Trin Tragula posted:I dunno, given that he's just wussed out on making sure of Sun at that point, I read that as a bluff to stop her from making trouble. Can you see any other Bond staggering into the room, waving a bloody knife and threatening to stab the girl?
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# ? Apr 19, 2020 00:21 |
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# ? Apr 23, 2024 11:01 |
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What, this smug toe-rag? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-OXOk3VOCc Sure, the only thing he does differently is pause for a second to get his breath back and straighten his tie.
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# ? Apr 19, 2020 00:42 |
Trin Tragula posted:What, this smug toe-rag? I think there's just a different feel here. Bond is coming fresh from an extreme torture session, skewers through his skull into the brain, having stabbed two men (one right in the doorway). Even Ariadne comments on how weird his voice sounds when he gets in there. Roger Moore is still smooth and suave even when threatening to break your arm. Amis's Bond is probably wild-eyed, soaked in blood, holding a bloody weapon out in front of him. He's trying to keep his patterns of speech slow and cautious, but he's clearly gone through poo poo and in some form of mental trauma and barely hanging on.
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# ? Apr 19, 2020 03:26 |
Chapter 21: A Man from Moscowquote:‘I had a devil of a job this morning, squaring things with the local authorities,’ said Sir Ranald Rideout fretfully. ‘Sticklers for form and their own dignity, as always. A lot of talk about the honour of Greece and of the Athens police department. Mind you, I can see their point in a way. A gun-fight in the streets, four dead, two of them foreigners and one of those a diplomat of sorts. No evidence at all, but the Commissioner fellow I saw had his guesses all right. Ah, thank you.’ Doesn't even drink! quote:‘Then this business on Sunday. Half a dozen corpses, two German tourists missing, mysterious explosions, goodness knows what else, and who have they got in the way of witnesses and/or suspects? A half-witted Albanian girl who won't or can't talk, and a Greek thug with a lot of burns who says he doesn't know anything about it either, except that a man called James Bond killed one of his friends and tried to kill him and blew up his boat. I must say, Bond – speaking quite off the record, you understand – I can't altogether see why you didn't square things off by getting rid of that fellow too while you were about it – he was only small fry, wasn't he? After all, according to your report you'd put paid to three of the opposition already that morning. Surely one more wouldn't have –’ Sir Ranald is not fond of the killers in his government, regardless of the necessity. He sees Bond as such a thug that he should be expected to go on a killing spree even when unnecessary. quote:M broke in. ‘What happened finally, sir?’ M confirms that Stuart Thomas, the head of Station G, was found dead. He questions why Bond didn't bother to let the plot go on, seeing as the Russians meeting down there were enemies in the first place, but approves of it for favorably tilting the balance of power in the world by painting the British as heroes. quote:An elegant young Russian with high Tartar cheekbones had made his way over. ‘Excuse me, Admiral, sir. Our Mr Yermolov from Moscow would like to have a talk with you, Mr Bond. Would you come, please?’ Alexei Kosygin was the Premiere of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980, after Khrushchev was removed from power. While he was the most powerful man in the USSR at this time, the Prague Spring of 1968 (when Czechoslovakia enacted liberal reforms and the USSR responded by sending in troops and occupying the country like normal people do) and other policy blunders led to Leonid Brezhnev (one of the other men in the government troika) coming out ahead in the power struggle and becoming the real power in the country. With his health failing and power effectively gone, Kosygin resigned and died 2 months later. quote:‘Besides our gratitude, it's also suitable that we offer your apologies. For certain specific failures of judgment on our part. I have to admit to you that our security apparatus in this area had been allowed to fall into disrepair. This was not the fault of the late Major Gordienko, a capable enough officer who –’ Bond has mostly been connected with Smirnoff since the very first movie, but he would get into Stoli in the 1980s with A View to a Kill and The Living Daylights with some very prominent product placement. Stolichnaya's exact start of production is unknown due to poor records, with a time between 1938 and 1948 being all that's certain. Stoli was one of the only Russian vodka brands exported to the West during Fleming's lifetime; while Smirnoff was started by a Russian, it's been produced in foreign countries for almost its entire life and was being made in the United States at the time of this book (not sure when the British distillery opened). For his part, Amis's writings on drinks in the 1970s suggest that you should stick to the cheaper American or British-made stuff instead of premium Russian vodkas when you can because they'll be identical to a taste test anyway. quote:He snapped his fingers at the high-cheekboned young man and went on talking. As for Arenski, he's still alive. When Bond attacked Von Richter at the mortar, his hasty shelling had completely missed the conference and instead landed in the water. He tried to accuse Bond of being the terrorist, but the Soviet government has been distributing information on the Chinese involvement and Arenski is going to find himself seeing re-education in Siberia. quote:Yermolov chewed at his lips. The noise of the party swelled in the background. Bond caught sight of Ariadne, beautiful and magnificently groomed in a lilac-coloured linen dress, the centre of a group of admiring Russians. The first really profound sense of relief swept through him. It was over. They had won. And more than that … The Order of the Red Banner is given to those who demonstrate extraordinary heroism, dedication, and courage on the battlefield. As an example of what an individual would have to do to get it for battlefield actions, Vasily Zaytsev was awarded it for his time killing over 200 soldiers as a sniper in Stalingrad. quote:‘I see.’ Yermolov nodded sadly. ‘I rather expected you to say that. I told Comrade Kosygin so. Well, there it is. It was an honest offer, expressing honest feeling. But, uh, you might not have found membership of the Order all that much of a distinction. Or an advantage. It wouldn't do you any good at all if you happened to come up against our counter-espionage forces in the future, as you've so often done in the past. As a matter of fact,’ – here Yermolov leant forward confidentially – ‘even Russian nationals who've been given it haven't noticed that it protected them very well – against anything. But, please, you must allow an old man his cynicism. Speaking naturally tends to go to one's head.’ That high-pitched whine you hear is the sound of Ian Fleming spinning in his grave like a jet turbine. quote:Ariadne had extricated herself from the Russian circle and was now talking to Litsas. Always a convenient loophole! quote:‘That's true. I must think of that.’ Now, with obvious effort, Litsas grinned. ‘Well, you've recovered in a good way. The glamorous secret agent again. I suppose that suit is full of little radios and concealed cameras and things.’ I had completely forgotten he had all that! I guess Amis really had a message he wanted to send: it's not the gadgets that make Bond, it's Bond. quote:Litsas had swallowed his drink. ‘I must go. I will let you know about Ionides. I've asked everybody I know to keep a look-out for him. He must have sold the Altair in Egypt or somewhere and decided to hide for a bit. But it's funny. I could have sworn he was honest.’ Oh, whoops. quote:‘Oh well … You're leaving in the morning? Come to Greece again, James. When the Chinese and the Russians aren't chasing you. There are many places I'd like you to see.’ It probably helped that she got to clock one of them in the face. quote:‘Very. Where shall we go?’ The exact opposite of Tatiana Romanova. Not scared of her work, but proud of it. quote:‘If that's how you feel, obviously you must stay with it.’ And that's it for Kingsley Amis's only trip into the Bond canon. I actually liked it! His writing style is very different, but he's a competent writer who crafted some good action scenes and a marvelously gruesome torture sequence even if he hasn't shaken his "old British man" biases. Unfortunately, I don't believe Litsas or Ariadne factor into any later author's stories. Tomorrow, we move on to perhaps the oddest Bond book: one that is presented as the biography of James Bond, the real superspy and friend of Ian Fleming.
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# ? Apr 19, 2020 22:40 |
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Ami's deserved another bite at the apple...that was really good.
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# ? Apr 20, 2020 00:56 |
James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, published in 1973, is the strangest book in Bond canon. To understand where it came from, one must understand the author. Unlike several of our other authors, John Pearson is still alive despite being less than a month from 90. Born in Epsom, Surrey, Pearson graduated with a Double First in History from Peterhouse, Cambridge and worked in newspapers and BBC scriptwriting. Ian Fleming noticed him and offered him a job as an assistant for his Atticus column. When he was 32, he gave up journalism to become an author. Two years later, Ian Fleming died. In 1966, Pearson had already published the first biography of Ian Fleming via interviews with over 150 people and extensive study of Fleming's private papers. Pearson served as an extensive non-fiction writer in addition to his novels, especially enjoying true crime writing. He first began interviewing infamous British criminals Ronnie and Reggie Kray in 1967 for their biography and kept up correspondence while they were in prison; after their deaths, he controversially revealed in his last book on them that they had maintained an incestuous homosexual relationships. His most famous work is likely the biography of J. Paul Getty and his heirs, turned by Ridley Scott into All the Money in the World. There were three especially unusual books that Pearson wrote, all with the same conceit. Along with his Bond book, he also wrote The Bellamys of Eaton Place as an Upstairs, Downstairs tie-in and Biggles: The Authorised Biography. All three of them take the same conceit: what if these fictional people are actually real and we're merely reading a fictionalized depiction of their lives? So The Authorized Biography of 007 is not an ordinary Bond novel by any means. While it's certainly fiction and mostly takes the form of Bond talking about his childhood and other missions he went on (a few of which got minor references in later films), it's written by Fleming's actual biographer and has him personally meeting Bond and various other characters from Fleming's novels. It takes the conceit (as Fleming hinted at in You Only Live Twice in Bond's obituary) that Fleming was hired by the Secret Service to write fictionalized versions of Bond's adventures in the hopes of disguising rumors of his existence as mere pulp novel fantasy. The goal with reading this book is to discover if it hurts or helps our perception of Bond. Because Pearson is writing as if the Bond novels are fictionalized exploits with creative liberties taken, he makes some changes to Bond's personality and fleshes out some of his backstory in ways that may not necessarily be good directions. Do we take the revelations as canon going forward, or do we abandon them?
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# ? Apr 20, 2020 17:28 |
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chitoryu12 posted:they had maintained an incestuous homosexual relationship. I'm sorry, WHAT?! Is there any truth to that?
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# ? Apr 20, 2020 20:20 |
Ichabod Sexbeast posted:I'm sorry, WHAT?! Is there any truth to that? It's certainly what Pearson claimed in his book. He had maintained private correspondence with them for the decades of their life imprisonment, which he used to write his books on them, but he apparently swore not to reveal that detail until they were dead. Their homosexuality had become a sort of open secret the more notorious they got, and Ronnie in particular had a reputation among the underworld as downright predatory according to other witnesses. According to Pearson, they had experimented first with each other for fear of being outed if they tried to find any other gay men.
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# ? Apr 20, 2020 21:38 |
Chapter 1: 'This is Commander Bondquote:I like to think that the plane was Urquhart's idea of a joke. He was the only one of them to have a sense of humour (he must have found it inconvenient at times in that grey morgue of a building up by Regent's Park where they all still work) and since he booked my tickets when he made arrangements for my trip he would have known about the plane. It left Kennedy at 4 p.m. for Bermuda. What Urquhart failed to tell me was that it was a honeymooners' special, crammed with newly-weds on packaged honeymoons in the sun. This is our first foray into the 1970s! Idlewild Airport that Bond flew into in Live and Let Die is now John F. Kennedy International, renamed in 1963 after Kennedy's assassination. quote:Between me and the window sat a nice young couple, suitably absorbed in one another. She was in pink, he in dark grey. Neither of them spoke. Their silence was disturbing, almost as if in disapproval of my so-called mission. After publishing his biography of Fleming in 1966, Pearson says he received a letter from a woman named Maria Künzler of Vienna. She claimed to have spent time at the ski resort with young Fleming in Kitzbühel in the 1920s, one of the many German girls Fleming had courted during his education and the shirking thereof. quote:‘So you can understand,’ she wrote, ‘the excitement we all felt when the good-looking young James Bond appeared at Kitzbühel. He had been in Ian's house at Eton, although of course he was much younger than Ian. Even in those days, James was engaged in some sort of undercover work, and Ian, who liked ragging people, used to make fun of him and tried getting information out of him. James would get very cross.’ As Pearson puts it, the consistency in which Bond's background is referenced in the books led to rumors that Fleming had based Bond on a real life British commando he knew. He dismissed all of this, but then a second letter from Künzler arrived. quote:It arrived some three months after I had written to her, apologized for the delay and said that she had not been well. (From what I could work out, she would now have been in her mid-sixties.) It was a much shorter letter than the earlier one. The florid writing was a little shaky, but everything she wrote was to the point. She said that there was not much she could add to her earlier account of young James Bond. That Kitzbühel holiday had been in 1938, and she had never seen James Bond again, although she was naturally amused at the world-wide success of Ian's books about him. After the way that Ian had behaved it was funny, was it not? She added that Bond had written her several letters after the holiday. She might have them somewhere. When she could summon up the energy she would look for them and let me have them. Also she thought there were some photographs. In the meantime, surely there must be people who had known James Bond at Eton. Why not contact them? Pearson began combing through Eton records, using the knowledge that Bond was younger than Fleming (who enrolled in 1921) as a starting point. He finds a James Bond who entered Slater's House in 1933 and was gone before the spring of 1936, but that seems far too young for Pearson to believe it's someone caught up in spycraft by 1937. The Eton secretary who answered the phone couldn't find a single record of a James Bond and sent him to the Old Etonian Society, who gave him the names of some of Bond's contemporaries. quote:I wrote to eighteen of them. Six replied, saying that they remembered him. The consensus seemed to be that this James Bond had been an indifferent scholar, but physically strong, dark-haired and rather wild. One of the letters said he was a moody boy. None of them mentioned that he had any particular friends, but no one had bullied him. There was no definite information about his home life or his relatives. The nearest to this was a passage which occurred in one of the letters: This adds up with Bond's obituary in You Only Live Twice listing his time at Eton as "brief and undistinguished" and the reference to being brooding and having suffered some sort of loss matches Bond's parents' deaths in a climbing accident. But again, these are the sorts of coincidences that crop up everywhere. Interesting, but not proof. quote:My next step was clear. Bond's obituary goes on to say that, after Eton, the young reprobate was sent to his father's old school, Fettes. Accordingly I wrote to the school secretary asking if he could tell me anything about a boy called Bond who may have entered the school some time in 1936. But before I could receive a reply, another letter came which altered everything. Inside a large brown envelope bearing a Vienna postmark was a short official note from an Austrian lawyer. He had the sad task of informing me that his client, Fraulein Künzler of 27, Friedrichsplatz had died, not unexpectedly, in her sleep some three weeks earlier. He had the honour now of settling her small estate. Among her papers he had found a note saying that a certain photograph was to be sent to me. In accordance with the dead woman's wishes he had pleasure in enclosing it. Would I be so kind as to acknowledge? As Pearson begins contacting some of Fleming's friends from his Kitzbühel days, he gets a phone call from a Mr. Hopkins who is aware of the inquiries he's making, and would he be so kind as to join him for lunch at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall Palace? quote:Mr Hopkins was an unusual Liberal: a big, bald man with outsize eyebrows, he was waiting for me by the bust of Gladstone in the foyer. Something about him seemed to make old Gladstone look a little shifty. I felt the same. We had a table by the window in the big brown dining-room. Brown was the dominating colour – brown Windsor soup, brown walls and furniture. Mr Hopkins, as I noticed now, was wearing a somewhat hairy, dark brown suit. When the soup came he started talking, his sentences interspersed with noisy spoonfuls of brown Windsor soup. The National Liberal Club is a private club founded in 1882 by William Ewart Gladstone for Liberal Party campaigners. The club took a direct hit in the Blitz, necessitating expensive rebuilds in the 1950s. Its members have included an array of notable authors, from Bram Stoker to George Bernard Shaw to HG Wells. It was also relatively progressive, allowing ethnic minorities like Indians as members since 1885 and allowing women as "associate members" in 1967 and then full members in 1976. Churchill was a member for over 18 years but resigned in 1924 when he joined the Conservatives. And as you can see, it is indeed very brown. It matches the Windsor soup, a meaty soup commonly made with lamb and/or beef and Madeira wine. While it was once a rich and decadent soup with Italian and French influence, wartime austerity led to it commonly being seen in government-established "British Restaurants" as a sort of watery brown gravy masquerading as soup. The follow-up of poor canned Windsor soup and cheap restaurant imitations permanently destroyed the meal's reputation until it became a symbol of British blandness. quote:‘This is all off the record, as you'll understand. I'm from the Ministry of Defence. We know about your current inquiries. It is my duty to inform you they must stop.’ As expected, the Ministry of Defense confronting and threatening Pearson only encourages his belief that Bond is a real person. A few days later he gets a call from a Mr. Urquhart, once again inviting him to lunch (this time at Kettner's in Soho) with the promise of no threats this time. quote:Urquhart was very, very thin and managed to combine baldness with quite startlingly thick black hair along his wrists and hands. As with the statues of Giacometti he seemed to have been squeezed down to the stick-thin shadow of his soul. Happily his expense account, unlike his colleague's, stretched to a bottle of respectable Chianti. Kettner's is a London institution since 1867, a place once attended by Oscar Wilde. quote:From the beginning I attempted a bold front, and had produced the photograph of Bond and Fleming before we had finished our lasagne. Turns out Bond was actually a fan of Pearson's biography of Fleming! quote:‘But where is Bond and what's he doing?’ Ouch. quote:For the remainder of the lunch we chatted about Fleming. Urquhart had worked with him during the war, and, like everyone who knew him, was fascinated by the contradictions of the man. Urquhart used them to avoid further discussion of James Bond. Indeed, as we were leaving, he simply said, ‘We'll be in touch – you have my word for that. But I'd be grateful if you'd stop your investigations into James Bond. They'd cause a lot of trouble if they reached the papers – the very thought of it would do for Hopkins's hernia.’ Urquhart tells Pearson that he's not the first person to stumble upon the reality of James Bond, but he's been the most cooperative with it. They're afraid that one day they won't be able to stop the truth from coming out, so they want the whole story told "responsibly." And that means Pearson is going to meet James Bond. quote:As I learnt later, there was more to Urquhart's plans than he let on. He was a complex man, and the years he had spent in undercover work made him as secretive as any of his colleagues. What he failed to tell me was the truth about James Bond. I had to piece the facts together from chance remarks I heard during the next few weeks. It appeared that Bond himself was facing something of a crisis. Everyone was very guarded over the details of his trouble. No ailing film-star could have had more reverent discretion from his studio than Bond from his colleagues at Headquarters. But it seemed clear that he had been suffering from some complicated ailment during the previous year which had kept him entirely from active service. The symptoms made it sound like the sort of mental and physical collapse that overworked executives succumb to in their middle years. Certainly the previous September Bond had spent over a month in King Edward VII Hospital for Officers at Beaumont Street under an assumed name (no one would tell me what it was). He seems to have been treated for a form of acute hepatitis and was now convalescent. But, as so often happens with this uncomfortable disease, he still had to take things very easy. This was apparently something of a problem. The doctors had insisted that if Bond were to avoid a fresh relapse he simply had to have total physical and mental rest from active service and the London winter. James Bond apparently thought otherwise. One of M's friends is Sir William Stephenson, codename Intrepid during his time in the British Security Coordination and one of the inspirations for James Bond in the real world. Stephenson at this time was living in semi-retirement in a penthouse in the Princess Hotel in Bermuda, and he suggested Bond come on down for a vacation. To keep his mind occupied, the Head of Records suggested he write his memoirs, but M pointed out that Bond is notoriously bad with even filling out after-action reports. So Urquhart suggested getting Pearson to do it. quote:‘You mean,’ growled M., ‘that you'd let this writer fellow publish the whole thing?’ After his passport is checked, Pearson is led to a large gold Cadillac where a black chauffeur is loading his luggage. He doesn't even get told where he's going. quote:We purred across a causeway. There was a glimpse of palm trees, lights that glittered from the sea. Then we drove through high gates, along a gravelled drive, and there before us, floodlit and gleaming like that party scene from High Society, stood the hotel – old-style colonial, pink walls, white louvered shutters, pillars by the door. The pool was lit up too. People were swimming, others sitting on the terrace. A doorman in top-hat and wasp-coloured waistcoat took my distinctly meagre luggage to the lift. The Hamilton Princess opened in 1885 on the outskirts of the capital city of Hamilton. It was used in World War II as housing for Allied servicemen and an intelligence and mail censorship center. No wonder a Canadian intelligence agent ended up rooming there. quote:Urquhart had said, ‘they do one rather well.’ They did. Bath already run, drinks waiting on the table, a discreet manservant to ask if I had eaten or would like something from the restaurant. I told him ‘no’, but poured myself a good slug of Glen Grant on ice. I felt I needed it. This is actually the first mention of a single malt scotch in the Bond books! quote:‘Sir William asked me, sir, to kindly welcome you and tell you to treat this place as your own home. When you are ready, sir, say in half an hour, please ring for me and I will take you to Sir William.’ The lift ascends slowly, and there's a pause as the doors open that suggests they're controlled remotely from the other side. The enormous room is almost entirely in shadow. quote:On three sides long, plate-glass windows looked out on the dark night sea. Along the fourth side there were chairs, a radio transmitter, two green-shaded lamps. By their slightly eerie light I could make out only one man at first – elderly, grey-haired with a determined, weather-beaten face. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jun 30, 2021 |
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# ? Apr 21, 2020 03:00 |
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chitoryu12, did you even saying what your favourite and least favourite Fleming bond books were in the old thread?
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# ? Apr 21, 2020 09:16 |
High Warlord Zog posted:chitoryu12, did you even saying what your favourite and least favourite Fleming bond books were in the old thread? I think my favorite would probably be Casino Royale. The action is more contained but it’s a very detailed, grounded book that plays on both Bond and the audience’s expectations about damsels in distress to hide the twist. Least favorite is obviously Golden Gun. It’s completely unfinished.
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# ? Apr 21, 2020 16:43 |
Chapter 2: Boyhood of a Spyquote:So this was Bond, this figure in the shadows. Until this moment I had taken it for granted that I knew him, as one does with any familiar character in what one thought was fiction. I had been picturing him as some sort of superman. The reality was different. There was something guarded and withdrawn about him. I felt that I was seeing an intriguing, unfamiliar face half-hidden by an image I could not forget. As I said, Pearson assumes that Fleming took creative liberties with Bond's personality in some places and creates a slightly different Bond for his book. "Less personable" is an understatement. quote:‘I'm not sure,’ he said, ‘that I'm going to be much help to you. This seems a half-arsed sort of project.’ Pearson asks Bond of his plans for the future. He's 52 years old now, too old for active service, but Dr. James Molony is on his way to Bermuda. If he gives Bond the okay, he could find himself back on active duty. quote:He dropped his voice, and stared out at the dark ocean. The lighthouse on Lighthouse Hill flashed and subsided. He may be bad at paperwork, but Bond is nothing if not punctual. At precisely 9:30 the next morning he calls Pearson and is in his room in 2 minutes. quote:Somehow he looked completely different from the night before – no sign now of tension or of that wariness he had shown then. He was fit, bright-eyed, positively breezy. He was wearing espadrilles, old denim trousers and a much faded dark blue T-shirt which showed off the width of shoulder and the solidity of chest. There was no hint of a paunch or thickening hips. But he seemed curiously unreal this morning in a way he hadn't previously; almost as if he felt it necessary to act a role I was expecting. (Another thing I was to learn about him was the extent to which he really was an actor manqué.) Remember in Thunderball when Fleming had him wearing a full suit with sandals in Bermuda? I think we can assume that's one fictionalization. quote:He talked about his early-morning swim. Swimming, he said, was the one sport he still enjoyed. Bond was born on November 11, 1920 in the town of Wattenscheid, in the Ruhr area of western Germany. His father, the Scottish Andrew Bond, was a Metro-Vickers engineer on contract with the Allied Military Government to dismantle the Krupp factory in Essen for war reparations. A railway strike had trapped his parents in the house Andrew Bond was living in during his work; being a native-born German caused some paperwork issues when he joined the Royal Navy later on and helped feed his dislike of Germans. quote:Once Bond had settled the question of his birth, he seemed to relax. He suggested that we order coffee, which he drank strong and black – always a good sign with him as readers of Fleming's books will remember. For the rest of that morning we went over the basic facts about the Bonds. Fleming, who used to get very bored with families, had been predictably brisk over James Bond's ancestry. Apart from some hypothetical dialogue in On Her Majesty's Secret Service suggesting that James Bond might be descended from the Bonds who gave their name to Bond Street – dismissed by Bond himself as ‘sheerest eyewash’ – all that he disclosed were the bare facts of his hero's parentage. The father, Andrew Bond, had come from Glencoe in Argyll whilst the mother, Monique, was a Delacroix from the Swiss canton of Vaud. The Massacre of Glencoe is still a sore spot for proud Scots centuries later. In 1689, the Jacobites (adherents to the exiled House of Stuart) revolted to restore King James II and VII (he was James II of England and James VII of Scotland, because you just can't have duplicates) to the throne in place of William of Orange and Mary II. William got a number of Highland clans to agree to support him with the promise of a pardon as long as it was done before January 1, 1692, but delays in transmitting the message (possibly intentionally by his enemies) and getting someone around to pledge an oath to led to MacIain of Glencoe learning about it late and not being able to get it done until January 6. Secretary of State Sir John Dalrymple sent soldiers to execute the clan over what was essentially a paperwork mishap. Two companies of William's soldiers happened to be quartering in the MacDonalds' home for the past week. Their commander, Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, suddenly received written orders to assist in massacring everyone there along with an implicit threat if he didn't carry it out. He did so, killing roughly 30 men (as well as some women and children) even as they surrendered, MacIain included. This was, to put it mildly, extremely controversial. Laws were in place regarding "slaughter under trust" that people accused this massacre of violating, and it also violated strong cultural cachets regarding safe travel and hospitality. Seeing as William himself signed the order that made this massacre official, the government promptly investigated itself and found that no wrongdoing was committed, and no compensation will be provided to the survivors! quote:According to James Bond, the men in his family all tend to be melancholies. Through this side of the family he evidently inherited his shut-in, brooding quality. There is a lot of granite in James Bond. He also got the family determination and toughness mixed with a solid dose of Calvinism. The Bonds, as true Scotsmen, believed in guilt, great care with money and the need for every man to prove himself. The Delacroixs were a rich and obstinate family, and their daughter rejecting her wealthy suitor for a one-armed Scot was matched by Andrew Bond getting into an argument with her father that ended with him storming out and slamming the door behind him to go elope. They had their first child, Henry Bond, exactly 9 months after their wedding and she was soon pregnant again. Unfortunately, the two found that they had little in common beyond their love of mountain climbing and Monique missed her wealthy lifestyle that her parents had now cut her off from. quote:As always in such cases, one wonders how two human beings can have been so painfully mistaken over one another. How could Andrew Bond possibly have been the sort of husband she required? He was profoundly serious and solitary, a dedicated engineer and something of a puritan. Worse still, he had no money. His old employers, Metro-Vickers, were prepared to have him back. There was a job for him in Birmingham. Monique, for the first, but not the last time, kicked. Andrew gave in; to keep his young wife happy, he accepted his secondment to the Allied High Command in Germany. James Bond was born the autumn after they arrived. The two Bond children were devoted to their parents despite their problems. He felt unable to talk to his father about anything that mattered and held long resentment toward his beloved mother for her dismissive behavior toward him, which Pearson attributes his later issues with women to. He grew up extremely strong for his age and a big eater, spending a portion of his childhood severely overweight (at least as a spy he had exercise to keep up with his massive caloric intake). quote:Another feature of his boyhood was the continual movement that went on – the Bonds were wanderers. After Monique's refusal to settle back in Birmingham, Andrew accepted a succession of overseas assignments from Metro-Vickers when his attachment with the Military Government ended. From Germany they moved to Egypt, where Andrew worked as consultant for three years on the Nile dam project above Aswan. By now James was five, and, just as in Germany, he proved himself adaptable in his choice of playmates. Soon he had his private gang of small boys from the neighbourhood, most of them Egyptian. James seemed to find no difficulty communicating with them, or with asserting his leadership. He had always been big for his age. The Bond brothers had an elderly French governess. James could elude her, and for days on end would roam the city with his gang of guttersnipes. Sometimes they played along the river, scampering along the waterfront and living on their wits. At other times they flitted round the market-place, picking up money where they could and playing their games with other gangs. The Bonds made one more move, this time to a big house near Chinon, France for Andrew's work, and the pattern continued. Monique only got more wild and irresponsible, spending their money with abandon. quote:France suited James. He picked up the language, loved the food and made a lot of unexpected friends – the boatmen on the river, the village drunk, the gendarme and the madame who kept the caf in the village. He also fell in love for the first time – with the butcher's daughter, a sloe-eyed, well-developed girl of twelve, who deceived him for an older boy who had a bicycle. That hussy! quote:James Bond remained in France a year – then his world changed again. In 1931 the Metro-Vickers combine won an unprecedented contract from the Soviet Government to construct a chain of power stations around Moscow as part of Stalin's policy for the electrification of Russia. Inevitably, Andrew Bond was despatched with the advance party of British engineers. Three months later he sent for his family to join him. The British engineers and their families were quartered in Perlovska, a small village 20 miles from Moscow. While the Russians put up the best they had available for their foreign guests, the spoiled Monique absolutely couldn't handle a place with no shopping district or nightlife and grew worse as the winter set in. quote:Ten-year-old James Bond was getting an impression of Soviet Russia that has never really changed. Deep down he still believes this is a land of starving peasants, cowed citizens and an all-powerful secret police. These conclusions must have seemed dramatically confirmed by the events he witnessed in the early months of 1932. This was a show trial in 1933, in which 6 of the Metro-Vickers engineers were suddenly arrested and accused of sabotage and espionage. Stalin was paranoid about counter-revolutionaries and made a speech claiming that they had infiltrated the burgeoning Soviet economy, and it's suspected that the OGPU went nuts "uncovering" various plots to try and help Stalin's image by making him correct. In particular, they wanted to make sure that any engineers and technicians connected to the pre-communist regime knew their place and feared that any betrayal would be uncovered. It started with the Metro-Vickers secretary being literally dragged into a car and roughly interrogated and forced to help with a frame job, then multiple others were arrested and put through long interrogations to break them down into signing false confessions. At the trial, the Metro-Vickers engineers were accused of being paid to sabotage their equipment and that all of the equipment failures they had suffered were intentional. The trial received massive media coverage worldwide and was roundly criticized for the obvious sham that it was. Ultimately 4 were convicted and deported (while their "crimes" could have resulted in imprisonment or execution, it's believed the Soviets wanted to avoid causing too much damage to international relations by suddenly grabbing British engineers and shooting them for alleged crimes to help Stalin look strong). quote:For the Bond family, huddled in their freezing house in Perlovska, it was all hideously real. Andrew Bond's friend, the minister Tardovsky, had already been arrested. Rumours were everywhere. Then the six British engineers – the Bonds knew them personally – were carried off to the fearful Lubyanka prison, by the secret police. It seemed a miracle that Andrew was not among them. Andrew Bond became one of the main points of contact between the Kremlin, the British embassy, and the prisoners. Despite Monique's rapidly declining mental health, he adamantly refused to leave Russia until the trial was done. quote:During this period, James Bond had an uncanny glimpse into the future. Several of the accused engineers had been released on bail, and were waiting in the compound of Perlovska for the trial to start. James, along with most of the English nationals, was with them. Suddenly a car drew up, a big, official-looking limousine. Out stepped a tall, impeccably-dressed young Englishman, looking for all the world as if about to enter some St James's club. Sounding distinctly bored, he introduced himself. He was a Reuter's correspondent, sent out from London for the trial. His name was Ian Fleming. While I don't know if Fleming was already wearing his checkered suits at this point (he was only 25), this is true! Fleming really was one of the journalists who was sent to cover the trial, and he even went so far as to try and get an interview with Stalin himself. quote:Although he had to stay on at Perlovska throughout the trial, James heard all about it from his father. It was from him that he learned of the impassioned speech of Andrei Vishinsky, the vitriolic Russian prosecutor. When the verdicts were announced they amounted to a triumph for Andrew Bond. All but two of the engineers were acquitted. Andrew was congratulated by his company and marked out for promotion. Still more important for the Bonds, their ordeal was over. The Metro-Vickers mission was withdrawn from Russia. The family was coming home at last. 6 North View is a real house in Wimbledon, in a small neighborhood on the outskirts of the town. quote:But the member of the family who fared worst was undoubtedly Monique. During the long months in Russia she had hung on, because she had to. The boys depended on her. Now that all this was over, she fell to pieces. Her zest for life deserted her. A photograph taken that July gives an idea of what was happening. The face is still beautiful but white and drawn, the thin hair turned prematurely grey, and there is a hunted look about the eyes. At least Bond's older brother Henry was doing fine! The two boys were sent to King's College School a five minute walk away. While Henry was a star pupil, James was sullen and moody. And then something would happen that would make it all worse. quote:It started with his mother's nervous breakdown towards the end of that July. She had been acting strangely for some time, complaining that the Russians were pursuing her and that she had seen several of the Soviet secret police from Perlovska watching the house from the common. Then one night she went berserk and tried to stab Natasha, the Bonds' devoted Russian maid. Fortunately, Andrew Bond was at home. The doctor came and Monique was sent off to a sanatorium at Sunningdale. She soon seemed to recover, but the specialist advised a change. At his instigation, Andrew Bond decided that the time had come to forget the past, make peace with the Delacroixs and take his wife home. It must have been a difficult decision for a man of his proud nature. While Henry broke down crying, James shocked everyone by how calmly he took it. He seemed to know that when his father left at King's Cross three weeks ago, he wouldn't be coming back. From what Bond was able to piece together, Monique made it to her family's home and stayed for several weeks after reconciling with her parents. When Andrew came to pick her up, he got into yet another bitter argument with the Delacroixs that turned into a shouting match over who she should continue living with. They got so heated that they didn't even realize that Monique had run out and driven off. Andrew Bond found her car abandoned outside the cafe in Chamonix; the owner said he saw her heading for the mountains. quote:It was past midday and Monique had more than two hours' start on him. But he remembered the climb up the sheer face of the mountain where he had first caught sight of her so many years before. Monique was making her escape at last. Aunt Charmian was the one who traveled to Switzerland to learn what happened. She convinced the Delacroixs to let her take care of the children and moved them into her cottage in Pett Bottom, near the Duck Inn. quote:There is something wholly admirable about Aunt Charmian. In the two Bond boys she had found something her life had lacked – a purpose – and this slightly dumpy, gentle woman dedicated herself to them with all the single-mindedness of her family. Bond did not do particularly well at Eton, though his behavior is "classic Etonian." Placed in the same house as his successful older brother, James Bond resented being in his shadow and rebelled against the strict structure, the uniforms, and the "fagging" system in which an older boy pays a younger one to do his chores and help him handle anything he doesn't want to himself. His incredible height and strength made him impossible to bully, and he made a few friends who were similar. quote:Bond's favourite crony was a boy called Brinton, nicknamed ‘Burglar’. He was a year older, embarrassingly handsome, with the cool, mondaine sophistication of the cosmopolitan rich. He and James got on together. During the holidays, James visited his house in Shropshire, and later was invited to his father's place in Paris. Here, with his looks and his command of French, Bond impressed Burglar's father. It was this rich old rake who discovered the boy's natural talent for cards and love of gambling. He backed the two boys when they played bridge for money with his rich Parisian friends. The canasta craze was starting – James Bond cleaned up at that. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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# ? Apr 22, 2020 00:36 |
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chitoryu12 posted:I think my favorite would probably be Casino Royale. The action is more contained but it’s a very detailed, grounded book that plays on both Bond and the audience’s expectations about damsels in distress to hide the twist. If you had to rank the books from best to worst how would you do that?
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# ? Apr 22, 2020 05:41 |
High Warlord Zog posted:If you had to rank the books from best to worst how would you do that? That would be difficult. Except for Golden Gun, most of them are pretty close in quality to me. I think that (other than the racism) the only part of any of the books I would seriously criticize is the ending of Goldfinger, where it seems like Fleming realized he had ended his book with two love interests dead and one a lesbian and decided to quickly throw in a scene of Pussy Galore falling in love with Bond on the last two pages so he could get a Bond Girl out of it. And then you get books like Dr. No, where his most virulent racism is in a book that also has one of his most memorable villains and a creative obstacle course that leaves Bond more battered and broken than ever before. If I had to make an order: Casino Royale Diamonds Are Forever On Her Majesty's Secret Service From Russia With Love The Spy Who Loved Me Moonraker Goldfinger Thunderball You Only Live Twice Dr. No Live and Let Die The Man with the Golden Gun Out of the short stories I'd give "The Living Daylights" the top place for being a very grounded Cold War story that lets Bond show his roguish and compassionate sides.
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# ? Apr 22, 2020 05:49 |
Chapter 3: Les Sensations Fortesquote:Bond had been talking all the morning. I was surprised. After the ritual show of reluctance of the night before, I had expected to have trouble getting him to talk – quite the contrary. Indeed he showed all the symptoms of someone who had lacked an audience too long – now that he had one, nothing would stop him. He was clear-cut and businesslike, precise on facts and quite uninhibited about himself. After my unfavourable first impressions, I found myself starting to like him. I can imagine! quote:‘Fleming would have a shock,’ I said. I can absolutely call that excessive. quote:By the telepathy that marks the finest waiters in the very best hotels, Augustus was waiting for our order just as James Bond finished speaking. I was intrigued to see how Bond treated him. In fact he gave the order just as Fleming had described in the precise, clipped voice of the man who knows exactly what he wants and is used to getting it – the vodka iced, the French vermouth specified by name, the single slice of lemon peel. I felt there was a touch of parody in the performance – Bond acting out the part of Bond – but he seemed unaware of this and coolly nodded to Augustus when the drinks arrived. Fleming had been right. This was a man who, as he said, took an almost old-maidish pleasure in attention to the minutiae of life. So does Augustus know who this is? quote:The customary table proved to be the best in the hotel – set well back from the pool and shaded by a great hibiscus, busy with humming birds. Clearly the birds delighted Bond, taking up most of his attention so that it was harder to get him to continue with the story of his life. Once more he did the ordering – ‘I always have the lobster done with coconut and lime juice, and avocado salad; then perhaps some guavas and blue mountain coffee. Suit you? The usual, twice, Augustus.’ When the food came, he ate with relish. Bond had kept up communication with the Delacroixs after his parents' death. They had been encouraging him to come to Switzerland, so as a compromise Bond agreed to study in Geneva on their dime. quote:Surprisingly, he liked Geneva. One says “surprisingly” because the prim, staid city is hardly the background one associates with Bond. And yet as soon as he arrived he felt at home here. Part of the explanation may be that he was half Swiss, and part that he was suddenly experiencing freedom here for the first time in his life. But there was something else about Geneva that appealed to him, and he agreed with Ian Fleming on the subject. For both of them it had, what Fleming called, a ‘Simenon-like quality – the quality that makes a thriller-writer want to take a tin-opener and find out what goes on behind the façade, behind the great families who keep the banner of Calvin flying behind the lace curtains in their fortresses in the Rue des Granges, the secrets behind the bronze grilles of the great Swiss banking corporations, the hidden turmoil behind the beautiful bland face of the country’. Bond was very self-sufficient in Geneva, requiring nobody but the girls he flirted with. He worked enough to satisfy the university, studying psychology and law. He also took up skiing, which appealed to his risk-taking nature. One day, a boastful young instructor made fun of him one too many times and told Bond that he should head to the Aiguilli du Midi and see how long he lasts with that form. quote:‘Fine,’ said James Bond, ‘we'll try.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCgXKm5_3Hk quote:Bond put on his goggles and, without looking back, thrust himself off. To this day he is not sure how he survived. Some instinct from generations of mountaineers must have helped preserve him – also his strength and his beginner's luck. For the hair-raising first mile of the descent he thought that he had gone. He had no control – nothing except the will to stay alive. But then he realized that he was winning. His mind was very clear. The closeness of death was sharpening his reactions; for the first time he was enjoying the one drug to which he would always be addicted – danger. As one casually does among friends, I guess. quote:Bond asked him why he did it. Gregoriev's reply was to provide James Bond with something of a motto in the months ahead. Fleming did not understand, however, all of Bond's motivations. When Fleming described Bond thinking of how he once climbed the Aiguilles Rouge, he had no idea it was the site of his parents' deaths and that Bond climbed it as a way of seeking closure. quote:During his first months at Geneva, Bond had been developing his appetite for life. He was voracious. The same greed which had made him a glutton as a small boy was now directed outwards, and he was hungry for experience. One of his girl-friends was to compare him with the character of Nora in Ibsen's The Doll's House – always waiting for something umnderbar to happen. But that first Easter in Geneva, it must have seemed as if this ‘something umnderbar’ had finally arrived. The next day, Burglar showed up in his dad's Hispano-Suiza. While he had little contact with the Brinton family since coming to Geneva, he was on his way to Paris with Burglar within half an hour to seek new adventure. quote:It was a memorable day with the great car sweeping towards Paris through the early spring. They stopped at Mâcon where they lunched off Poulards comme chez soi at the Auberge Bressane. Burglar insisted on champagne. When they drove on to Paris, he promised Bond that they would have a night to remember. Bond, slightly drunk, agreed. And so occurred that evening which Fleming has described as ‘one of the most memorable of his life’. On Burglar's father's account, the got started at Harry's Bar and moved on to Fouquet's for dinner. The next challenge was to find women. quote:At this time the most notorious, if not quite the most fashionable, brothel in Paris, was the Elysée on the Place Vendôme. Le Chabanaif was wilder, Le Fourcy enjoyed a reputation still for the blowsy splendours of la belle époque. The Elysée was different. The superb eighteenth-century house was run like a London club, complete with doorman in full livery, smoking-room with hide armchairs and library smelling of cigar smoke where it was strictly forbidden to talk. The one unusual feature of the place was the presence of a lot of pretty girls with nothing on. This turned out to be a mistake, as the Elysée was a classy institution. Bond, drunk and angry, promptly knocked out the doorman and began shouting for the manager. And she arrived. quote:Although forgotten now, Marthe de Brandt was famous in her day. The daughter of a judge and a famous courtesan, she was something more than the successful harlot she became. She was beautiful, abandoned and ambitious. She was also undoubtedly intelligent and well-educated. By twenty she was rich, by twenty-five, notorious. Thanks to the generosity of de Combray, the armaments king, she attained sufficient capital to open her own establishment. Thanks to her own attractions, she made the place something exceptional in the pleasure-life of Paris. It was her idea to call it the Elysée after the presidential palace. It was also her idea to base the décor on a London club. Within a few months of opening, it had become an unofficial centre for the political élite of France. For some unknown reason, Marthe de Brandt took an immediate liking to the 16-year-old Bond. She was unusually apologetic, slapping and firing Alys and reprimanding the doorman once he had woken up. Bond and Burglar went to bed for the night and woke up to Bond being delivered his belongings, 10,000 francs, and a note inviting him to dinner. quote:The remainder of that Easter holiday is something Bond won't talk about. His friends, the Brintons, saw little of him. Nor did Aunt Charmian. Marthe had a small flat in the tiny Place Furstenburg off the Rue Jacob. For the next few months this became his home. This was included by Pearson as the explanation for why Fleming listed Bond as acquiring a Bentley "almost new" when he should have been a teenager. quote:Despite their difference of age, they seemed to have appeared a well-matched couple; she was so small and fair and doll-like, he so tall and mature for his age. For these few months they led a charmed existence, almost oblivious of others. Aunt Charmian wrote anxious letters until old Gregor Bond told her he would get over it. Burglar's father tried to warn him of a woman like de Brandt. One night, as they were dining in the crowded Restaurant des Beaux Arts, they heard a drunk American call out, ‘Here is the lovely Marthe and her English poodle.’ It was a well-known brawler called Sailor Hendrix. Bond hit him very hard between the eyes, then pushed his head into his onion soup. I cannot emphasize enough that Bond is 16 here. quote:In fact there was only one man in the whole of Paris who could come between them. James Bond met him early that summer. His name was Maddox. He was a curious, dry, bespectacled man of totally indeterminate age, tough as a prewar army boot, and very rich. Bond met him through the Brintons. He appeared a typical wealthy foreigner, a collector of paintings and of pretty women, gourmet and wit and friend of many politicians. Officially, he was military attaché at the British Embassy. Unofficially, he ran the British Secret Service inside France. As an old lover of Marthe de Brandt, he had observed Bond's success with interest. A methodical man, he had checked on him as matter of routine. Then he decided he should get to know him better. But Maddox was a cold fish. Having met James Bond he did what he often did with people he thought might prove useful – he pigeon-holed him carefully away, but kept his tabs on him. At this point in history, Italy had invaded Ethiopia and the Spanish Civil War was raging. Germany was secretly remilitarizing and unexpectedly sent troops into the Rhineland region in March 1936 (which was off-limits to the German military under the Treaty of Versailles). Unwilling to risk a war, Britain and France decided to let it slide despite being a treaty violation. Hitler became convinced of his infallibility and the German people felt strong again after the economic crisis that had led to the Nazi party seizing power. With no challenges to German remilitarization, the balance of power had shifted and Hitler was confident that he could begin making territorial claims that eventually led to his attempt to conquer Europe. quote:Two days later came the bombshell. A Berlin newspaper published photographs of French High Command documents together with comments by the British General Staff. They were repudiated by the French, but in Paris the right wing was in full cry. The President was said to be distressed, and behind the scenes the whole policy of military cooperation between France and Britain now seemed threatened. Maddox had frantic messages from London. However the leak of documents had happened, it must be found and blocked. Immediately. Maddox had several suspects. One of the major ones was Marthe de Brandt. Von Schutz, the German military attaché, was an habitué of the Elysée. Marthe had done business with him in the past. Maddox was informed that she was the source this time. She needed money for her fancy boy. He half suspected her already. Even so, normally he would have checked more thoroughly. There was no time with London clamouring for action. That same evening Maddox had dinner with James Bond. One of these men was Von Schutz. Playing on Bond's patriotism, Maddox manipulated Bond into believing that Marthe de Brandt had betrayed Britain and would directly cause tens of thousands of deaths should war break out. quote:Bond was silent. Now this is a change that I don't like. Remember that Bond is 16 years old when this is happening. He's a moody boy who's getting involved in stuff way over his head, sure, but murder? Of his lover? That isn't the Bond we know. That's frankly a shocking level of sociopathy, and I can't believe Pearson would put that in. quote:The next day was a Saturday. The day after was to be Marthe de Brandt's thirtieth birthday. She dreaded being thirty. To make her happy, Bond had arranged a long weekend with her and some old friends at a small hotel beside the Seine where they had often enjoyed each other in the past. The place was called Les Andelys. It has a famous castle built by Richard the Lionheart and Monet painted here along the river. If you know a teenager who's willing to just murder their girlfriend because they get told she'll be executed as a spy, run. quote:Just after midday they reached the long road from Les Thilliers. The Seine was on their left, its waters shining through the leafless poplars. The road was empty. On the far hill stood the ruin of the Norman fort. The Bentley sang at something over eighty.
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# ? Apr 22, 2020 17:58 |
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That’s a direction I wasn’t expecting.
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# ? Apr 22, 2020 19:16 |
Midjack posted:That’s a direction I wasn’t expecting. Neither was she!
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# ? Apr 22, 2020 19:32 |
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The problem with the whole such and such pulp hero is real and this is their true biography genre is that the writers can't resist pulping up the parts of their life not covered in the original texts whereas the conceit works better when they keep the new between adventures material grounded
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# ? Apr 23, 2020 00:39 |
Chapter 4: Luminous Readerquote:When Bond had finished telling me his story he fell silent. At first I thought that he was deeply moved: then I realized that he was simply watching the two humming-birds that were still flickering like small blue lights against the coral flowers of the hibiscus. By now the sun was at its height and they were the only things that moved. The empty pool was bright-blue plastic, sea and terrace had become some over-coloured photo on a travel brochure. Bond sipped his coffee. His grey eyes still followed the two birds intently It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. ....that's the lesson you took from that?! quote:‘A pretty drastic lesson.’ What the gently caress? You got manipulated as a teenager into murdering your lover, found out that it was all a lie, and this was somehow your impetus to join that organization? gently caress no! This is a Bond who should have become a German spy instead! quote:I tried getting Bond to continue with the next stage of his story, but he seemed reluctant. He had been talking for a long time. Clearly he needed his siesta, but, before he went, he promised to see me that evening over dinner. Then he would continue with his debut with the British Secret Service, the famous affair Fleming mentions of the Roumanians at Monte Carlo. Bond continues on with his biography. Maddox was an old spy who claimed W. Somerset Maugham based one of the characters in his Ashenden collection after him. He had Bond sent to a nursing home to recover from the assassination he just put a 16-year-old on, hiring a plastic surgeon to try and reduce the scar on his face; he wanted Bond to continue working for the Service and didn't want him to have a distinctive facial feature. quote:The evening James Bond left the nursing home, Maddox took him out to dinner – at the fashionable Orée de la Forêt. The food was somehow typical of Maddox –fonds d'artichauts au foie gras, tournedos aux morilles, a bottle of Dom Perignon – and over the brandy and cigars, Maddox outlined his proposition. He did it with great charm and skill. James Bond has never forgotten the small, frog-like man with the bald head and bright black eyes who gave him his first introduction to the life he was to follow. It was a Faust-like situation with Maddox playing Mephistopheles. Bond had little chance against the future that fate had in store for him. So Maddox is the real villain of this piece. He saw an opportunity to exploit a teenage boy and push him down the path to being used as a tool for espionage and murder by his government. quote:At this period Maddox was still dealing with the mess left by the stolen documents affair. Officially the incident was closed. Behind the scenes it was regarded as a considerable loss of face for the British; in the undercover world of secret agents such things matter. I'm not sure who Taylor or Fernande are. The best suggestion I can find for who "Taylor" could be is Buck Taylor, the "King of the Cowboys." He was a legitimate cowboy who Buffalo Bill Cody cast in his famous wild west shows as General Custer, who ended up with dime novels about his fictional exploits by Prentiss Ingraham. I can't find any other famous person who was involved in at least spurious gambling by that name in the 1890s. quote:They were a syndicate of four, headed by a man called Vlacek. No one had heard of them before, but in the season which had just ended they had played steadily and won remorselessly. Nobody knew quite how they did it. Seeing as casinos are famously places of intrigue among the high-roller clientele, Maddox decided it would be helpful to get the company running the casino in his debt by helping them with their card shark problem. As a gambler himself, he felt that the card table was the best place to see someone's strengths and weaknesses. James Bond has sharp instincts and a drive to win, so why not let him try? Bond was put up in the Carlton Hotel where a battery of medical, language, and firearms experts were brought in to study him. He quickly cottoned on that he was essentially on probation for the British Secret Service. quote:Maddox explained all this over dinner in the grill room. He also said that he would be saying goodbye to Bond for a month or two. Now that he had started him on his career he must return to Paris where he had work to do. But quite soon now, Bond would be meeting his instructor. Bond was becoming slightly bored with the whole air of mystery. Esposito was a plump, gray-haired man who reminded Bond of the Eton chaplain. quote:‘I am informed, sir, that I must teach you all I know.’ Esposito sounded much put out by this. His voice had traces of New York and Budapest. ‘I tried to tell the fools that it would be impossible, and probably not in anybody's interests, but the police have never understood my sort of work. Your Mr Maddox seemed a cut above the rest of them. He and I agreed upon a basic course for you on the manipulation of the pack. May I see your hands?’ He felt Bond's fingers, tested the suppleness of the joints, and sighed impatiently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1rvlI_lOYI quote:But this was not the purpose of the course, and now that Bond was beginning to achieve the basic skills of the card-sharp, Esposito started to introduce him to the main tricks on the repertoire – how aces could be slightly waxed so that the pack broke at them, how cards could be marked on the back with faint razor cuts, and how the whole pack could be minutely trimmed to leave just the faintest belly on a few key cards. During lunch at the Hotel Windsor in Dieppe, Esposito regales Bond with tales of his gambling adventures. While he's made enough money to be a millionaire many times over, his only interest is in gambling as a thrill. Maddox had the idea of letting Bond go out and try his hand at card sharking to see if his training is paying off. Since Esposito is already known in Dieppe, he takes Bond somewhere with a small casino: Royale-les-Eaux. quote:Bond liked the little town immediately. It had a certain style about it, an air of well-fed tolerance. It was not pretentious, but seemed the sort of place where comfortable French families had come for generations for their holidays. There were fat plane trees in the square, an ornate town-hall, several tempting-looking restaurants. There was also a casino, almost a Monte Carlo in miniature. Bond's heart sank when he saw it. Silently he cursed Esposito. Esposito subtly signals to Bond that the banker is standing on a 5, while Bond has a 9 and an 8 (a 7 in baccarat terms, if you've forgotten how to play in the last 2 years). He's unsure about whether to trust him, but he does. He stands and the banker puts down a 9 and a 6. quote:There was that faint murmur from the players – part envy, part excitement – as the croupier pushed Esposito's ten red plaques across the table. Bond felt a twinge of regret as his white ones followed. The play continued, but his opportunity was over. Esposito made no more signals, nor did he gamble heavily again. Half an hour later he rose, tipped the croupier, nodded towards the banker, and departed. Five minutes later James Bond followed him. Bond found him in the bar. Esposito was laughing. Back in Paris, Maddox outlines Bond's assignment over dinner. He's being sent to the casino in Monte Carlo to find out how the Roumanians are winning and beat them at their own game. He'll be undercover as Pieter Zwart, the son of a South African millionaire, staying at the Hotel de Paris. His contact is a young agent named Mathis from the Deuxieme Bureau. He's to use no violence and draw no attention to himself, and he'll be on his own with virtually unlimited funds. quote:‘But if there is no secret?’ Bond asked anxiously. Charming. quote:At Monte Carlo, Bond was in his element. The character of the wild young Pieter Zwart appealed to him. He hired himself a car – an electric-blue Bugatti. He had silk shirts and pink champagne sent up to his room. Above all, he was thrilled to be back in France and in such circumstances. He never gave the memory of Marthe de Brandt more than a passing thought. Bond is quite fortunate this is the age before you got asked for your ID. quote:Bond took his place in the grande salle early, anxious to secure a good seat and to have a chance of seeing who was there. The great room was crowded and Bond played the usual game of trying to pick the genuinely wealthy from the would-be rich. Esposito had told him there was something in the eyes. Bond believed him, but was still not certain what it was. He wondered what his own eyes gave away. Vlacek sits at the table and is essentially a computer in a tuxedo, winning every single hand without a change in expression. Bond loses 500,000 francs to him in a heartbeat. quote:Bond did his best to bear his losses as he imagined any well brought-up millionaire’s son would. He shrugged, grinned, tipped the croupier and nodded towards Vlacek, who made no sign of having noticed him. But as he got up from the table a girl brushed his arm. She was tall, beautiful and very blonde. Bond apologized to her. She smiled; he noticed she was very young. But as young as 17? quote:‘Sorry you had such bad luck tonight,’ she said. Before he can engage in any questionable behavior brought on by multiple traumas, Bond has to meet the casino manager, De Lesseps. The case seems hopeless; everyone from the croupiers to the lavatory attendants has been checked and there's not a single sign of any foul play. The Romanians are taking more and more of the casino's money. quote:He sat down weakly behind the largest buhl desk Bond had ever seen, and, for a moment, seemed on the point of tears. Bond felt embarrassed and a little helpless. Neither were emotions he enjoyed. He was relieved when someone knocked at the door. With how Bond's judgement is, I think "totally cleared out of brain from sex" is a viable diagnosis. quote:Although it was nearly four by the big yellow clock on the casino before Bond got to bed, he was up early. The sun was shining, there was a splendid day ahead, and he had plans for using it. Now that he had finally met Mathis he was on his mettle. He liked the spur of competition – there would be a very private pleasure in showing that Frenchman how to settle an assignment. Bond phones Esposito and tells him about the assignment. As soon as he mentions Vlacek's sunglasses, he immediately identifies the trick: the "Luminous Reader". quote:During the next few days, James Bond played the part of spendthrift Pieter Zwart with gusto, driving the blue Bugatti wildly, eating splendidly, gambling recklessly. He made a point of losing three or four thousand pounds a night, yet always having a quick smile for everyone in the casino – including Mathis, who was convinced by now that he was mad. He also made a point of always chatting to Vlacek's mistress. Although so beautiful, she struck him as a shade pathetic. She was English and her name was Pamela. He recognized the type and wondered how she had become involved with the Roumanian. Did she love him? He would find out, but first he had to speak to Maddox. He was soon dealt with. There was a predictable explosion when Bond rang to say that he had got through £15,000 in four days, but Bond could cope with this side of Maddox. He knew how he admired extravagance, and confidently promised him that by the weekend the Roumanians would all be back in Bucharest. In return Maddox gave him three more days' unlimited credit. "You never tell anyone that I'm underage." quote:The next day was a Friday. He had two days left. Reluctantly, he decided that to keep his promise now to Maddox he needed Mathis's help. At first the Frenchman was distinctly sceptical of Bond and treated him with much the same courteous disdain that he had shown before. He also made it plain that his own plans for dealing with the Roumanians ‘in the only way that's left’ were well advanced. That Friday night, the routine continues. quote:It was to be a night of waiting. It was gone four when the casino had begun to empty and the Roumanians had won enough. Bond was sitting in a hired Peugeot opposite the main entrance when they came out. Mathis had joined him, and they saw the Roumanians troop out, solemn as four constipated undertakers. The girl was with them. A big limousine purred up with darkened windows. They got in and drove away. I was not going to include this passage, but "solemn as four constipated undertakers" is a line that deserves to be read. quote:There was no hurry. It would take the Roumanians twenty minutes to reach their villa. According to the girl, Vlacek was a leisurely lover. It would be an hour at least before he was asleep. So Bond and Mathis made sure that the Roumanians were well ahead before they set off for the villa. They drove slowly, then took up position near the small tradesman's door at the rear. Several lights were on. One by one they were extinguished. At ten past five the back door opened. Keeping to the shadows Bond walked across. The girl was waiting. Neither of them spoke as she handed something to him and then closed the door. Bond has the glasses back at Vlacek's villa before sunrise. That Saturday night, De Lesseps has made it a gala night to try and attract bigger name gamblers. It's a veritable parade of expensive cars and fireworks as a ball occurs up at the Prince's Palace. quote:The casino was crowded, with the rich elbowing the would-be-rich for places at roulette; in the grande salle the croupiers were performing miracles of speed as they kept the cards and the counters on the move. There was excitement in the air, that unique excitement of high gambling in a great casino where fortunes and human lives are desperately at risk. The heavy money seemed to be originating from a group of South Americans – sallow men with diamond-covered wives. Bond wondered how they would react to the Roumanians when midnight came. Vlacek begins to panic as he loses hand after hand unexpectedly. He suddenly rips off his glasses and stands up, staring at Bond, but Mathis puts him back in his chair. quote:‘Sit, monsieur,’ he said, ‘the game goes on.’ Bond, Mathis, and a whole team of casino security bring the Romanians up to De Lesseps' office. Mathis wants to make the case public, but De Lesseps wants to keep any potential negative publicity to a minimum. Instead, the Romanians agree to return most of their winnings and sign an agreement never to enter a casino again. quote:So they agreed, and Bond saw them walk down the grand staircase and across the foyer for the last time. It was a moment not without its pathos. The big limousine was waiting.
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# ? Apr 23, 2020 17:52 |
I managed to get myself some Kourtaki retsina wine, albeit not in time for Colonel Sun. The brand isn't mentioned but Kourtaki became popular in the 1960s, so this may have been the exact same wine Amis had in mind! This stuff is weird. It tastes sort of like pine wood mixed with seawater, with a slight sweetness. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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# ? Apr 23, 2020 21:40 |
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Roald Dahl described retsina thus in 'Going Solo': "The Greeks have a trick of disguising a poor quality wine by adding pine resin to it, the idea being that the taste of the resin is less appalling than the taste of the wine." I'm no drinker, so I don't know the truth or false, but the description stayed with me.
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# ? Apr 24, 2020 06:52 |
Chapter 5: Eve of War Gamesquote:Bond seemed to have enjoyed telling the story of the luminous reader. There was no mistaking the nostalgia with which he talked about those far-off days. Does that include the part where he was manipulated into murdering his lover, or... quote:‘So,’ he concluded, ‘I like to think that I'm the man who saved the Bank of Monte Carlo.’ Actually, we've seen in the books that Bond has historically had quite a bit of self-doubt! He just gets thrust into situations where there's no way out but forward and he presses on, expecting his competence in violence and sheer luck to help him through. quote:‘What price?’ I asked. I would say he was very loudly, obviously a wicked bastard. quote:Bond grinned, revealing strong, faintly discoloured teeth. We had stayed too long at the table. The last of the coffee had gone cold, the waiters had already laid the other tables for the evening meal. The poor Rolls that Bond has destroyed was the latest two-door luxury car by Rolls-Royce, debuting in 1971....except not really, because it was actually the two-door version of the more famous Silver Shadow rebadged as a different model. quote:On the front seat there was a woman's pink towelling beach coat, also a pair of gilt-and-diamante framed sunglasses. Well good news Bond: the Corniche does use coachwork from Mulliner Park Ward! Despite Bond's love for the classic Silver Wraith curves, the Corniche is actually technologically superior in every way and has a top speed over 20 MPH greater. The only thing the Silver Wraith will win is legroom for the passengers. quote:I asked him about his favourite cars. The old Bentley was the best. The essence of a car is that it should be part of you, an expression of your character. He explained that for him a motor-car was as personal a possession as his wrist-watch or the clothes he wore. It needed to be absolutely perfect. At the age of 17, Bond had already become a full-fledged MI6 agent. He attracted both envy and mockery from the other agents for his youth, good looks, and competence in showing them up. For his cover, Maddox had him return to the University of Geneva in 1938 to continue his studies. quote:He also seemed much more sophisticated, dressing so elegantly now, smoking his foreign cigarettes that made the whole house smell like a bordello. He had his great grey battleship of a motor-car which Herr Nisberg garaged for him behind the shop. He used to drive off in it for days, sometimes for weeks on end. Frau Nisberg was certain that the young Herr Bond had got himself a rich, demanding woman. Frau Nisberg knew the signs. She would hear his telephone ringing in the night and in the morning his room was always empty. He would never leave a note or any hint when he was coming back. She used to tidy up a bit while he was away – he was even more untidy than she remembered – and when he reappeared he was often in a dreadful state – unshaven, hollow-eyed for lack of sleep. ‘Women,’ Frau Nisberg thought, ‘keeping the young Herr Bond away from his studies.’ Frau Nisberg is not very observant. quote:But Bond was careful; it was how he survived. One of the highest words of praise in Maddox's vocabulary was ‘professional’, meaning a man who knew his job. Bond liked to think that he was rapidly becoming a true professional. Bond actually finds the spy life ideal for him. It reminds him of all his adventures with his friends as a child in different countries, and gives him les sensations fortes that he's almost addicted to finding. quote:It was in Berlin that James Bond first killed a man. It was a bizarre affair. Bond says that ‘it gave me the creeps for quite a while.’ He is fortunate that this was all it did. Specifically a man. He has already killed a woman. At 16. quote:The assignment was a routine affair which Bond had already carried out before. During these early months of 1938, British Intelligence was fostering connections with a small resistance group in Germany – a dedicated band of anti-Nazis with plans for the assassination of various top Nazi leaders. It was an offshoot of this group which brought about the so-called Stauffenberg plot against the Fuehrer in 1944. But even in 1938 the conspirators were busy. British money was helping finance them and in return top-secret information was being sent to Britain. Much of this two-way traffic was controlled from Station P, and inevitably Bond's fluent German fitted him to play the part of courier. He used to travel to Berlin and always stayed at the Hotel Adlon. This was a hotel Bond disliked intensely. It was the epitome of a Germany he had hated almost as long as he remembered – heavy and stuffy and authoritarian. And in those days it was cram-full of party members and their fat supporters. It was Maddox's idea that Bond should stay there, on the grounds that he was less likely to attract attention under the very noses of the Nazis. Bond was not sure that he agreed. He had had one uncomfortable moment there already when the Gestapo carried out a sudden check on the whole hotel because Goering was guest of honour at a banquet. Bond escaped having his luggage searched by sheer effrontery and arrogance. He could be very German when he had to and calmly informed the Gestapo sergeant that he would be searched only with the official order of his friend, Reichsführer Himmler. The sergeant blustered. Bond coldly ordered him to get him the Reichsführer on the telephone, banking on the fact that no mere sergeant would risk bothering the head of the Gestapo at a time like this. So Bond would meet his contact, a pretty blonde, and they would play up the roll of wealthy young Nazi and high-class call girl for the benefit of any microphones placed in their room while exchanging documents. They would have champagne and laugh and, well, they were already there so.... quote:It was in May of 1938 that Bond made his fourth and final trip to the Adlon. He had come via Munich – all the way he was thinking of the girl. Against all the rules he had brought a present for her – a mammoth bottle of Guerlain's L'Heure Bleu. Its nostalgic fragrance seemed to suit her. He left it in his room, and, as usual, tipped the concierge and went out for dinner. He returned earlier than usual, eager to see the girl. L'Heure Bleu hasn't even changed the bottle since the 1930s, but the scent at the time was much darker and muskier than the modern formulation. quote:To this day, Bond is not sure what put him on his guard. It was probably a subtle difference in the smell inside the room as he opened the door. Only the rose-silk covered bedside lamp was on; the girl was lying with her back to him, apparently asleep, her honey-coloured hair spilling across the pillow. Bond called to her. She stirred, but she still seemed half asleep, and made no reply. The light was dim, her face was hidden in the shadows. Bond undressed, and as he slipped in beside her, she rolled towards him. Then suddenly, she lashed out, and for the first time, Bond saw her face. In one nightmare moment he realized the truth. This was not his mistress – but a man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVAq90lAqHU As much as I wanted to put an Austin Powers clip here, a similar concept was used in the pre-title sequence of Thunderball. Bond is sent to the funeral of SPECTRE agent Colonel Jacques Bouvar, who is in fact in disguise as his own widow at his funeral. This ends with him making a famous escape on a Bell Rocket Belt, an actual working 1960s jetpack. quote:It was a gruesome fight, for the Nazis were evidently taking no chances. The man they had put to wait for Bond was a trained killer. But once he was over his surprise, Bond found he had the advantage as he hurled himself against him. Bond maintained his usual keen mind under danger. He heard no sound outside; the Germans must have kept clear to avoid rousing his suspicions on his way up. He put the wig back on the body and put it in the bed, tidied up, changed, and left out the window. quote:Not all of Bond's assignments were as violent as this. The majority were quite straightforward and went off without a hitch. And just occasionally Bond would make a mistake – like the time he was in Istanbul. If you thought Bond was incompetent on his assignments under Fleming, have I got a tale for you! quote:The Istanbul affair began as a routine assignment – so routine that Bond now admits that he did not take quite the care with preparations that he might have. It came a few weeks after the Adlon business, and he was frankly looking forward to the trip as a holiday to help forget that hideous affair. There had been some trouble with the Turkish network. Normally the few British agents around Istanbul were run and paid from Station N in Cyprus, but a courier had been arrested by the Turks, and as something of an emergency measure it was arranged for funds to be transmitted through Station P. Maddox gave Bond the task of taking them. Fortunately Bond still enjoyed long rail journeys. Packing a lightweight suit and an early novel by Eric Ambler he travelled overnight from Paris on the Simplon-Orient. Sewn into the lining of his jacket was a bearer draft for £20,000 on the Etibank of Turkey. Bond is staying at the Pera Palas for one night before meeting his contact, Azom, whom he can identify through a photograph. Bond has to put the bearer bond in a black suitcase that will be identical to Azom's. They'll meet on the Bosphorus Ferry and make a simple briefcase switch. quote:The ferries across the Bosphorus are frequent, shuttling all day between Europe and Asia and linking the two halves of Istanbul. So Bond had to take great care in choosing one that left just before 3.30. Punctual as usual, he was early, but after some waiting boarded a ferry that left at 3.28 precisely. Under his arm he had the battered briefcase with £20,000 inside. Coward. quote:Bond found no difficulty switching the two briefcases. Azom's was identical with his, and at the far shore Bond picked it up, bowed to the smiling Turk and joined the jostling disembarking crowd. He then caught the next ferry back. Absolutely incredible. quote:For the remainder of the journey, Bond wondered what on earth to do. Should he go back to Istanbul and try finding Azom and Herr Yusuf Rhazid? It was too late for that. Should he tell Maddox? What could Maddox do? After a sleepless night, he decided to await events: events, for once, were on his side. In Paris, Maddox was in the best of spirits and praised him for a successful mission. Early next morning, Bond drove the Bentley back to Geneva. During the drive he was mentally preparing his explanations for when the inevitable complaints arrived from Turkey. They never did. Station N reassumed control of the Turkish network. Maddox was thanked for his assistance, and Bond decided to let sleeping Turks lie. Just the same he often wondered what did become of the £20,000 he had given to the stranger with the moustache aboard the Bosphorus Ferry. Eighteen years later he found out. During the events of From Russia With Love, Bond joined his friend, Nazim Kalkavan, for dinner at a proper Turkish restaurant owned by his friend. It's a beautiful place on the water. That friend? Yusuf Rhazid. quote:The face had hardly changed. There was the same cropped hair, the same magnificent moustache that Bond had last seen eighteen years before on the Bosphorus Ferry. For a moment the sharp currant eyes caught Bond's – then, unmistakably, Herr Rhazid winked. "Vizier's Fingers" are made by shaping semolina dough into fingers flavored with rosewater, almond, and lemon. "Lady's Navel" is a cream-filled fried pastry. quote:Throughout the long splendid European summer of 1938, Bond was busy. Apart from a snatched few days in Kent visiting Aunt Charmian, he had no real holiday. Bond has been sent to contact a Soviet biochemist who has expressed a desire to move to Cambridge and work there instead. quote:keen to have him. Bond had to tell him so and see what could be done. Leninskie Gory was the new Moscow of the Russian Revolution – monstrous and unrelieved and grey with its cliff-like blocks of workers' flats. Fedyeov, the scientist, lived on the eighth floor of one of these. He was a small man with a three-day growth of stubble and bright scared eyes. Bond recognized the air of hopelessness within the flat. Fedyeov had given up. Bond was reminded of a bird with a broken wing he had once tried to nurse – Fedyeov had the same uncomplaining stillness. The man's eyes seemed to know exactly what was coming. I think we can all guess where this is going. quote:Bond had not expected much success – even so he was disappointed. He spent a somewhat melancholy evening with an official from the Embassy, and since he was due to leave next day, went to bed early. He was staying in the annexe to the Embassy. This suited him. He didn't care for diplomats, but the Embassy had two advantages – he was saved trouble with the Russian state police and he was guaranteed a decent breakfast. While he was eating it the Head of Chancery came in. He was a plump, tweedy man in his middle thirties, who chatted for a while about life in Moscow. Of course, this brings back memories of his parents. Everyone around him seems doomed. quote:He hoped that with his return to Paris all would be well. It wasn't. Something was hideously wrong. He couldn't sleep and when he did there was a recurrence of those nightmares which had troubled him after his parents' death. He drank. He went on sleeping pills. Neither did much good. And, as always in the past, Bond had no way of telling anybody what was wrong. Luckily Maddox noticed. According to Andrew Lycett's biography and others, this is a completely accurate description of Fleming. quote:Certainly for Bond the presence of Fleming was a godsend. As he admits he ‘stopped me brooding’. He also introduced him to a lot of girls – Miss Künzler among them. According to James Bond she was ‘a cheerily amoral little thing, a sort of doll who slept with everyone’. He was upset to hear about her death. Fleming was exaggerating Bond "learning to ski", but Oberhauser did teach him the style of a professional Olympic skier and acted as a father figure to him. quote:Oberhauser was a realist. Like Bond, he had often found himself face to face with death as he climbed the mountains. He had lost comrades, friends and those he loved; and yet his zest for life was undefeated. Bond talked to him of Fedyeov, of Marthe de Brandt and finally about his parents. The Austrian was sympathetic, but, as he said to Bond, ‘so what?’ Did he intend to live his life out with a load of guilt? Would he continually blame himself whenever things went wrong? If he went on like this, the past would finally destroy him. Bond moved into a flat in Paris and began obsessively turning himself into the best agent possible. Shooting at the Garde Mobile range, swimming in the Olympic pool at Vincennes, learning judo, and playing bridge with Maddox at the clubs. quote:Behind it all, Bond was attempting to destroy the softness and weaknesses that were in him. Usually it worked, but he was always conscious of his private enemies. Fleming described him getting sentimental when he heard La Vie en Rose, and there were similar occasions that Fleming never heard of. Sometimes, however hard he tried, his memory and his imagination tortured him. And always in the night there was the hideous fear of cracking. He describes himself as ‘old before my time’. He was cynical and bored, and always in the background lurked something worse than any enemy – world weariness.
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# ? Apr 24, 2020 22:59 |
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Got to be honest, I wish we'd gotten more Amis instead of this. The writing isn't bad on a technical level, but some of the storytelling decisions... On the topic of biographies, my father recently gave me a secondhand copy of Ian Fleming: The Man with the Golden Pen - A Life by Richard Gant. A previous owner appears to have gone through it and made a few annotations in pencil.
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# ? Apr 25, 2020 04:57 |
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chitoryu12 posted:Does that include the part where he was manipulated into murdering his lover, or... From what you've quoted it sounds more like an attempted murder/suicide rather than a simple murder - was there any reason given that he'd think she'd die and he'd survive? It seems like it was just luck it turned out the way it did. Somebody Awful posted:Got to be honest, I wish we'd gotten more Amis instead of this. The writing isn't bad on a technical level, but some of the storytelling decisions...
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# ? Apr 25, 2020 17:56 |
Chapter 6: Bond's Warquote:‘The war changed everything,’ said Bond, ‘but it's a complicated story and it will take a lot of telling. Right now I feel like a siesta. Perhaps we'll start again this evening after dinner.’ Ah, to be an old British man longing for retirement in the tropics, where you can still tell a black man what to do as if he's your servant. quote:At dinner I looked out for Bond – he wasn't there. But afterwards I saw him in the bar. There was a woman with him. Was this the mysterious companion of the last few days? I felt that Bond would want to keep his woman strictly to himself, but he must have seen me and immediately called me over. He was unusually affable, almost as if relieved to have me there. The woman was, I felt, less welcoming. Even the Bond Girls are real! quote:He seemed amused by this. She was quite clearly irritated. She seemed a hard, bad-tempered, very beautiful, rich woman. Certainly she could hardly have been more different from that appealing child of nature Fleming had described living in the ruins of a great house in Jamaica. The golden adolescent with the broken nose had metamorphosed into a tough and all too typical socialite American in her early thirties. As Fleming had predicted, the nose had been remodelled – quite triumphantly; and Honeychile, like Miss Jean Brodie, was in her prime. Bond looked, I thought, a little hunted. "Comparing my buttocks to that of an adolescent boy! A scandal, I say!" quote:Bond grunted then and asked what I was drinking. He and the Mrs Schultz were taking bourbon on the rocks. I chose the same. Bond, as usual, made it doubles, then steered the conversation firmly away from literature. David Nightingale Hicks was an English interior designer who went from drawing cereal boxes to designing Prince Charles' apartment in Buckingham Palace until his death in 1998. His work has been found all over the world, from rooms at the Okura Hotel in Tokyo to BMW interiors. quote:She pouted. This did not improve her looks. She had, I noticed now, a thin upper lip. So that's how Pearson portrays Honey Ryder. A stuck-up new money aristocrat looking for fame. quote:She prattled on about herself. Bond seemed in full retreat and I thought that she was set to stay all evening. But she refused another drink, explaining that she had to be back on board by nine and that her chauffeur was already waiting. We walked out of the hotel with her. A Rolls Corniche drew up as she appeared, and, as it purred away, I recognized its scratched bodywork and badly smashed rear wing. Remember when we knew this girl for killing rapists and breaking out of ill-conceived death traps on her own? quote:He drained his glass and settled himself comfortably back into his chair. Without the woman he seemed more himself. Somewhere a band was playing a calypso. The bar was filling up. The big windows to the terrace had been drawn back and from the beach below came the faint murmur of the sea. Yes, let's move away from the character assassination. quote:‘I didn't realize at first quite what the war would mean. For years I had been thinking it would be my great moment. Instead, when I came back to London, I found that nobody was remotely interested in me. Maddox was stuck in France. Headquarters had just been moved into its present offices by Regent's Park – sheer bloody chaos everywhere. When I reported there, the place seemed full of Oxford dons and refugee Hungarians. All of my records had gone astray and some moron would insist on calling me James Band. When I told him the name was Bond and that I'd been working for the Service for the last three years, he told me not to lose my temper, and gave me the “don't-ring-us-we'll- ring-you” routine. To cap it all, the Carlton Hotel was full.’ This is the "Phoney War" period, between France and Britain declaring war on Germany on September 3, 1939 and Germany actually making it to the Low Countries on May 10, 1940. The two sides were engaging in naval blockades and engaging in a few sporadic skirmishes, but mostly just drawing up plans for what to do when the war inevitably hit France. On the very day of the German invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, Neville Chamberlain resigned as PM after a vote of no confidence in relation to the Allies' complete inability to block the invasion of Norway and would be replaced by Winston Churchill. quote:By a strange coincidence the man who rescued Bond from the stagnation of the ‘phoney war’ was Ian Fleming. He was already working in intelligence – as personal assistant to Admiral Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty – and he was on the look-out for suitable recruits to the Admiral's empire. He must have heard about the strange young man that he had met at Kitzbühel, checked on his records, and decided, as he often did, that this was the sort of man Naval Intelligence required. Thanks to his backing, Bond was commissioned as lieutenant in the Royal Navy with immediate secondment to the D.N.I. Bond's war had finally begun – and also the bizarre relationship with Ian Fleming. To Pearson, Bond and Fleming both envied the other and saw in each other the man they wish they could have been. Bond's first taste of action came with one of Fleming's typically wild plans: to plant an observer on the small North Sea island of Wangerooge to monitor Kriegsmarine traffic from Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven. quote:‘How on earth?’ said somebody. The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is one of the first true examples of the espionage novel, published in 1903. It's set among the same Frisian Islands as Wangerooge and details an attempt to uncover a secret plot by the Germans to invade Britain through the North Sea by yachting through the sandbars between the islands. quote:The idea hung around as ideas do but Bond could see its possibilities. Unlike the other members of the department, he had worked as an agent inside Germany and knew how often the most daring scheme succeeded. Without Bond's interest the idea would have lapsed. Fleming, the potential thriller writer, liked to devise his daydreams, but for James Bond anything was better than this futile life in London. And, for once, Fleming was spurred to action. Fleming's attitude toward any of Bond's concerns is a dismissive "Of course it'll work, my dear chap" attitude. With no way to argue, Bond is loaded aboard the HMS Thruster submarine at the beginning of February 1940 for a 3-week patrol. quote:Secretly Bond had always dreaded submarines, which seemed like steel coffins, but he was excited by this new adventure. Fleming was there to see him off – a tall and somehow melancholy figure in his superbly cut lieutenant's greatcoat. There was a thin dawn drizzle from the sea. The submarine shipped moorings, the engines started. Fleming smiled wryly, raising a languid hand and Bond finally sensed how much he envied him his journey. Wangerooge is a tiny island even today: a smidge over 3 square miles and 1263 people. Hiding on the beach isn't incredibly hard. quote:Not that he had much time to brood. First light was due at eight. By then he would have had to have dug himself in, camouflaged his hide, and made himself secure before his first full day. He worked furiously. There was a fishing village just along the coast. His stretch of beach was theoretically deserted at this time of year, but he could take no risks. The dunes were covered with thick clumps of dense sea grass and sea holly – more than enough to give the cover he required. The fine sand too was simple enough to burrow; as Bond dug he kept remembering himself as a small boy, building his sandcastles on the beaches of the Baltic. Bond digs himself a sort of foxhole, using aluminum planks devised by Fleming to hold up the walls and a roof of driftwood, sand, and grass that blends in with the beach. During this cramped and very cold day, Bond watches the sea with his periscope binoculars and makes regular pre-arranged calls back to the British from his radio. quote:During the first morning Bond could appreciate the accuracy of Fleming's thinking. Wangerooge was on the German navy's doorstep and there was a constant flow of inshore shipping – first the low crouching shape of German E-boats roaring their way home to Bremerhaven after a night patrolling in the Channel. Then came some coasters bound for Hamburg. And twice that morning Bond saw the quarry he was really after – two U-boats, grey steel whales sliding past so close that he could hear the throb of engines. He could see their numbers on the conning towers. Within two days they would be trailing Allied shipping out in the Atlantic. Self-heating rations are viewed as completely modern, but that was a real thing....4 years later. In 1944, Heinz and ICI collaborated on cans of soup that had a heating element lit by a fuse. You would puncture the top of the can with a knife to let the steam out and light the fuse with a cigarette or something, giving you a hot meal within minutes. They were withdrawn and not heavily used, likely because they burned so hot that they would scald you if you didn't wait long enough to eat and there were reports of cans exploding when not properly pierced. Presumably Bond has been given an early prototype! quote:Like a large nocturnal animal, Bond crept from his lair when it was safely dark. The joy of stretching cramped limbs and sniffing the night air from the sea! For a while he worked, enlarging the burrow so that he could lie full length in it and sleep. He had an inflatable sleeping-bag and was soon comfortable. At 12.15 he called the Admiralty in London, using a simple code and prearranged waveband, and reporting everything that he had seen. He would have liked a two-way conversation, even a word, with Fleming. This was too big a risk. He pulled the cover tight above his head, wound in the aerial, and slept. Bond doesn't get much sleep before he's awaken by the roar of a Dornier seaplane flying low overhead. It circles around, then lands and deposits a rubber dinghy that begins rowing toward the beach. quote:Fleming had been over-optimistic about the transmitter. The Germans must have intercepted last night's message and fixed its origin with accuracy. These searchers knew what they were looking for. Bond quickly realizes that he has no way out except surrender. If the Germans are monitoring his radio, any attempt to summon the submarine to pick him up early will inevitably bring them down on him. He doesn't have enough water to stay here forever. Making plans to steal a boat from the village at night, he eats and falls back asleep. quote:It was late afternoon when he awoke. He was cold. He started to prepare the rations he would take with him that night for his escape. But first he needed to survey the beach. It was empty – so was the sea. Then he noticed something. Far to the right there was a ship approaching. There was the beginning of a North Sea mist, making it hard to identify, but as it came closer Bond was certain what it was. One of the outlines he had learned during his lessons on enemy shipping was of the high-speed ocean-going tankers – the Germans called them milch-cows – which the Germans had developed to refuel their U-boat fleets. This was one of them. Two E-boats followed it to give protection as it steamed off into the darkness. Bond radios in his message, immediately sending the seaplane swooping back down to land and drop off the dinghy commandos. Bond placed much of his equipment a hundred yards behind him, where it would immediately attract the attention of the Germans. As they search his gear, Bond crawls out of the burrow and makes it almost to the water before being spotted. quote:Bond had never rowed so hard in all his life. Luckily, the sea was calm, and, luckily, the German airmen were no marksmen. But there was still the problem of the flying-boat. The Germans would certainly have left somebody aboard – this firing from the beach must have alerted him. But Bond possessed one advantage. Whoever was aboard the plane had no idea of what was going on. The last thing he would be expecting would be for the English spy his comrades were out looking for to come aboard of his own free will. Bond drew along the side of the Dornier. There was an open door in the fuselage. Here he shouted out in German. And this is why you learn the enemy's language! quote:But even then, Bond's problems weren't over. The pilot was a surly individual – a heavily built, red-headed man. Bond had to keep his pistol firmly in his back as he ordered him to set his course due west for England and climb to 5,000 feet. For a while the man obeyed; then suddenly he shouted – ‘Look out, Englishman. Fighter-planes.’ It really makes you want a good action writer back for these scenes, huh? quote:By now, Bond had no idea where he was, or how much fuel remained. He had picked up his pistol and kept the pilot covered in the seat beside him. At the same time, he held the plane on course for England, trusting in his luck and the compass to get him there. Despite having previously tried to take out Bond, the Dornier pilot realizes that they're getting out of this tub together or not at all. He shows Bond the escape hatch and pulls out the rubber dinghy, which both of them spend the next 2 hours floating in until an RAF rescue boat arrives to pick them up. quote:Bond came back to Whitehall feeling jubilant, but not for long. True he had got the information of the German tanker through to the Admiralty, but there were delays and it was lost. And in the meantime the whole adventure had been criticized. Bond's old reputation as a glory-seeker was pursuing him, and Lieutenant Fleming had been reprimanded for a scheme which put a British submarine at risk. Having to be rescued by the R.A.F. was considered thoroughly bad form, and Bond, though still officially attached to the D.N.I., was in disgrace. He was sent to work at their offices at Penge. And it was here his great adventure ended. In real life, as far as unclassified evidence suggests, at this point in real life Fleming was a liaison and assistant to Rear Admiral Godfrey. He wrote a lot of memos and plots, many of which were ignored or had their flaws pointed out before being rejected. quote:Bond loved the navy and the fourteen months he spent as a seagoing sailor are among the happiest of his life. He trained at Devonport and was seconded to destroyers. Just before Dunkirk he joined his first ship, H.M.S. Sabre, as a lieutenant. He was at Dunkirk. Sabre was bombed but still managed to bring back three loads of British troops from the beaches. After repairs, she went on convoy duty in the North Atlantic. The Sabre was a ship that really shouldn't have been fighting. This S-class destroyer was launcher in September 1918 and had already been demilitarized to use as a target ship before war broke out. Out of desperation, she was returned to active service and re-equipped as a convoy escort. She indeed made 10 round-trip runs evacuating troops from Dunkirk in spite of bombing, one of the highest evacuation rates of any individual ship. She continued on through more evacuations across Europe in 1940, convoy escorts, U-boat hunting, and a famous rescue of every passenger and crew member (except one poor bastard who got hit in the head by a pulley while climbing a rope ladder) of the SS Volendam, a Holland America Line passenger ship carrying 320 children of the Children's Overseas Reception Board that had been torpedoed. It would not be until 1946, nearly 30 years after her launch, that the Sabre would be scrapped. quote:Even so, life aboard the Sabre did a lot to thaw him out. One night ashore in Kingston, Jamaica, he became the hero of the ship. He was in charge of the liberty party. The men were due back aboard at midnight but there was a bar brawl with the crew from an American cruiser, so that Lieutenant Bond found himself in the middle of a pitched battle. Bottles and knives were being used. His men were getting much the worst of things. Bond was very calm, telling his men to get outside. Most of them did but a drunk heavyweight U.S. petty officer kept up the battle. This one is actually long enough to need a chapter break!
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 07:26 |
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chitoryu12 posted:So that's how Pearson portrays Honey Ryder. A stuck-up new money aristocrat looking for fame. And knowing enough about shells to support herself and save money. That's just depressing. I'm going to pretend Bond was lying and she's actually a marine biologist doing cool stuff on her yacht.
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 10:03 |
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Runcible Cat posted:And knowing enough about shells to support herself and save money. That's just depressing. This book feels like it's wallowing in the same "your heroes are actually shitbags, let me tell you how awful they are" pit with a lot of other 1970s books and films.
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 20:04 |
Midjack posted:This book feels like it's wallowing in the same "your heroes are actually shitbags, let me tell you how awful they are" pit with a lot of other 1970s books and films. God only knows what he did to Biggles!
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 20:40 |
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chitoryu12 posted:God only knows what he did to Biggles! I actually have a copy right here; I'll have a skim through and let you know. (I like fictional biographies, but AFAICR I got bored with this one very quickly and stuck it in the "see if this is worth anything before giving it to the charity shop" pile, where it sat for years before last week's lockdown clearout.)
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 22:37 |
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chitoryu12 posted:So that's how Pearson portrays Honey Ryder. A stuck-up new money aristocrat looking for fame. No sir, I don't like it! Should have landed on the next island over, then he might have found a passing witcher to help him out.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 01:27 |
quote:During this time afloat, Bond lived a life of almost total chastity. This too was a relief. After his past involvements he enjoyed a pause from the demands of sex. There had been moments of brief indulgence in the Bahamas or New York, generally with married women who regarded the servicing of good-looking Allied personnel as essential patriotic war-work. Perhaps it was, but it left Bond depressed. He enjoyed sex, but not impersonally. He liked his women to be something more than animated text-books of the sexual act. He was also slightly prudish or, as he would have said, romantic. He liked to think that there was at least the possibility of love before he clambered into bed with anyone. Despite the name, this is not the Muriel Wright that Fleming fell in love with, who was traumatically killed during the Blitz. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an intentional reference. quote:Late that July, H.M.S. Sabre steamed home from the West Indies for a refit at Birkenhead. Bond had leave and traveled down to London with the 2i/c. Some three weeks later he was happily engaged. It was all terribly conventional – visits to Kent to introduce Aunt Charmian (she raised her eyebrows but said nothing), visits to Sussex relatives of Muriel, visits to London. Bond seemed happy. Muriel adored him, and for the first time in his life he was conscious of doing what Brother Henry always called ‘the proper thing’. Bond rents a room for them at the Dorchester Hotel. Nervous at the prospect of that night for the first time in his life, he heads down to the hotel bar for a drink first. quote:Bond was ordering his favourite martini – the bar, to his surprise, had Gordon's gin – ‘And do make sure,’ he told the barman, ‘that it is …’ Bond and Fleming talk until well past midnight, until Muriel falls asleep waiting for him. Bond does indeed take Fleming's offer, being sent to Hertfordshire for a saboteur course and then to Camp X in Canada for weapons and judo. He's the top trainee, even giving the judo instructor a concussion. quote:The Canadian establishment was at a place called Oshawa, on Lake Ontario. It had been founded, late in 1940, by Sir William Stephenson as training ground for his American agents, and at the time it offered the most rigorous and thorough training of its sort anywhere outside the Soviet Union. Bond learnt a lot. Camp X, officially Special Training School No. 103, was a real training camp for Commonwealth agents and a document forging facility. The famed Fairbairn and Sykes did close combat training and the OSS ran an assassin training program through it. It was open for only a few years until 1944 (Pearson gets the date wrong, as it actually opened on December 6, 1941), but the Hydra telecommunications relay station remained in operation for receiving and sending Allied radio and telegraph signals until 1969. The buildings have since been demolished. Ian Fleming has been rumored to be one of the visitors to this site, but it has never been proven. quote:Had Bond known this, he would have been more wary when Fleming took him out to lunch soon after his return. Bond had enjoyed himself in Canada. Muriel had seemed a little sullen when he left – despite the débâcle at the Dorchester they were still officially engaged – but out in Oshawa he had found it hard to worry too much on her behalf. Now he was looking forward to some active service and Muriel agreed that it would be wrong to rush ahead with marriage. Fleming seemed relieved when James Bond told him this, for as he explained to Bond, there was ‘an element of risk’ in the small assignment the Service had in mind for him. Bertorelli's is one of the restaurant chains in this book that has actually closed. The Bertorelli family arrived in London in 1913 and founded the first serious, influential Italian restaurants in the UK. While they grew all the way through the 1970s, the family sold most of their restaurants to a restaurant group in 1984. Before 2009, the entire chain had closed. Spezzatino is simply an Italian beef stew, though this is Britain under wartime rationing... quote:‘The man's Japanese. He's called Shingushi and he's in New York. Officially he's with their consulate-general – he has an office on the thirty-sixth floor of a sky-scraper on Lexington Avenue. But unofficially the man's a cypher expert – probably the greatest in the world. We've been studying him, and now we know for certain what he's up to. For several months we've known that the Germans have been getting detailed information of Allied shipping movements from New York, and it appears that this has been relayed from their friends in Tokyo. The question was how the Japanese were getting it. Now Stephenson's found out. The Japanese have been intercepting all our messages, to and from the Atlantic convoys, and little Shingushi has been busily decoding them.’ As I mentioned with the mistake Pearson makes in Camp X's opening, this causes a timeline oops. Camp X actually opened only one day before the Pearl Harbor attack, so America would doubtlessly be involved in the war by the time Bond finished any training there. quote:Bond could not refuse. This was the sort of operation he had trained for. He knew its logic, but wished it didn't have to seem quite so like cold-blooded murder. Fleming was smiling. ‘I envy you New York,’ he said. ‘Take my advice and buy some shirts from Abercrombie's while you're there.’ The Volney at 23 East 74th Street still exists but is now a residential building rather than a hotel. This is another mistake by Pearson: while Dorothy Parker did live there, it was from 1952 until her death in 1967. Perhaps the Bond of this timeline succeeds at his missions despite his glaring incompetence because he can see the future? quote:As head of British Intelligence in North America, Sir William was a busy man, but he arranged to meet James Bond that night at 10.15 at Murphy's bar on 45th Street. Bond dined alone – off T-bone steak and ice-cream in the drug-store round the corner – and walked to his appointment. Stephenson gives Bond photographs of the target, detailed plans of the consulate, and biographies on the people around him. While Bond is dealing with the problems of describing how he likes his eggs cooked for breakfast, a monogrammed Saks box is delivered to his hotel room. quote:‘Sure sah, you're meanin' sunny side up with double crispy rashers.’ Mannlicher rifles do not come standard as folders, but they've had biathlon stocks made for their use in the high-speed shooting sport. This is a change from Casino Royale, where Bond describes himself as using a Remington. quote:Bond had slept well, but the excitement of his arrival in New York had left him. His eyes smarted in the October wind, and for the first time he felt the effect of time lag from his journey. Because there's only one cab here this morning and both he and the other customer there are going to Lansdown Boulevard, they have to share. This other passenger just happens to be a middle-aged Japanese woman. quote:There are moments in an agent's life when he must accept whatever chance comes up. This was one of them. The journey took some fifteen minutes, and finally the cab drew up at the entrance to a private drive. There was a large, green painted steel door – each side of it a high brick wall. Beside the door a notice warned trespassers that there were ‘electric methods to repel them’. Bond sneaks through the shrubbery until he has a view of the two-story concrete house. The doors are grilled and the windows are shuttered, making an impenetrable fortress as far as one man in a Burberry coat with a sniper rifle is concerned. Nonetheless, he assembles the gun and waits. quote:The house puzzled him. There was no light within, no sign of life. Bond lay very still; the rifle was becoming part of him. Then the rain started, a cold drizzle from the Sound: the hours ticked by. Twice he thought he heard a car, but still saw nothing. It was early afternoon before anything occurred. The rain had stopped by now, and suddenly the grille was pulled back from the big French windows facing the lawn. A white-coated servant stepped out, shouted something and a dog bounded out, barking and bounding off across the lawn. The servant called again and a small girl appeared, an ugly little girl of seven or eight in a bright pink dress. Bond watched her through the telescopic sight. She was laughing at the dog, and Bond could see that she had lost her two front teeth. She threw a ball and the dog went bounding after it. It was a mud-brown mongrel bitch with a tail like a feather duster. His moment lost, Bond can't fire. At dusk he climbs the wall out of the community and walks back to the train station, making it back to the Volney by midnight. The next morning, a telegram from Fleming reminds him that he's already late on his murder. quote:Bond skipped breakfast – always a bad sign – and spent most of the morning sitting on a bench in Central Park. Here he went over the whole affair. He thought about Shingushi and the child – why did the wretched little man have to involve himself in such a dirty business? He also forced himself to think of sailors drowning in the North Atlantic, sailors perhaps from his own destroyer. Quite calmly then Bond made his decision. He no longer had the luxury of following straightforward orders aboard ship. He was a solitary man doing his best to fight a war. There was no point in being squeamish. It was a bright autumn day; the Park was crowded, but Bond had never felt so much alone. He strolled out and down Fifth Avenue. New York no longer seemed exciting, but he ate a good lunch at Flanagan's Restaurant in Lower Manhattan and then rang Stephenson. There were still certain things he had to know. This is one weird episode of Mad Men. quote:It was a very simple operation. The main requisite was patience and Bond remembered how, as a Who the hell is this guy? Is he an American agent? Is he an alcoholic hitman? Casino Royale describes him as a "colleague from the agency in New York" but this guy doesn't seem very agent-like. quote:It was surprising how soon Bond picked up the routine in the Consulate – also the faces in that office opposite. The days pass. Bond gets another, much less polite telegram from London on Wednesday. Finally, at nearly 9:00 PM on Friday, Dolan spots Shingushi coming into the office. quote:‘Now,’ barked Bond. With Bond having a reputation as an assassin, he's now finding himself offered those tasks. Whenever he gets a chance, he picks something that doesn't involve murder, like destroying a refinery in Brest or arranging for the release of jailed Allied agents in Vichy. Now promoted to Lieutenant-Commander, in early 1943 he finds himself on another similar assignment. quote:For some time Naval Intelligence had been having trouble with its Baltic circuit. This whole area was of great importance since it also covered the British convoys to Murmansk. Russia was now our ally – Germany was battling towards Leningrad and trying hard to close the Northern ports. But we were getting faulty information; agents were being caught, four in the last two months. With so much at stake, such wastage could not continue. Unfortunately, Svenson is an agent that Bond was familiar with and liked. Fleming has some sympathy but puts Bond on the mission regardless. Now he has to kill not just an abstract traitor, but an old friend. quote:Perhaps it was his mood, but Bond found Stockholm an uneasy city. Behind its palaces and quays and calm good sense lurked a hygienic pallor that depressed him. It was a city of cold eyes and painless dentists. Any excess was possible in such a place. There's no sign of Svenson as Bond watches the house, and he thinks the girl must have alerted him. With his plan to avoid any personal contact foiled, Bond just calls the house and tells the girl that Svenson's old pal James Bond has come to visit. He later gets to call Svenson from his hotel that night. quote:At the first sound of that booming voice with its fragmented English, Bond was reminded of the man that he had known. Happy-go-lucky Svenson, great drinker, womanizer, and Norwegian patriot. He always had enormous warmth of personality – even now Bond felt it in the voice. I feel like this change to the story, making Bond's kill in Stockholm an old friend, is getting too dark. It's like this book is trying to psychologically brutalize Bond. quote:When he reached the little square, the house was in darkness. This time Bond was careful to stay out of sight – Svenson or the girl might well be watching for him. Instead he tried the street behind the house. There was an alleyway, a wall, a window he could force, and he was in. He found a staircase and then, gun in hand, set out to explore. The house was silent. Bond's first thought was that Svenson and the girl had fled. Then he heard voices from above. Tiptoeing he reached a landing. There was a bedroom door with light beneath it. Hey, what's a good way to make this even darker? quote:Bond waited, holding his fire. He could see nothing in the room, but somebody was moaning. Bond paused in readiness to shoot again. That's how. quote:Svenson was trembling. He was moaning now. Bond is commended for his work, while the murders are blamed on a crime of passion by the local police. quote:For Bond, the irony of the case was that it confirmed him in the last role that he wanted – that of a ‘hard’ man, a remorseless killer. But luckily his talents were employed on ‘cleaner’ assignments for a while. Towards the end of 1943 he was back in Switzerland, organizing the escape of two important Jewish scientists from Germany across Lake Constance. He had a period behind the lines in Italy, helping the partisans attack the big Ansaldo naval works at Spezia. Later he was attached to the naval task force liaising with the French resistance in the Channel ports before D-Day. But Bond's big assignment came at the end of 1944, during the crucial German offensive into the Ardennes. This was the German Werwolf program. While propaganda claimed that the Nazis would fight to the last man and conduct guerrilla operations for years after the official end of the war, armed to the teeth with the best saboteur gear on the market, the dire supply situation Germany was facing as they approached April 1945 meant the units were never issued even close to as much as they needed. Otto Skorzeny found out when he was assigned to train units that the number of cells had been greatly exaggerated and it was effectively a useless plot that would do nothing to stop their defeat. While some Werwolf units did actually try fighting, most of them surrendered or just aided in helping Nazi officers flee the country. This makes Pearson's portrayal of the program somewhat problematic, as it directly flies in the face of actual evidence regarding the sorry state Germany was in by this point. It paints the Nazis as incredibly tenacious, well-equipped, and only narrowly stopped by the skin of our teeth, rather than a failing fascist state that overstretched itself and was hamstrung by infighting and inherent flaws in fascist white supremacist thinking. quote:During the autumn the committee's chief concern was the Ardennes. Nobody doubted that the Fuehrer's massive armoured offensive to win back lost German conquests here would ultimately fail. But our agents were reporting that one of the secret aims of the offensive was to gain time to plant a self-contained resistance set-up here for the future. It would have arms, underground headquarters and carefully disguised command points for its troops. It would include the so-called ‘Werewolf Movement’ but in addition have a fully equipped and trained ‘secret army’ to harass the advancing Allies from the rear. According to well-confirmed reports, the S.S. general from Mehringplatz was personally in charge, and Himmler had paid a two-day visit to the area. Himmler's visit is planned to be a showpiece to encourage further resistance. Bond needs to hunt through the Ardennes to find the center of this bullshit secret army Pearson somehow thinks is a great idea and find General Semler. quote:Just two days later Bond heard the rattle of German Spandaus firing across the narrow no-man's land to the west of a town called Haslach. He could see nothing, but the Armoured Corps captain with him pointed towards the line of woods where the firing came from. We already covered in Dr. No how "Spandau" is a pretty bad way to describe German WW2 machine guns. It seems Pearson didn't pick up on that. quote:‘They've got their armour concentrated there. A division of Panzer Grenadiers, equipped with Mark Two Tigers – what you might call the cream of the cream. We know they're grouped back through the forest. We'll have to see if they attack again.’ Ha! The Tiger II, nicknamed "King Tiger", is a classic example of why Germany lost the war. Intended to be the successor to the Tiger heavy tank with sloping armor for better protection, only 492 were ever built. The tanks were insanely expensive (costing over $4.2 million in modern currency per tank), underpowered, and drank fuel the Germans didn't have like a whale opening its mouth underwater. It wouldn't have changed the direction of the war even if they could have built enough of them. quote:For the past two weeks the armies had been locked in battle. On one side was the massive power of the Allies – on the other the desperation of a Wehrmacht launching its final bid to save the Fatherland. The German heavy tanks had broken the Allied advance, but now they in their turn were halted. This forest land was witnessing the power of steel and high explosives as the Allied armies picked up their momentum towards Berlin. Bond conceals himself in the brush and finds himself near 8 concealed Tiger IIs, mechanics hard at work (presumably figuring out how to get these drat things actually running). As he observes the German troops walking through the village and tanks occasionally driving off, he takes note of a loudly marked hospital building in the village. A massive flow of trucks is going to and from the building, far more than any hospital should need. quote:There was a narrow bend in the road a mile or so back, and as the German army driver changed down to take it, he saw a figure in British army uniform leap towards the cab. That was all he saw of Bond as the door swung open and a jarring blow caught him below the ear. The lorry stopped. There was a brief scuffle in the cab, and three minutes later when it drove on there was a different driver in the German's uniform – James Bond. Propped up unconscious by his side was the German, now in British uniform. As fellow goon HEY GUNS informed me, a Hamburg accent has a working class connotation. Bond is putting on a "dumb soldier" routine. quote:But instead of backing it, he turned it and drove full pelt towards the village. Nobody stopped him and he abandoned it on the corner where he had ambushed the driver. Soon afterwards the bombardment started and Bond hid in the woods. He was hungry now and very tired. When darkness came he slept a while and after midnight started the hazardous trek back to the Allied lines. You literally just used the two most glaring examples of the Nazis being extremely inefficient in this chapter! quote:Bond nodded, but said nothing.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 20:42 |
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chitoryu12 posted:It's like this book is trying to psychologically brutalize Bond. I feel like it's been going that direction since his first kill. chitoryu12 posted:This makes Pearson's portrayal of the program somewhat problematic, as it directly flies in the face of actual evidence regarding the sorry state Germany was in by this point. It paints the Nazis as incredibly tenacious, well-equipped, and only narrowly stopped by the skin of our teeth, rather than a failing fascist state that overstretched itself and was hamstrung by infighting and inherent flaws in fascist white supremacist thinking. To be fair, the same could be said for an enormous amount of material published between 1945 and now. Can't sell the ignominious truth to gullible wehraboos. chitoryu12 posted:We already covered in Dr. No how "Spandau" is a pretty bad way to describe German WW2 machine guns. It seems Pearson didn't pick up on that. If you stand in front of a mirror at midnight under a full moon and say "Lindybeige" three times...
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 01:29 |
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HEY GUNS is a good dude. But yeah, this is going hard on Bond as if his adventures in Fleming's tales weren't enough trauma for one man to survive. Hopefully it doesn't get much worse or it'll cross the line to laughable.
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 05:15 |
Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:HEY GUNS is a good dude. But yeah, this is going hard on Bond as if his adventures in Fleming's tales weren't enough trauma for one man to survive. Hopefully it doesn't get much worse or it'll cross the line to laughable. What happens to Bond may get worse, but let's just say that Pearson isn't done with just Honey Ryder in destroying Bond girls....
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 05:58 |
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Oh no.
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 07:41 |
I just had a thought. Ian Fleming was very dissatisfied with the first draft of The Man with the Golden Gun, to the point where he wanted to rewrite as much of it as possible and publish it a year late. Sergio Leone's famous A Fistful of Dollars would release in Italy in September 1964, a month after his death, and across other European countries in 1965. What could the book have been like if Fleming not only had more time to work it out, but had seen one of the most influential spaghetti westerns while fixing a book about a gunslinger with a revolver right out of the old west?
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 07:54 |
Chapter 7: Scandalquote:I had an idea that there had been some scandal hanging over Bond at the end of the war. Urquhart had mentioned what he termed ‘a spot of trouble’, and from chance remarks of Bond's I gathered that he still felt bitter over how he had been treated. When I asked him, his first reaction was to shake his head. Pearson turns to Stephenson for more information. He learns that Bond had a huge fight with M shortly after he became head of the Service, some sort of conflict regarding how both parties handled a situation. Stephenson, however, believes it's wrong for him to gossip and tells him to get the info from Bond himself. Two days later, he gets his answer when Bond suddenly calls him over while sitting at the bar alone after dinner. quote:According to what he said, he had been uncertain what to do in peacetime England. Officially, he was still on the establishment of the Volunteer Reserve of the Royal Navy. Finding himself with a fortnight's leave, he went back to spend it with Aunt Charmian. In February 1946, Bond submitted his application to transfer to a peacetime civil servant position. A few days later he was summoned to meet the new head of the Secret Service, Admiral Sir Miles Messervy. Now secretary to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, M had a reputation as a brilliant officer who was often arrogant and inflexible. quote:Bond's first impression was unfavourable. Perhaps it was the pipe. (Bond had never cared for pipe-smokers since Eton – his housemaster had been a devoted Bruno Flake Cut man.) And there was something less than warmth in M.'s manner – no word of welcome, not even an invitation to sit down. The steely eyes surveyed him from the weatherbeaten face. Bond noted the closely cut grey hair, the tightly knotted tie, the neat arrangement of the ruler, blotter, shell-case ashtray on the desk, and, once again, remembered school. The last time he had felt such apprehension was when summoned by the head during the trouble over Brinton's sister. M. had the same headmaster's trick of staring at his victim hard before speaking. M proposes that Bond be recruited into his service on probation, sent on loan to the OSS in Washington. He would officially be a staffer of the British Embassy, a position that Bond notes is often a way of getting rid of unwanted personnel. quote:Bond flew into New York in the spring. It was the first time he had been there since he killed the Japanese in the Rockefeller Center; the memory haunted him. He was twenty-five but felt immensely old. For ten years he had been at war, plotting and struggling and murdering his fellow men. Now it was over and he realized his soul was sick of it. The time had come to catch up on a lot of living. I still say that oyster stew wasn't that great when I went! The Staten Island Ferry is a meme in the New York City LAN thread, especially since it's now free instead of costing 5 cents ($0.71 cents today). A 30 minute ride will take you to the forgotten borough, a mostly suburban island that constantly tries to secede from the rest of the city. During my last visit I actually took a train all the way to the opposite end of the island to eat at Killmeyer's, a Bavarian restaurant that's been virtually unchanged since Bond's time and has a Bavarian bar built in 1849. Also, that $0.25 price of a Zippo is only $3.55 today. If you're being sold a Zippo for that much today, it's a fake that'll probably break as soon as you flick it. quote:It was the perversity of a puritan, loving and rejecting the richest city in the world – an attitude which Bond has always had towards America. During these few days in New York he stayed at the Stanhope, a five-star hotel opposite the Metropolitan Museum. Sir William Stephenson had recommended it. Its dignity and calm appealed to Bond, despite its cost. Similarly, he made great show of eating simply in the most expensive restaurants. As a friend of Sir William's and something of a celebrity, he was entertained extravagantly; but at Voisins he insisted on dining off vodka martinis, eggs benedict and strawberries. At Sardis he had scrambled eggs. When he flew on to Washington, Bond had the feeling that he had put New York firmly in its place. The Stanhope Hotel is yet another that's turned into apartments in 2005, at 995 Fifth Avenue. It's been seen in film and TV from Woody Allen's Manhattan to multiple episodes of Sex and the City. quote:In Washington the Embassy took care of him. This was a mistake. The last thing James Bond needed was to dine with the Ambassador or swap gossip on the city's cocktail circuit. Washington was not his city. After New York he found it formal and pretentious with too much marble and too many monuments. It brought out the worst in him. The Head of Chancery offered to take him round the White House. Bond replied that he'd rather see the Washington gasworks – end of conversation. So...not the James Bond we've seen. quote:Somewhat hypocritically, Bond insists that once again he was distinctly shocked by the eagerness of these rich American wives to go to bed with him. ‘They had no self-respect. It was all too easy. There was absolutely no romance.’ But this time, absence of romance did not stop him making the most of things. This isn't Bond, this is Fleming. Ian Fleming was notorious for his womanizing, and was even worse until Muriel Wright's death finally shocked him into realizing his callousness. I think Pearson is (subconsciously or otherwise) letting his time with Fleming and writing his biography influence his version of Bond. quote:Bond had work to do. It suffered. He claims that not until much later did he discover what a crucial period this was for American Intelligence. So you're saying he's a tremendous, unlikable rear end in a top hat. quote:There were several warning incidents. The first involved a young French diplomat. A former Vichyite, he had somehow got himself appointed to the French Embassy. At a small dinner given by a leading Georgetown hostess, he taunted Bond about the British in North Africa. There was a scene. Bond replied in the sort of French that is rarely heard in Washington, and when he hit the man the Frenchman fell, smashed an almost genuine Chippendale escritoire and needed his jaw pinning in three places. This is terrible. This isn't Bond. quote:None of this mattered over-much. People who knew James Bond liked him and made allowances. The final incident was different. The following weekend, Bond accepted an invitation to see the Congressman for a golfing competition. His wife wasn't there, fortunately....until she promptly landed a Piper Cub at the private airstrip behind the house. She was awful to the guests and Bond could hear the signs of a fight upstairs between the couple. The Congressman abruptly left, claiming he had sudden urgent business in Washington, and the wife insisted on flying Bond back in her little plane after sleeping with him. Bond was very insistent on not engaging in such a dangerous affair, and she finally (and angrily) acquiesced. quote:She was a skilful pilot, and it was only later that Bond was to learn just how drunk she was. At the time he thought she was doing her best to scare him. She certainly succeeded, but he was determined not to show it. He admits it was the most hair-raising flight he has ever lived through. They were following the main line of the Turnpike but losing height. Bond asked her twice about their altitude: she didn't answer. He asked again. This time she swore at him, shoved the stick forward and shouted, ‘O.K., big boy – fly the bloody thing.’ There's obviously no way you can hush up a member of congress's wife dying in a plane crash with another man. Bond was unable to tell the truth to her husband, who was incredibly bitter about it. Bond made the mistake of telling the man at the embassy who was in charge of dealing with the press; a devout pupil of Winchester College with an inherent dislike of the Eton-educated Bond, he assumed Bond must have been at fault and trying to shift the blame. quote:Coldly, the diplomat suggested Bond had better catch the evening plane to London. Once he had gone the Embassy would do its best to smooth things over. These things did happen, but in future Commander Bond might be advised to steer very clear of politicians' wives. At least that punch would have been justified. quote:Bond's disgrace was serious. He did his best to salvage what was left of his reputation by seeing M. at once: at least he managed to make sure that M. heard his version of events before anybody else's. But if James Bond was expecting a sympathetic ear from that old sailor he mistook his man. When M finally sent for Bond, he had coldly determined that he was fired. No board of inquiry necessary. As the summer of 1946 began, James Bond was unemployed. quote:Bond's spirits rose. By Marble Arch he noticed new leaves on the plane trees by the park. People were strolling past him, leading their ordinary, uncomplicated lives and suddenly Bond realized that he was one of them. He was no longer tied to a life behind a gun, no longer threatened with the fear of sudden death. M. had set him free and he could start a normal life at last. The idea was so exciting that he crossed Park Lane, entered the Dorchester and ordered a half-bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate. Over the next two weeks, Bond gets no offers he's actually interested in taking. A suggestion from a wartime colleague that he become a Harrods store detective is the last straw for his ego. quote:It was the last sad straw. That evening Bond decided to make money in the one sure way he knew – by gambling. Bond still enjoyed his wartime membership of Blades, although he hadn't been for several months. He put on his dark blue suit, arrived at nine, stayed clear of the bar (to avoid the embarrassment of having to buy drinks that he could not afford) and took his place in the great eighteenth-century gaming room. He had always played to win, but never before because he needed money. He was disturbed to find how much this spoiled the game: it even dictated his choice of an opponent. He found himself picking someone he would normally have avoided – Bunny Kendrick, a cantankerous old millionaire who was a bad but frequent loser. Bond played high. For more than half an hour he lost. Kendrick was delighted in the way that rich men are at such unnecessary strokes of fortune. When Bond was £200 down, he panicked – and it was then that he was tempted. He suddenly remembered an all but foolproof card-sharp's trick Esposito had taught him, a way of dealing himself a perfect run of cards. It would have been so very easy, and no one would have noticed – certainly not Kendrick. Bond was sweating, and this chance of cheating was so frightening that he almost left the table there and then. Instead he forced himself to finish playing and ended owing £80. It was the most wretched evening Bond has ever spent at a card table in his life. Next morning he decided he would ring the man at Harrods. But on that very day his fortune changed. The Legion of Honour, established by Napoleon in 1802, is the highest French order of merit for military or civil service. He's clearly been busy during the war. quote:‘Consultant work,’ he said when Bond asked what he did, ‘at, shall we say, a somewhat elevated level. I work with various big French commercial houses, chiefly with connections throughout Africa.’ Maddox has turned Bond into what he is now. He's too far gone to change. So he offers Bond a chance to work for him. quote:Bond would have hated to admit how good it felt to be aboard the morning plane to Paris. He had his battered pig-skin case that had been with him on so many old assignments. Even to pack it had brought back a touch of the excitement of the old days: pyjamas, light blue shirts, and black hide washing-case. He wore the dark blue lightweight suit, the hand-stitched moccasins, the heavy knitted-silk black tie that virtually comprised his private uniform. He stretched his legs and watched the Staines reservoirs recede below the Viscount's wing-tip. Early though it was, he broke his usual rule and ordered a long cool vodka tonic. Maddox was paying for the trip. He could afford it. Quenelles are a dish of creamed fish or meat (optionally with breadcrumbs) with an egg binder shaped and poached. Boeuf gros sel is boiled salted beef, a very English French dish. quote:Maddox outlined the work he had in mind for him. Since the Liberation he had been working for a syndicate of big French bankers as ‘security director’, A title which appeared to cover top-level planning to protect the group's massive interests throughout the world. Bond spent the next 4 years in this job, where his non-Frenchness made him a perfect neutral party for handling disputes. quote:There were great journeys which he loved, weeks spent travelling rough across Morocco or over the Sahara. He got to know Dakar, that scorching, fascinating melting-pot of France and black Africa. In Conakry, the capital of Guinea, he found a night club where the black hostesses wore nothing but full-length ball-dress skirts and long blonde wigs. In Timbuktu he bought himself a ‘wife’ for fifteen sheep. He caught the spell of Africa – its size, its paradox, its mystery. He travelled up the Niger river, and got to know the tribes of Senegal. Here it seemed that he could live a cleaner life than he had known in Europe. ...how did Pearson manage to be more racist than Fleming in the 1970s? quote:When he did come back, it was to Paris, to confer with Maddox in his elegant small office by the river. He never seemed to visit London now. He had given up the flat in Lincoln Street and finally arranged to have the Bentley repainted and restored and brought over from Pett Bottom. Resplendent in its polished brass and ‘elephant's breath grey’ paint, it now lived in a lock-up garage off the Rue Jacob. Bond lived nearby. He had a tiny roof-top flat behind the Place Furstenburg, ‘more like the cabin of a ship than a gentleman's apartment’ as Maddox used to say. So far the rich wife Maddox had promised had not materialized. All of these would be a lot more interesting if they were actual books, not sentences. quote:He was approaching thirty and knew quite well that he had settled nothing. He was still rootless and, despite a succession of fairly clinical affaires, still without lasting emotional attachment. He had begun to doubt if he were capable of one. Despite Bond's psychological issues with women, he lusted after the ideal of a stable family life. He became "Uncle James" to the Maddoxes, always coming around to play with the children and give them presents. Following a typical Madonna/Whore Complex, married women were the only ones he could respect. Which is why he went after Maddox's wife, Regine. quote:Soon after his arrival he had attempted to seduce her. She had been perfectly good-natured about it, even taking care to protect his precious vanity. As demonstrated in this dramatization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UJpkGiCqYU quote:Everything went wrong that summer. Bond had been going through one of his periodic hates against the French – their rudeness, narrowness and general meanness. There was a running battle with his concierge. Several assignments had been unsatisfactory, and suddenly Paris seemed impossible – crowded and hot and full of tourists. Maddox had been increasingly irascible. Bond began counting the days off to his holiday. Maddox was very much concerned with trouble in Algiers. The local nationalists were already starting their campaign against the French: the French were getting worried. There had been small-scale riots, bomb attacks and killings. Maddox, and many like him, saw them as portents of disaster round the corner. Much of the trouble was that already it was clear that the local gendarmes in Algiers could not contain the unrest. There had been raids on banks owned by the Syndicate. Several employees had been killed, but there had been no arrests. Then, in July, the manager of the main branch in Oran was gunned down and several million francs were stolen. This is obviously tremendously illegal, but Maddox explodes on Bond until he reluctantly takes the job. quote:In fact he liked Oran. At this time it was relatively peaceful, and the city with its port, its great bay and the mixture of the French and Arab worlds was still part of the old North Africa. It had great atmosphere and charm. French legionaries from the Sahara lounged in the outdoor cafés of the Rue Maréchal Lyautey, sipping their Pernods and smoking their issue Bastos cigarettes. The Arab city of the kasbah seemed to Bond part of the oriental world that he remembered from his boyhood. The only drawback to the mission was Descaux. Bond considers immediately quitting the job, but he realizes Descaux will go ahead without him and Bond could find himself implicated regardless. And he realizes that Maddox knew exactly what he was doing when he sent him here. The head of the Sûreté in the city, Fauchet, is a Corsican that Bond had met while he was with the French Resistance. He tells him everything about the plan, and Fauchet informs Bond that Descaux is actually a Vichy and Gestapo agent named Grautz. El Bezir is a moderate nationalist with no connection to the bank robberies. Maddox is putting Bond on a political hit. quote:Bond felt that he was beginning to understand. This is a great story and I wish Pearson had just written a book about it instead. quote:Bond stiffened. Up to that moment he had never guessed the truth. Now that he did, everything was clear. Maddox had simply used the El Bezir affair to get even with him. The fact that the Algerian was innocent didn't matter. Maddox wanted Bond destroyed – and didn't mind how. As Fauchet takes care of everything locally, Bond calmly cables his resignation to Maddox, then has his flat closed and his Bentley sent to Aunt Charmian's house. He moves to Kenya for a few months, working for an American wildlife filmmaker, then to Mombasa and then Seychelles as he has money and girl troubles. For once, hitting rock bottom has been his best situation. quote:It is hard to know how long he might have stayed here. Places like the Seychelles, dead-end paradises, seem to be full of potential James Bonds. For a while he helped a man prospect for treasure, then he worked for an American millionaire who was searching for rare fish. Fleming retold this episode, changing the time and names and certain key facts, in a short story which he called The Hildebrand Rarity. That story is a lot less fun when Bond is just a cold womanizer. quote:Then, once again, chance intervened; Ian Fleming arrived in the Seychelles. He was travelling for the Sunday Times and writing about the buried treasure of an eighteenth-century pirate. He said he was appalled to see how Bond was living. No one should waste their talents and their life like this. They talked a lot together and Fleming said that during the time that Bond had been away, there had been changes in the Secret Service. Why not come back?
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 05:44 |
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Oh no, Stephanie Meyer is bleeding into this thread now. How far into this book are we?
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 06:40 |
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If the author is still filling out the 1970s bingo card Bond will spend a little while strung out on heroin, amphetamines, or psychedelics.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 07:02 |
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# ? Apr 23, 2024 11:01 |
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chitoryu12 posted:God only knows what he did to Biggles! If anyone's curious I got to chapter 5 of that before tapping out from boredom. Not much of interest, though I was vaguely amused to see Pearson has a Type: Half-Scot... Dad married a much younger woman with Issues... Though she ran off with a bounder rather than fell off an Alp. OK, I got a snigger out of this: And Mum is gloriously stone cold when she shows up again: Other than that it seems to be pretty straightforwardly out of the books - no-one's secretly gay or drug-addicted or anything even faintly interesting; just punching Huns and Rule Britannia doncha know old chap.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 16:21 |