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William Boyd calls Fleming an "unreflecting racist".....Groannnn.
From the front page article:
Boyd on Bond Q&A (2)
5th November 2013
http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/interview_boyd_on_bond_transcript2.php3?t=&s=&id=03594
"Even though, I must admit, that some of the early descriptions (of women by Fleming) are sado-sexist, and you can't possibly condone them at all, even within their context. But I think that Fleming was of that generation and of that class where these attitudes were unreflecting. I think that he was an unreflecting racist, probably an unreflecting anti-Semite, right wing, sexist, and homophobe...but accuse him of being a racist and he'd have been outraged. He was very much of the time and class, I think. He was unreflecting and I think that's why it comes across now so starkly. " William Boyd
An informative article and thanks to Mi6 for providing it, but groannnnn, is Boyd the guy we want continuing Fleming's'work!? He's fallen in with the fashionable notion (in certain precious circles) that Fleming must have been a racist, homophobe yadda yadda, blah blah blah...........
This is tedious in the extreme, betrays a conformist politically correct bent. This guy is not qualified to write Bond IMHO of course.
I've read every Fleming continuation novel published. They are all proudly displayed on my shelf, but I won't be adding this entry, until it hits discount bins.
In the meantime, I have it on order from the library. Boyd is not getting any of my cash, and given his obtuse understanding of Fleming, I am not in any rush to read what he has penned anywy.
I don't think we realized how good we had it when John Gardner was writing the continuation novels, considering some of the pretentious pap we'd been subjected to with the last three entries, but neither Faulkes nor Deaver, displayed such a biased, prejudiced, superior view of Fleming. Boyd's take is noxious, not to mention just plain wrong.
Boyd on Bond Q&A (2)
5th November 2013
http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/interview_boyd_on_bond_transcript2.php3?t=&s=&id=03594
"Even though, I must admit, that some of the early descriptions (of women by Fleming) are sado-sexist, and you can't possibly condone them at all, even within their context. But I think that Fleming was of that generation and of that class where these attitudes were unreflecting. I think that he was an unreflecting racist, probably an unreflecting anti-Semite, right wing, sexist, and homophobe...but accuse him of being a racist and he'd have been outraged. He was very much of the time and class, I think. He was unreflecting and I think that's why it comes across now so starkly. " William Boyd
An informative article and thanks to Mi6 for providing it, but groannnnn, is Boyd the guy we want continuing Fleming's'work!? He's fallen in with the fashionable notion (in certain precious circles) that Fleming must have been a racist, homophobe yadda yadda, blah blah blah...........
This is tedious in the extreme, betrays a conformist politically correct bent. This guy is not qualified to write Bond IMHO of course.
I've read every Fleming continuation novel published. They are all proudly displayed on my shelf, but I won't be adding this entry, until it hits discount bins.
In the meantime, I have it on order from the library. Boyd is not getting any of my cash, and given his obtuse understanding of Fleming, I am not in any rush to read what he has penned anywy.
I don't think we realized how good we had it when John Gardner was writing the continuation novels, considering some of the pretentious pap we'd been subjected to with the last three entries, but neither Faulkes nor Deaver, displayed such a biased, prejudiced, superior view of Fleming. Boyd's take is noxious, not to mention just plain wrong.
This discussion has been closed.
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Comments
No, he isn't. Boyd is wrong because Boyd doesn't see things through Fleming's WWII eyes; he doesn't see things through the eyes of someone who spent most of his life in the first half of the 20th century. Certain words were neither insulting nor dangerous back then. Certain reflections on society were not as risky as they are now. Furthermore, Fleming put a lot of words in the mouths of his characters. Say what you want but technically it's debatable whether or not he himself thought exactly the same way as they. Even his characterisation of Quarrel was fuelled by his own experiences and observations. He recorded specific elements of the times in his books and I, being born several decades later, am glad to be able to read them in so detailed and amusing a fashion.
I admit that Fleming's way of dealing with Pussy's lesbianism feels perhaps rather strange today. Then still, I'm not exactly put off by that and nor am I holding it against the man. The armies of the PC-darkness, however, enjoy cataloguing isolated and incidental flaws - the word flaw defined by modern standards - and building a hopeless case from that. They even attacked Hergé on his 1931 (!) album Tintin in the Congo over its comic book portrayal of the Congolese.
Fleming was neither racist nor sexist IMO. And today, he almost functions as a symbol of the anti-PC movement in my view. I so love it when Bond slams a woman on the bottom, demands Quarrel to fetch his shoes and lights a few dozen cigarettes a day. Not because would love to do the same thing, but because I love to give the PC-slaves the finger. It's sad, but the moral orthodoxy of today seems to be working from the narrow mind of the PC craze.
As for Boyd, brave move to profit from Fleming's legacy and subsequently condemn the man in whose shadows you write.
As somebody born in 1953, I discovered the Bond books in 1964 and read Casino Royale eleven years after it was written and fantastic book that it was and is, it had already dated. But at least I had the good sense to realise that Fleming's language was the language of the time. The language of 1964 could be found in The Beatles records that topped the chart that year not the Bond books!
If an eleven year old boy can figure that out then surely Boyd, a sixty-one year old literati would have the sense to realise that the attitudes portrayed in his books can't be misconstrued as those of the author. As for being homophobic, one of Fleming's best friends was Noel Coward for Christ's sake!
Doubtless now he has taken IFP's shilling, he feels at liberty to spout this nonsense.
Yes, he is. By modern standards Fleming is undoubtedly an unreflecting racist--there is no way a modern author would be able to publish what Fleming wrote about blacks in LALD or Koreans in GF. But as Boyd said, if you accused Fleming of racism he would have been understandably outraged. Fleming undoubtedly liked blacks, as he has Bond and Leiter say on his behalf, but saying that blacks en masse are instinctively superstitious and prone to voodoo is racist in the textbook definition of the word. (Just as the jigger joke in DAF is cringeworthy and insensitive.) And I don't see how calling Koreans apes would not be a bigoted statement in any time and place.
I can understand why some people here have soft-pedaled the issue--for far too long, critics have used racism as an excuse to dismiss Fleming's novels as trash not worth reading. In Moonraker, M says that cheating at cards is one of the few sins left that can get you in trouble with society. Today, being accused of racism is one of those too. But we have a duty to be objective. The racism in the Bond novels is not a reason to stop reading them--it is part of the historical context of books written by an author born over 105 years ago; an author who shared the Imperialist outlook of many conservative Englishmen.
The only place I think Boyd goes wrong is saying that Fleming was probably an unreflecting anti-Semite--there isn't enough evidence to support that. True, hinting that LeChiffre was part Jewish is fishy, but Fleming also goes out of his way to emphasize that Goldfinger was not Jewish. There are very few Jewish characters in the Bond books, and thankfully none of them are villains.
It's such an odd change in the fandom, really. 15-20 years ago, everyone accepted (gladly or with reservation) that the Fleming novels were in fact racist and simply moved on. But now there's been this push in the opposite direction - and it is, like you've described above, about being transgressive and not particularly rooted in any measure of sincerity.
It leads to this strange paradox where Fleming is adored more and more, but less and less for the actual content of his writing. While I'm sure the man himself would be amused by this, I think he'd prefer his books to be used as reading material as opposed to cudgels.
(As an aside, it's also unusual to see Gardner move from pariah to fandom saint. I suspect there's some similar mechanism at work there (along with nostalgia, and countless posts by Dragonpol), but that's for another thread!)
Which is odd, because Boyd is clearly a bigger Fleming fan than Gardner ever was. Gardner barely understood Fleming. His first few novels owe as much to the Bond films as to the books, and his later efforts are a series of un-Flemingian double and triple-crosses featuring a geriatric, colorless Bond.
And this is the real sin. Even if Fleming was a racist/sexist, I find Boyd's hypocritical and parasitic profiteering off of Fleming's genius to be far more revolting. Boyd profits from Fleming's creation and then spits on his grave. Disgusting. And whoever hired Boyd to write his so-called "Bond" book should be sacked forthwith.
Ah. So only white, Christian males can be villains, eh? Speaking of bigotry.
Fan of an unreflecting racist and sexist? That's highly suspect. Perhaps Boyd is a crypto-racist/sexist without the excuse of being a product of his times.
How is Boyd being parasitical or spitting on Fleming's grave? He's merely pointing out the truth, which is that Fleming, by today's standards, qualifies as an unreflecting racist. That doesn't mean he thinks Fleming is a bad author or shouldn't be read.
Not unless you think being a fan means uncritically accepting and defending every objectionable aspect of an author. I'm a fan of the unreflectingly racist and sexist Fleming as well, just as I'm a fan of Hemingway, who was by all accounts an asshole.
That's your proposition, not mine. If an author consistently portrays characters of one sex/ethnicity/etc. in one way, it's a fair indication of his attitudes toward them. How many villainous Englishmen are there in the Bond books? None, aside from the very minor and pathetic Major Smythe. Had Fleming exclusively used Jewish characters as villains, we would have good cause for calling him an anti-Semite. Thankfully he didn't. If white, Christian males are cast as villains nowadays, it's probably because they were almost always the heroes of popular fiction and films, and often still are.
I'll read Boyd's novel when the time comes (meaning paperback) and judge it on the work of the artist, not on interviews or political comments from the man.
I mean, who even knows if a quote is really a quote these days? Stuff is made up/bent/slanted all the time.
*falls off soapbox*
Well if nothing was said on Boyd's return for another novel, I would couple the 'Solo' reviews with these statements and guess he has no chance of returning to do another.
Boyd already ruled out doing another before Solo was released. It's one time authors at the moment it seems.
This is a very interesting point.
How do the supposed custodians of this literary brand manage to recruit this stream of idiots ?
My hope is that the combination of Boyd's fee and the declining sales will result in them loosing their shirts and blouses ( didn't want to be sexist ). God knows they deserve to!
I'm surprised to see this kind of comment from you Dimi, but I imagine it's probably not quite meant in the way it comes across. I don't think this is Fleming's function at all. As Boyd points out, he was very much of the time and class. He is a window on a chapter of history, one which contains a rich tapestry of images and ideas.
Where Boyd destroys his own argument is suggesting Fleming is unreflecting. That's pure conjecture on his part.
I know.
Comments removed by Mod team.
Mr. Flemings ideas are indeed a product of their time and new readers might be upset reading some parts of Flemings oevre that is indeed highly questionable these days. It could be called the charm of the old days, but a lot that went on in those old days were not that great unless you were of the caucasian variety.
Having read some of the articles by Boyd on the subject of Fleming he rightfully states that many of Flemings output reflects a window at a time gone by and that this would nowadays not be accepted or published. In that aspect he is totally right.
And as always some of the media take what one person has said and make a total mockery of his original message. There is a quite comprehensive article even on this forum that has been linked and discussed several times where Boyd views on Fleming are shown and these are far more moderate than in this thread. But then again some people need Boyd to be evil.
Having read some of his novels after Solo I can understand the choice of IFP, he is a very good writer. Too bad he held back on SOLO he could have made it a better novel. But I guess that is writing by comitee.
Well for a start IFP really couldn't give a toss. They have proven this by their cack handed approach. The bottom line is they want money - and as much of it as possible. They thought a strategy of piggy backing on big name authors success, irrelevant of the quality of the final product, would have them laughing all the way to the Leeds (one for all the over 35's and George Cole fanboys there). That this plan has failed and true Bond fans like us, let alone the general public, are staying away from their increasingly shoddy output fills me with glee. That said IFP are like FIFA and the Vatican - accountable to no one - so don't expect any honourable resignations/seppuku from the board of directors. Especially while they think they can still wring a few more pence from Fleming's corpse.
Rather than continually messing about with snooty authors who see Bond as beneath them but generously condescend to do it anyway because IFP wave a massive cheque at them find a guy who wants to do the job and will give us a plain and simple rip snorting Boys Own adventure with lashings of sex, sadism and snobbery ladled over the top.
Which brings us to Boyd and his constant disparaging of Fleming seemingly without any appreciation that the man lived in a different era.
If you are uncomfortable with Fleming's 'racism and sexism' why take the job? Oh yeah because your strongly held PC beliefs only extend to how many zeroes IFP put on your cheque.
Seems to me that Boyd is symptomatic of the current white middle class obsession of proclaiming how not racist you are. Its no longer sufficient to take people as you find them and treat everyone fairly you have to condemn your white forefathers for a multitude of perceived atrocities that have absolutely nothing to with you to show how PC you are.
I can understand Boyd's position because anyone in the public eye runs the risk of being convicted in the kangaroo court of Twitter et al where if you dont proclaim your non racist credentials you are automatically assumed to be a Nazi. Its just a shame that someone as inoffensive as Fleming who only ever had the intention to entertain and live his life to the full should now be held up as second only to Hitler because of his use of a few words which were commonplace at the time.
The most offensive thing about all of this PC/racism debate though is that it is mind numbingly tedious - and that is something that would really annoy dear old Ian more than anything else. Some people really need to clamber off their moral high horse and go out and have a drink and shag some women.
I'd much rather spend a raucous evening in the company of Fleming, George Best, Richard Harris and James Hunt than pass 5 sterile and humourless minutes with the likes of Shami Chakrabarti, Germaine Greer and George Galloway.
The man (sorry ladies but I cant envisage Bond being written by a woman - if thats sexist then guilty) IFP need to turn to (presuming they are planning to continue rather than doing us all a favour and hanging themselves) is someone who enjoys living life -like Bond and Fleming - rather than being so obsessed with not offending anybody that it sucks any life out of what they are writing.