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How did you like LALD @JWESTBROOK? I read it a while back too and wanted to know your thoughts.
Haha I'm in exactly the same part as when I wrote that, sadly. I'll get back to it. Deep in a busy semester, so its hard to find time. Plus, my work suddenly doesn't know how to schedule me properly
-_-
It took me so long to read it too. Like 3 weeks to a month for such a short novel. It is hard to get into once you meet all the racism and misogynistic tendencies. CR was pure brilliant espionage fiction, LALD is just an uninteresting mess that screws over Felix just 2 books in, has an uninteresting plot, and lackluster sequences, Bond girls, and locales. MR is hopefully better. I'l read that next, to follow proper order.
I've heard Moonraker is the best book! And really I find humor in all the racism. Its a reflection of the times, and of Fleming's attitude. I just smurk, and think how people must react with no background knowledge to the book.
I just finished reading all of the Fleming novels (over the past year). LALD is, in my opinion, clearly the worst and is truly cringe-worthy (although wait until a later book when Bond thinks that homosexuality was caused by giving women the legal right to vote!).
However, all the books are still quite readable and MR is a classic. I would recommend MR to any person whether they are a Bond fan or not. If only Fleming could have kept up that level of quality - his books increasingly rely on outlandish coincidences to drive the plots forward, he repeats several key phrases over and over, and characters often talk in exposition rather than dialogue. And yet I kept reading, which is a tremendous testament to his writing style.
BTW, I always disagree when people dismiss racism as "oh, that was just the times". The great-aunt of an old girlfriend went to jail fighting for equal rights for blacks back in the 1920s. She was a wealthy, priveledged white woman but her family recognized that right was right and wrong was wrong even if it didn't affect them personally. It's interesting how the more I speak to elderly people the more common anti-racism seems to me to have been - at least, more so than we might think.
As always, one shouldn't assume I'm generalizing about the entire population when I say something -_-
Can't remember that one exactly. Could you help me out and give the book and chapter? Am at a loss.
Based on what I know by just loose plot, Goldfinger comes to mind, with the whole Pussy-lesbian connection. Or Klebb in FRWL, because I've heard that she is very overt in here love of women there too.
Great post!
I love Bond, and Fleming's writing for the most part, much as I love Connery's portrayal. But Fleming's and Connery's personal views? Not so much.
@Flasheart is right. The novels do get more and more outlandish as they go on - though never quite reached the silliness of the films. Many of the more OTT situations (e.g. Bond fighting a squid) would seem more real than they actually were by having Bond suffer superficial injuries. He still manages to defeat the villain (by burying him under BIRD POO in the case of DN) and escape relitively unscathed.
Very much looking forward to moving onto MR soon. I've heard many great things from members on here.
So far the part I love in LALD is how Mr. Big sends Bond a bomb, that isn't actually big enough to harm him, but shows him Mr. Big is on to him. Thats the best I've read in LALD yet. Was it CR or LALD that described Bond's first kills. I began LALD right after CR, so I'm a tad confused.
It was CR. Some cipher clerk in Japan, and a German or whoever. I'll have to look for it later.
At the end of Bond's 'meeting' with Mr. Big, he cites an 'original quote'.
"Those who deserve to die, die the death they deserve." What a beautiful quote for Bond's universe.
*I've only read CR and up to Chapter 9 of LALD, so I'm confident Fleming will surprise me yet.
I'm hopeful too. I love chapter 20 of Casino Royale, called The Nature Of Evil. For me it is truly one of the greatest chapters of writing that I've ever read, and so utterly beautiful in its structure. Bond discusses the heroes and villains getting mixed up, and how the villains are around so the heroes can thrive and stop them. Mathis is struck by his philosophy and bounces off of Bond's words. The discussion of there being God and the Devil and God getting all of the renown and a face to symbolize with is so truly thought provoking. The Devil, like evil, is faceless, and we only see that evil villainy when we are assigned to eradicate it or the person has done us physical or emotional harm where a persona; vendetta is emerging. Mathis finishes off the beautifully written chapter with:
"Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles. But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine."
This is the epitome of Bond here. Where the line is drawn between the good and bad, and how though Bond is the hero, the villains can be heroes in their own eyes for achieving their own causes. The principles become flogged down by trauma while those you love can always be seen as pure and just, never compromising in your views of them. If there is such a fine line between goods and evils, would SMERSH and MI6 be that different at all? Maybe Bond ponders this, but I still wonder what he wanted to say to Mathis at the end of the chapter when he shouts after him.
Alas, we will never know, but Casino Royale is such a brilliantly moving piece of writing. From the nature of what is truly good and evil to Bond's frustrated torment over Vesper's betrayal and his resulting vendetta against getting SMERSH, I will make the bet that there has yet never been an espionage novel to surpass the immense power and reality that it laid out to us. I honestly don't believe another Fleming Bond novel will ever strike such a chord in me.
That's actually in QoS if you remember. But in that film it was Mathis who uttered the line - not Bond.
I love MR and rate it as one of the best, but then again I don't know why people think the book YOLT is so great, I find it a really slow paced travelogue until the last few chapters. I suppose the thing about these books is we all latch on to different elements and Fleming's writing style changed so much over the series and covered such a vast range of different subjects that it's hardly surprising that our opinions of the books differ so greatly.
It has its weaknesses, but you have to put it into perspective. For the most part, at that point, people knew Bond as Roger Moore, and it was all camp comedy & smirking. Gardner definitely brought the more believable tone of Fleming back. LR is definitely a warm-up exercise, but for a fresh "reboot" after twelve years, it got the job done without dropping the ball. The Gardner series gets better as it goes on but I think LR did a good job in 1981 of reminding readers of what Fleming's Bond was about without slavishly copying Fleming.