end, and that it would be quick and easy, and that he would soon be home.”
Be careful what you wish for, Mister Bond. You may just get it…
Keep those reviews coming. I am thrilled by them, @4EverBonded, @BeatlesSansEarmuffs and @Birdleson. Excellent work, all.