I didn’t get to know Bond that way though. My folks were
pretty strict about what we watched and the sexual nature of Bond’s exploits
kept him off our TV. It wasn’t until I was 16 and able to drive myself to the
movie theater that I saw my first Bond film. But long before then, I was able
to enjoy his adventures in a different format.
For whatever reason, my folks never policed my books. If I
could find it in the library, they were okay with my reading it. So while I was
unable to satisfy my curiosity about the Bond films, the world of Ian Fleming’s
novels were completely open to me and that’s how I met the superspy. And since
I was a compulsive nerd about continuity even then, I had to start with the
first book, Casino Royale. It blew me
away.
Even today, having lost count how many times I’ve read it,
I’m still amazed and impressed by the structure of the novel. It starts with
Bond already on mission, then flashes back to the mission briefing, then
flashes back again to what set that up.
It doesn’t have a conventional ending either. The climax of the mission happens
maybe two-thirds into the story and then has several chapters dealing with the
aftermath. That ending shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does.
A couple of other things about Fleming’s style are also
immediately noticeable. First, the man knows how to write chapters. This is an
old trick by modern standards, but he was one of the first writers I
encountered who wrote short, fast-paced chapters that always ended on some kind
of cliffhanger – physical or emotional – to pull me into the next one. Casino
Royale is a difficult book to put down.
The other thing people always talk about with Fleming’s
writing is his attention to detail. The reason that the movie Bond seems to
know everything about every subject from booze to butterflies is because
Fleming writes with such confidence about those kinds of things, especially
food and drink.
As Bond’s hanging out in the hotel before his mission’s
really got started, Fleming doesn’t just have him eat breakfast, but explains
that he consumes “half a pint of iced orange juice, three scrambled eggs and
bacon, and a double portion of coffee without sugar.” There’s more food porn
later in the book when “Vesper busied herself with a delicious homemade liver
paté and helped them both to the crisp French bread and the thick square of
yellow butter set in chips of ice.” Turns out that she and Bond are both
foodies with strong opinions about what they eat.
As well known as Bond is for alcohol, it’s mostly just a
part of his food consumption in the novel. Fleming doesn’t give it a lot of
extra attention, except of course that Bond’s invented his own Martini that he
later suggests naming the Vesper. Other than that though he’s as likely to
drink orange juice or an Americano as champagne or whiskey on the rocks.
“Shaken not stirred” isn’t a thing yet and I’m curious to see when it becomes
one. Part of the instructions for making a Vesper is to “shake it very well
until it’s ice-cold,” so maybe that’s it? I’ll keep an eye out.
Another place where Fleming employs a lot of detail is
describing Bond’s gambling, especially the game of baccarat. It’s an easy enough game, but Fleming has Bond
explain it very well and I remember teaching it to my brothers after reading Casino
Royale. Fleming’s not just indulging
himself though; the game is important in the novel. The Daniel Craig movie
follows the book’s plot pretty closely, so anyone who’s seen that has the gist
of it. I won’t go into the differences until I get to the movie later on, but
in the novel Le Chiffre is a Russian agent who’s made some failed investments
with his organization’s funds. He now has to make back the money before his
bosses learn what’s happened, and he plans to do that by gambling at the Casino
Royale in the south of France. The British government gets wind of the plan and
– with the cooperation of the French and US secret agencies – sends Bond to
make sure Le Chiffre loses. Knowing the rules of baccarat is crucial to following the drama.
Fleming’s descriptions extend to his characters, too. His
villains are almost always physically grotesque and that starts right here with
Le Chiffre. He’s overweight and has a lot of nasty habits, but Fleming adds to
the monstrousness with metaphors like comparing Le Chiffre to an octopus under
a rock as he watches Bond from across the gaming table.
By the way, it’s thanks to Le Chiffre that we get a couple
of tropes that are well-known in the movies: the henchmen and gadgets. Le
Chiffre employs a number of helpers, but his two closest are a short, greasy
guy Bond refers to as the Corsican, and a tall, thin man named Basil. They’re
both dangerous, but Basil is especially so and sort of a prototype for future
goons like Odd Job and Jaws. Since Le Chiffre is so gross and out of shape, he
needs a guy like Basil who can take Bond on physically.
If Basil is the first real henchman though, it’s the
Corsican who employs the first Bond gadget: a gun disguised as a cane. The
camouflage is necessary to sneak the weapon into the casino and threaten Bond
with it when it looks like he’s going to succeed. The other gadget is Le
Chiffre’s: a car with a trick trunk that drops a carpet of spiked chain mail to
blow out the tires of pursuing vehicles. Both gadgets feel very real and
possible the way Fleming describes them, not at all like the fantastical
craziness that Q Branch comes up with in the films. It’ll be interesting to see
if Fleming’s gadgets stay that way.
Bond’s only gadgets are his guns. Not the famous Walther PPK
at this point, Bond carries a “very flat .25 Beretta automatic with a skeleton
grip.” He also hides a .38 Colt Police Positive under his pillow and carries a
long-barreled Colt Army Special .45 in a concealed holster under the dashboard
of his car. The car itself isn’t a gadget either. It’s a battleship-gray,
convertible Bentley that Fleming describes as “Bond’s only hobby.” He’s had it
modified for speed, but that’s about Bond’s personal pleasure, not the business
of catching bad guys.
In writing about the vehicle, Fleming also reveals that Bond
lives in a flat in Chelsea, not too far from the London mechanic who services
the vehicle. Other than that, we don’t learn a lot about Bond’s personal life.
He seems to love cold showers and he tells Mathis, the French agent assigned to
his mission, that getting a Double O number simply means that you’ve had to
commit cold-blooded murder in the line of duty. There’s nothing about it being
a license to kill, so I wonder if that’s a movie thing or if it comes up in a
different book.
Speaking of whether things are Fleming or movie inventions,
Bond introduces himself to his CIA ally Felix Leiter as “Bond, James Bond,” so
that classic line is all Fleming.
Fleming does tell us a little about Bond’s looks. He’s a
good-looking guy and Fleming says that he has a black comma of hair on his
forehead that he can’t do anything with. Vesper remarks at one point that Bond
reminds her of singer Hoagy Carmichael, but she doesn’t actually say Bond looks
like him and Bond rejects the comparison
later on.
I usually try to imagine actors as the characters when I’m
reading a book, but Bond novels are hard for me to cast. The only character I
was able to nail down was Felix Leiter, who would be played perfectly by Matthew
McConaughey. None of the movie Bonds adequately capture the emotional mess of
Bond in this novel and I can’t think of a large actor who would be able to
disappear into the role of Le Chiffre. We’ve already had our perfect M. in
Bernard Lee, so I can’t imagine anyone else in that role.
Young Lois Maxwell was an accurate Moneypenny, not that
Fleming spends much time on her. She “would have been desirable but for eyes
which were cool and direct and quizzical.” In other words, she’s a knock out,
but has too much going on upstairs for Fleming to be attracted to her. I’m
going to try to refrain from commentary about Fleming’s personal life, but his
idiosyncrasies do keep popping up, especially as Bond relates to women. There’s
no flirtation between Bond and Moneypenny yet, but I don’t remember if Fleming
builds their relationship as the series progresses or if that’s entirely a
movie thing.
Of course, the most interesting woman in Casino Royale is Vesper Lynd. She’s the first “Bond girl” (a
diminutive term I kind of hate) and I have to admit falling a little in love
with her the way Fleming describes her early on. She’s a no-nonsense woman with
a simple hairstyle and no makeup or nail polish. I don’t know if that matched
tastes that I’d already developed as a young teenager or directly helped to
form what I would come to find attractive, but I could relate to Bond’s being
into her. Eva Green looks the part and is certainly “no-nonsense,” but she
expresses it differently from Fleming’s Vesper.
Like the movie Vesper, Fleming’s is also quickly able to put
Bond in his place, but she uses a different approach. She doesn’t have the
disdain for Bond or his mission that movie Vesper does, but she does appear to
be detached and unemotional about it. That intrigues Bond and calms the
irritation he felt when he first heard that he’d been assigned a woman to
assist him. (More on Bond’s misogyny shortly, I promise.) Once Bond warms up to
her, she continues proving that she’s got a mind of her own. When he makes a
presumptuous suggestion about what they should both drink, she’s amused rather
than impressed. Hilariously, that kind of hurts Bond’s feelings.
There’s none of the verbal sparring from the movie, but this
is still a woman – at least at first – who’s confident enough to call Bond out
on his chauvinism. In most ways, she controls the relationship and I especially
like a scene after the game where she’s cooled towards Bond and he can’t figure
out why. I’ve been on dates like that and know Bond’s frustration there. In
fact, I can relate a lot to his generally not being able to figure her out and
being even more attracted to her because of it.
As Bond and Vesper’s relationship heats up, the sexuality in
Casino Royale isn’t what movie fans are
used to. In the aftermath of the mission, Bond and Vesper vacation at a seaside
hotel, but get separate rooms. I know it’s the ‘50s, but I was surprised that
they didn’t simply lie and say they were married. And as soon as they’re alone,
the sexual tension that’s been building between them the entire novel is
released by mad, furious… French kissing. It wears them both out and Vesper
needs a cigarette afterward, but it’s awfully tame by modern standards. Then
again, when they do get serious, Fleming isn’t shy about describing swelling
buttocks and hard nipples, so he’s not a prude.
The confusion about sex fits well with Bond and Vesper’s
relationship. She may have confidence and power early on, but once Le Chiffre
has been defeated she changes quickly and becomes all about wanting to please
Bond. There’s a reason for it, but I don’t know how satisfying it is. I think
it makes sense, but I missed the old Vesper.
Bond’s not any more consistent with his feelings. He’s an
emotional guy who seems to fall for Vesper quickly when the job is done. He
calls her sappy things like “my love” and “my darling,” and while swimming he fantasizes about erupting from the ocean in a shower of spray for her to see.
Hard to imagine Daniel Craig doing that.
Of course, by this time Bond’s been through hell. The
torture scene from the movie is only slightly modified from the book and its
affect on Bond is serious. He cries when it’s over and threatens to resign from
the secret service. The experience has made him question his conviction and his
world has become less black and white. In the midst of that uncertainty is
Vesper, who feels responsible for Bond’s being captured and desperately wants
to make it up to him.
It’s clear that they were attracted to each other earlier in
the case, but Bond’s torture has turned sexual curiosity into full-blown
co-dependence. Vesper wants to atone to Bond for screwing up; Bond is looking
for something else to anchor to now that he’s uncertain about his job. It’s not
a recipe for a great relationship, even if there weren’t other factors coming
along to complicate things.
Besides some plot stuff, one of the biggest complications is
Bond’s selfishness. He gets criticized a lot for his misogyny – and rightly so
– but it’s just a symptom of a deeper problem. Fleming writes about the first
days of Bond’s recovery after being tortured and how he accidentally hurt
Vesper’s feelings by refusing the flowers she’d sent. “Flowers seemed to ask
for recognition of the person who had sent them, to be constantly transmitting
a message of sympathy and affection. Bond found this irksome.” Fleming goes on
to clarify, “Bond was bored at the idea of having to explain some of this to
Vesper.” Bond’s problem with women is that he can’t see past his own ego enough
to consider someone else’s feelings. It’s made him an utter failure at
relationships in the past, and I suspect that’ll be his downfall in
relationships going forward. He appears
to have real feelings for Vesper, but it’s an illusion created by his frantic
need for something to replace MI-6.
Early in the book, Fleming writes that Bond “was honest
enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women.
One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or
by luck. When that happened he knew that he too would be branded with the
deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay
before you have lost.” That’s a great line: “the promise to pay before you have
lost.” It’s about the lack of confidence that comes after you’re deeply,
emotionally wounded for the first time. And that’s something that Bond’s never
experienced. That’s really fascinating to me.
Usually, when we read about a character as emotionally cold
as Bond, it’s because of some past hurt. His confidence is a mask for deeper
pain. That’s not the case with Bond though. Fleming explicitly points out that
Bond’s never been seriously, emotionally
hurt. That makes his coldness and confidence not entirely human. He’s able to
relax around and connect with other men, so he’s not a sociopath. It’s just
that he doesn’t need to experience emotional loss for himself in order to see
its effect on other people and to decide that he doesn’t want that. So he never
lets himself become attached to women. Or hasn’t by the time Casino
Royale takes place.
I argue that he doesn’t get there in Casino Royale either. He gets there later in the series, but not
with Vesper. Look how quickly he gets over her with that famous, perfect last
line of the novel. She hasn’t brought him to his knees in any permanent way.
She left him before that damage could truly be done. He hadn’t even gotten
around to resigning from his job yet, so all he has to do is go back to it.
After all, that’s what the novel is really about. It’s not a love story; it’s a
story about Bond’s crisis of faith in his occupation. Vesper is just an option
he plays with while he’s working through those issues. I think that becomes
even clearer in the next book, Live and Let Die.
What’s cool though is that Mathis presents Bond with another
solution that he doesn’t take, at least not right away. As Bond is recovering
and visiting with Mathis, his friend tells him, “Surround yourself with human
beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.” That’s a
fascinating thesis statement for the rest of the series and I’m extremely
curious to see if Bond’s able to do that and if so whether the result will be
as Mathis predicted. One of my favorite themes in books and movies is
disengaged people learning to connect. I’m going to enjoy watching that at work
in these books.
2 comments:
What a terrific post! I myself have only read half the books, and not in many years (a situation I plan to rectify in the next year or two).
Thanks, Kelly!
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