These trips would result in a successful and popular newspaper series covering thirteen cities in all. ‘Thrilling Cities’ was published in book form in 1963, but beyond that the extended double journey furnished Fleming with vast amounts of contemporary material for his novels. Ann remarked acidly that she did not see how Ian could be thrilled by any city, since he never stayed long enough to see anything. But that was the way Ian travelled, Fleming wrote and Bond lived: impressionistically, thrillingly and very fast.
Travel, golf, swimming, gambling, reading, book-collecting: these were all, to some extent, the habits of a solitary man. The boy who had eschewed team games at Eton in favour of athletics remained a solo player all his life. The character traits that made him shy away from commitment to women were also those that drove him to pursue, alone, the things that most fascinated him. This surely also explains why, in that explosion of creativity in the last years of his life, he was able to devote himself utterly to the most solitary and lonely occupation of all: writing.
Bond’s lifestyle echoed and exaggerated that of his creator, perhaps to a greater extent than any other twentieth-century writer, though the parallels are far from perfect. Bond is a superb shot, whereas Fleming hated shooting, and did it as seldom as he could. Bond exercises daily, and retains his fitness despite his habits, while the summit of Fleming’s health regime was swimming or an amble around the golf course. Fleming was an avid reader, book collector and bibliophile; Bond’s bookshelves are apparently full, but there is little evidence he has ever read the books therein. Indeed, books are hardly mentioned in Bond’s world, save for a few, including Hogan on Golf, Scarne on Cards and a few books written (inevitably) by Fleming’s friends: Raymond Chandler, Eric Ambler and Patrick Leigh Fermor, as well as JFK’s Profiles in Courage. Bond lives in Chelsea and never has the slightest money worries; Fleming, until the final chapter of his life, never had quite enough cash. Bond reads The Times, every day; Fleming, a journalist to his core, read every newspaper and magazine he could lay his hands on. Bond is childless and parentless; Fleming had a complex relationship with his mother, and strove to be a good father to his only son, Caspar. Fleming was brought up in an age where children were to be seen and not heard; in Bond’s life they are neither seen nor heard.
Fleming had not intended to give James Bond a style. He was to be a blunt instrument, an empty vessel. But in the end, in spite of himself, Bond’s way of life and way of thinking were broadly those of Fleming. Above all, Fleming and Bond share an interest in things, the rarer and more exclusive the better. In this, both writer and creation were harbingers of a new consumer age, when lifestyle and fashion would matter increasingly, and the label often proclaimed the man. ‘We are the only two writers,’ Fleming told Somerset Maugham, ‘who write about what people are really interested in: cards, money, gold and things like that.’ Bond admits, almost sheepishly, to taking a ‘ridiculous’ interest in food, drink and other material things. But Fleming knew exactly what he was doing. The writing technique he pioneered was far from being ridiculous, and very close to being inspired.
008
The Short Life of Ian Fleming; the Eternal Life of James Bond
008
The Short Life of Ian Fleming; The Eternal Life of James Bond
By 1961, and the publication of Thunderball, James Bond is ailing. As the book opens, he wakes up feeling dreadful, chronically hungover. Boredom, and the soft life he has always feared, are taking their toll. M dispatches him to a health farm, Shrublands, where the medical report is stern. ‘The officer’s daily consumption of alcohol is in the region of half a bottle of spirits of between sixty and seventy proof,’ the doctor writes. ‘The tongue is furred. The blood pressure a little raised at 160/90 . . . the officer admits to frequent occipital headaches.’ The report blames Bond’s habits: ‘I believe these symptoms are due to the officer’s mode of life. He is not responsive to the suggestion that over-indulgence is no remedy for the tensions inherent in his professional calling . . .’
Fleming’s report on the health of his hero was broadly autobiographical: the drinking, high blood pressure and headaches were all symptoms suffered with increasing persistence by the writer himself. In Bond’s refusal to countenance changing his unhealthy and indulgent lifestyle, Fleming was stating his own determination not to waste his life by trying to extend it. Yet he was aware that his body was failing. Shrublands is based on Enton Hall, an expensive and exclusive health farm, or ‘hydro’, in Surrey. Ann Fleming had visited Enton Hall, and she persuaded Ian to book into the health farm to treat his painful sciatica, headaches and generally failing health. He did not enjoy the strict regime, and scoffed at the faddish nature remedies prescribed. His doctor prescribed more pills.
For all his vigour, Fleming had never enjoyed robust good health. The shadow of mortality was seldom far behind him, and in a notebook he wrote with wry candour: ‘I’ve always had one foot not wanting to leave the cradle, and the other in a hurry to enter the grave, which has made for an uncomfortable existence.’ Fleming was just thirty-eight when he first began to suffer serious chest pains, which spread to his neck. A New York medical specialist told him to cut down on the cigarettes and drink, advice that he would continue to receive, and fail to heed, for the rest of his life. He suffered from stress and persistent headaches – possibly a legacy from his broken and ill-mended nose. A cardiogram in 1949 showed no evidence of heart disease, but in retrospect what Fleming called the ‘iron crab’ had plainly already taken a grip on his heart. In 1956, he was struck down by agonising kidney stones, which would develop into another recurrent problem. Soon after the publication of Thunderball in 1961, Fleming suffered a major heart attack and spent a month in hospital, followed by a long convalescence at a hotel on the coast near Brighton. He was put on a strict diet, which he tried to circumvent by sneaking in smoked salmon and other forbidden delicacies. He also began writing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, based on the bedtime stories he would tell his son Caspar. ‘There is not a moment even on the edge of the tomb,’ he told his publisher, ‘when I am not slaving for you.’
He joked that Ann was trying to convince him that ‘going for long walks and looking for birds’ nests is the right way to spend the next forty years of my life’. Fleming had just three years of life left, and for all his grim joviality, he probably knew it. Blanche Blackwell, his lover in the final few years, noted that he was ‘fighting like a tiger to live, but everything was against it’. Thunderball opens on a bleak note: ‘It was one of those days when it seemed to James Bond that all life, as someone put it, was nothing but a heap of six to four against.’ For Fleming, the odds on his own life expectancy were steadily getting worse, but at the very moment when his books were about to hit the most astonishing winning streak.
When describing his writing methods, Fleming reached for a water-sports metaphor: ‘Each chapter is like a wave to be jumped as we race behind the hero like a water-skier behind a fast motor boat.’ Forcing the reader to turn the page was the only rule of thriller-writing that mattered, and he stuck to the formula religiously, writing at the pace of the most daredevil water-skier, but with iron discipline. Over the course of fourteen years, every one of the Bond novels was written in Goldeneye as winter turned to spring, usually taking about eight weeks, and then published a year later: two thousand words every morning between 9.30 and 12.30, or approximately seven hundred words an hour. ‘If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky to write five hundred words a day,’ he advised.
There spoke the true journalist. Unsurprisingly, he sometimes made mistakes: occasionally the plot blows a gasket, and screeches to a halt; sometimes the narrative flags; and the later Bond books lack some of the brio of the early novels. But for the most part, the books sail along with infectious verve and confidence. Returning to England with a completed manuscript, Fleming would then set to work correcting the proofs of the book written the previous spring,
before starting to cook up a fresh plot, with new experts and fresh opportunities for travel. It was a hurtling rhythm of work, and it translated into a breathless, heart-thumping style. For Fleming, the demands were exhilarating, exhausting and relentless. He seldom rewrote in any substantial way: the books seemed to flow from him almost fully formed, on the initial draft. The first people to see the manuscript would be William Plomer, Fleming’s old friend and his most loyal and reliable critic, and his brother, Peter. The self-deprecation continued: ‘My books are straight pillow-book fantasies of the bang-bang kiss-kiss variety,’ Fleming declared, with that appealing nonchalance. This was simply untrue. Fleming had discovered an extraordinary recipe, and the public, if not always the critics, recognised it as such.
The reviewers, at least initially, were gentle with James Bond. When not plugging the work of his friends in newspapers or novels, Ian was an avid and expert self-promoter, and as a senior newspaperman he was in a position to ensure some favourable notices; yet the rave reviews were more than mere log-rolling. With the publication of Casino Royale, the Sunday Times, his own newspaper, hailed Ian Fleming as ‘the best new thriller-writer since Eric Ambler’. But other newspapers, which might have been expected to be more impartial or even hostile, were equally enthusiastic: ‘Ian Fleming has discovered the secret of narrative art,’ declared John Betjeman in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Don’t miss this,’ advised the Observer. Even the Times Literary Supplement, bible of the higher-browed, proclaimed: ‘Mr Fleming has produced a book that is both exciting and extremely civilised.’ Amid all the plaudits, however, one can already detect the early rumblings of the backlash that would eventually follow. One reviewer considered the scenes of torture in Casino Royale ‘too monstrous to be excused’. Another recommended that Fleming ‘cut down on the physical violence’. The reaction to the US publication was also somewhat muted. In one of the more remarkably askew assessments in literary history, one reviewer insisted that this British secret agent was ‘passé’.
The first print run of Casino Royale, 4,750 books, sold out in a month. Jonathan Cape, the publisher, had not expected much from the book, and agreed to accept it for publication only after Peter Fleming, an established author, interceded on his brother’s behalf. ‘He’s got to do much better if he’s going to get anywhere near Peter’s standard,’ Cape remarked. But with Casino Royale selling well, Cape offered Fleming a contract for three further books, and his career as a novelist was well and truly launched. James Bond, as ever, provoked different reactions: some serious-minded critics baulked at the implausibility; others squirmed at the sex and violence; a few resented the brand-naming and what looked like product placement, as it has since become known. But Fleming also found supporters in the most unlikely and useful places. He had been introduced to Raymond Chandler at a luncheon party given by the poet Stephen Spender. The acclaimed master of the American detective novel would prove a loyal fan, reviewing both Diamonds Are Forever (apparently his first ever review) and Dr No, and declaring Fleming to be ‘probably the most forceful and driving writer of what I suppose still must be called thrillers in England’.
Sales were good, but nowhere near what they would become, or what Fleming would like them to have been. Some of Fleming’s early success may be ascribed to canny promotion, and some to mere good luck. If Live and Let Die had been entitled The Undertaker’s Wind, as Fleming originally planned, then one wonders if the entire Bond series might have come to a premature end. Reviews for the first five books were, on balance, positive. In Fleming’s own words, ‘the great thing is that each one of the books seems to have been a favourite with one or another section of the public, and none has yet been completely damned’.
Damnation, swiftly followed by the breakthrough Fleming craved, would come in 1958 with the publication of Dr No. The critics rounded on Fleming, almost as a pack, and Bond-bashing became the order of the day. Fleming’s writing was pilloried as vulgar, licentious and immoral, snobbish and anachronistic, with a nasty flavour of sado-masochism. The most famous assault came from Paul Johnson in the Spectator, who claimed that Bond had been cooked up from three base ingredients: ‘all unhealthy, all thoroughly English – the sadism of the school bully, the mechanical two-dimensional sex-longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude, snob-cravings of a suburban adult’. The London literary cognoscenti had always looked down on Bond, even, most painfully for Fleming, his own wife Ann and her coterie of writers and intellectuals, which included such luminaries as Evelyn Waugh and Peter Quennell. Ann could be particularly withering, refusing to allow him to dedicate Casino Royale to her on the grounds that ‘books of this sort’ (i.e. cheap ones) do not merit dedications. ‘I would so love him to triumph over the sneers of Annie’s intellectual friends,’ observed Noël Coward. And triumph he did. The attacks reflected the fact that Fleming was now well known enough to warrant being attacked: helped by the notoriety and controversy, the faint but exciting whiff of immorality and sexual mischief, the Bond books acquired their own momentum. The critics continued to complain, often savagely; the readers, too, were sometimes angered when Fleming appeared to tinker with the established formula, as in The Spy Who Loved Me, narrated by the fictional Vivienne Michel. But Bond was becoming unstoppable. In 1959, Goldfinger hurtled directly to the top of the best-seller lists.
Fleming knew the value of a plot twist, but nothing could have prepared him for the change in Bond’s fortunes that would occur when 007 finally transferred to the movie screen. In October 1962, Fleming attended the film premiere of Dr No, the first instalment in what would become the most valuable cinematic franchise in history. Bond, for better and for worse, would never be the same again. Nor would he ever again be solely the product of Fleming’s imagination. For many people, James Bond is a film character (or several film characters), but his path to the screen had not been simple or swift. Fleming had always intended that his creation should transfer to film or television, and as with the books, he worked hard to bring about the transformation.
This was less easy than, with hindsight, might have been expected. The rights to Casino Royale were sold to CBS in 1954 for $1,000 and later adapted into a television play as part of a series entitled Climax, now almost wholly forgotten. Sir Alexander Korda, the great Hungarian-born producer, toyed with the idea of making Live and Let Die, but the idea came to nothing. In 1958, Fleming was commissioned to write a thirteen-part Bond series, again for CBS in the US. Once again, the project foundered, but much of the material Fleming had written would be recycled in different forms in the later books. Like many writers, Fleming was frustrated by Hollywood’s capacity for encouraging talk and no action: ‘hollow bonhomie combined with ultra-sharp horse-trading’ was how he put it. Yet he persevered, and set out to create a film project of his own. Through Ivar Bryce, he met an up-and-coming filmmaker, Kevin McClory, and together (along with screenwriter Jack Whittingham) they set about writing a treatment for an underwater Bond adventure set in the Caribbean. Once again, the project foundered, mainly for lack of financial backing, but as usual Fleming was unwilling to see hard work go to waste and adapted the idea into the novel Thunderball. This time, however, the recycling got him into serious trouble, when McClory and Whittingham claimed the book was based partly on their work and sued in the High Court for breach of copyright. The resulting legal wrangle was bitter, intensely complex and, for Fleming, quite debilitating; it would not be resolved for a further thirty-seven years. At one point in the process, he was reduced to drawing up a list of the ideas, details and inspirations that he had put into the book, in order to back up his claim to sole authorship. This legal document again demonstrated both the depth and eclecticism of Fleming’s research: the specifications for the Disco Volante, for example, had been obtained from the Italian boat manufacturer Leopoldo Rodriguez;the title Thunderball came from a conversation in which Fleming had heard this term used to describe an American atomic test; and so on. For later archaeologists of the Bond phenomenon, such detai
ls are fascinating; for Fleming, forced to pick apart his own writing in order to prove ownership, the entire legal experience was hellish. His first heart attack came just two weeks after the court action was launched. ‘I do not think James Bond would be at home in the Chancery Division,’ Fleming observed morosely as the case dragged on.
Film salvation arrived in the somewhat unlikely double act of Albert Romolo ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, an experienced Italian-American Hollywood producer, and Harry Saltzman, a Canadian former circus performer and intelligence agent turned movie impresario. Saltzman had acquired the film rights to all the Bond books (save Casino Royale), and in partnership with Broccoli he founded EON Productions – standing for Everything Or Nothing – which was a good motto for their high-stakes gambling style. United Artists signed up to make six films, with Fleming earning an impressive $100,000 per film and 5 per cent of producer’s profits. Broccoli and Saltzman decided to open the franchise with Dr No, which has arguably the most filmic of the Bond villains. Bond was about to hit the big time on the big screen, but Fleming’s control over the character, inevitably, would begin to diminish.
For Your Eyes Only Page 12