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I wrote more about it above. Basically you have a nobleman summoning a British man to help him in a seemingly legitimate enterprise. The nobleman lives in a remote location and is surrounded by beautiful women. He has sinister motives. He is a relatively old man with white hair, he is tall and has striking features. He is also very proud of his ancestry and his blood. Oh and the sinister motives involve spreading a disease and consuption of food, for Dracula it is vampirism and the food is us, for Blofeld it is livestock disease. In many ways Blofeld is a modernized Dracula. Of course, both are counts, or claim to be.
The similarities are very apparent. It's likely that Fleming used Stoker's Dracula story as the basis for his own novel with Blofeld taking on the villainous role.
The Coen's did a similar thing with the Big Lebowski taking story elements from Raymond Chandler's works. There are numerous examples of this from fiction over the years and Fleming's reinterpretation of the Dracula story was in many regards successful.
Well, he did give a list of horror novelists and writers that James Bond had studied at school at one point in his Gothic Bond thriller You Only Live Twice.
I'm intrigued in how you describe Fleming as a 19th century writer - could you elaborate at all, @Ludovico. I'd love to hear more of your views on that one!
"[Fleming] invented an endless story about Graf Schlick, the local lord of the manor who lived in the big castle at the end of the valley, and had him committing the most terrible crimes and perpetuating unspeakable tortures. At the end of one of these stories, when the Graf had performed multiple villainies upon some unprotesting virgin, retribution caught up with him." [He contracted leprosy from her.]
Lycett gives more detail in his own Fleming biography:
"[Fleming] was fascinated by the exploits of the local aristocrats, the von Lambergs. The Graf (or Count) Max von Lamberg had a formidable reputation for drinking and womanizing. While his wife and three children lived in the family castle, a sugary Gothic confection called the Schloss Kaps, Graf Max camped out in a nearby chalet with a blonde mistress who worked in the photographer's shop and who was consequently known as the Photo-Grafin. Count Max's exotic sister, Paula, was a close neighbour in the Schloss Lebenberg. She was an artist and sportswoman, widely known as the best female ski-jumper in the world. She married a Czech adventurer who adopted the name 'Count Schlick' and who started the first ski club in Kitzbuhel. Schlick ran through her money, but not before introducing her to motor racing which led to her death. She was competing with her husband in a race in Salzburg, when she mysteriously fell out of the carand was killed. Local gossip had it that she was pushed by Schlick who, having inherited her castle and land, methodically sold it off piece by piece. Ian liked to concoct stories about the evils perpetuated by Schlick, including graphic details of tortures the Count devised."
Though Blofeld is less of a playboy than Schlick, he is also a wicked aristocrat (or self-styled aristo at least) plotting evil in Teutonic mountain hideout.
Ian Fleming was keen on long, picturesque descriptions and relatively low level of action. This is XIXth century style writing, or at least not very modern. Compare his novels to say crime fiction novels of his time. His settings are modern, but his writing is rather old-fashioned, not in a bad way, but he belongs to an older tradition. It would be interesting to study how influenced he was by XIXth century Gothic writers.
Well I have an upcoming blog article on the Gothic influences on Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice that should cover some of this ground.
Except for those thug villains that feature in the DAF and TMWTGG novels, of course.
Even they are larger than life. They are not petty thugs, low-life criminals, they are, to use an expression in GF, la crime de la crime.
Yes, I see your point, though many commentators (and Christopher Lee) refer to them as mere common thugs when viewed in comparison with Fleming's supervillains.
No. Fleming would have been keenly aware of what a risk closeted homosexuals could pose to national security.
Great synopsis @Pierce2Daniel.
I'm currently re-reading the Blofeld trilogy and have just started 'Thunderball'.
I think it's the least an aficionado can do in the run up to SP.
With regard to OHMSS, for me it's one of Fleming's greatest achievements - I vacillate between FRWL & OHMSS as to which is actually his greatest.
However, if you are looking for coherent, realistic plots, Fleming is not the place to look. This is Bond not Smiley and most of the 007 books have plot holes in them that can be viewed from outer space. Strangely enough, the one that didn't, Moonraker, was actually moved to outer space for the movie.
That said, Fleming was the absolute master of the set piece and nobody, pre or post his death has driven narrative as well as him.
He is the absolute master story teller and I do think OHMSS was something of a relaunch. After the unjust criticism he received for TSWLM he was determined to show them what he could do.
I remember at the time, he was deeply stung by the reaction (hence his refusal to allow PAN to release it for a number of years) and OHMSS was his fight back and what a reaction it was.
He clearly made it more character driven and produced a novel that moved like an absolute rocket — a brilliant achievement!