Tue 10 Sep 2024
A 1001 Midnights Review: IAN FLEMING – Casino Royale.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[8] Comments
by Marcia Muller
IAN FLEMING – Casino Royale. James Bond #1. Macmillan, hardcover, 1959. Reprinted many times. TV episode: 1954 starring Barry Nelson as Bond. Films: (1) 1967 ensemble satirical film starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. (2) 2006 with Daniel Craig as Bond.
The spy novels of Ian Fleming made James Bond — Agent 007 of British Intelligence — a household name and spawned a large number of films, as well as imitators both good and bad. This great escape fiction seemed just what was needed by the 1950s world — still austere after the sacrifices of World War II and newly frozen in the grip of the cold war-and the public’s reaction was tremendous. Fleming gave his readers richly detailed descriptions of exotic locales, exclusive hotels and resorts, fine foods and wines, expensive cars, luxury consumer goods, and beautiful women.
And for the first time, sex — illicit, hedonistic, and sophisticated — came to the forefront in the British mystery. Bond’s basic character was nothing new lo the genre, since he is very much in the tradition of the snobbish, urbane gentleman, but the villains were something new and so hideously evil and inventive in their wicked ways as to often strain the reader’s credulity. The Bond novels, even with their rampant sexism and fervent anticommunism, can be great fun if read with the context of their times in mind.
As Casino Royale opens, we find Bond at the casino at Royale-les-Eaux, watching a powerful agent of the Opposition (SMERSH) play baccarat. Bond is acting undercover, posing as a rich client of a Jamaican import-export firm, and his mission is to see that the agent, Le Chiffre, who is reported to be on the brink of financial disaster, is “ridiculed and destroyed.” Bond has been chosen for this assignment by his boss-known throughout the series only as M — because 007 is the finest gambler in the Secret Service.
Much to Bond’s dismay, the Service also sends him a “Number Two”: a woman named Vesper Lynd. Bond’s comments are telling on this point: Although Vesper is a beautiful woman, 007 is “not amused …. Women were for recreation.” A true professional, however, Bond eventually establishes a rapport with Vesper and comes to respect her abilities –and, inevitably, also becomes romantically involved with her.
Fleming gives his reader excellent glimpses into the operation of the grand casinos and the people who frequent them; a high-stakes baccarat game in which Bond becomes enmeshed with Le Chiffre holds even the attention of those who know or care nothing about cards. There are car chases, a literally torturous confrontation with the villain, and an ending that combines success with disillusionment in a manner characteristic of the series.
———
Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
September 10th, 2024 at 11:39 pm
I reiterate my belief that when Daniel Craig arrived, EON had opportunity to recreate the entire movie series from scratch –starting with this book –and keep new faith with Fleming’s original chronology.
It was a viable means of reviving interest in Bond. Just brazenly re-film the whole franchise as period-pieces. Gut it out.
“Do it up right” with sumptuous preserved/antique vehicles, exciting live stunts, and British class-system glam.
Resuscitate all the imperialism, re-visit all the exotic locales, renew all the masculine myths.
I think it would have been a smash. I think the public today craves Fleming’s escapist-fun now more than ever.
But EON was too afraid to take a risk. So instead we get 4-5 more cringing attempts to shoehorn a WWII-hardened 1950s brute into the modern world of, “you’re hurting my feelings!”
McCartney said it best. “Y’got a job to do, you got to do it well …y’gotta give th’ other feller ‘ell!”
September 11th, 2024 at 12:53 am
Well understood and observed, Lazy. Thumbs up all the way.
September 11th, 2024 at 7:36 am
At this point, Ian Fleming was just beginning to develop a character who became a literary icon of sorts, as well as his own skills as a writer. All things considered, I think both efforts looked promising.
It’s easy for readers to conflate an author with his creation, and Fleming seems to have enjoyed the confusion–if confusion it was. Was he really as racist, sexist and snobbish as all that?
Finally, whatever you have to say about Daniel Craig’s debut as 007, we must agree that this CASINO ROYALE was better than the previous two.
September 11th, 2024 at 7:36 am
“[Fleming’s] villains were something new and so hideously evil and inventive in their wicked ways as to often strain the reader’s credulity.”
As you say, Fleming’s villains aren’t just “bad guys”, but rather more. I think Fleming’s Scottishness was involved. His predecessors, the Scottish Calvinists John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson both created villains in their thrillers who were Satanic in their metaphysical evil. The tradidion go back to James Hogg and perhaps beyond.
September 11th, 2024 at 7:51 am
I read once that the relationship between Bond and Bond villains touches on myths like “St. George and the Dragon”; or even “Beowulf”.
His villains are almost always older men, much fatter men, wealth-hoarding; and without any powers of libido. They keep females at their side as ornaments (‘holding them in thrall’) rather than as their lovers. Some theory along these lines.
September 11th, 2024 at 2:29 pm
Coincidentally, my exhaustive analysis of the novel and all three screen versions has just been published in bare*bones:
https://www.cimarronstreetbooks.com/2024/08/now-shipping-barebones-19.html
September 11th, 2024 at 2:42 pm
Coincidentally, indeed. I love it!
September 13th, 2024 at 10:31 pm
I do think a streak of Calvinism explains both Fleming and Buchan’s fine nose for villainy.
Fleming draws on numerous sources for Bond, including himself and his brother Peter. I knew several of the men he based Bond on, and I can’t say any of them were simply “nice guys.” Playboy, professional houseguest, professional criminal, and pretty much bloody-minded bastard, but not nice.
CASINO ROYALE is the closest Fleming ever got to writing that thriller meant to be read as literature he wanted to write. For the first few books he struggled with the voice and the tropes, and then beginning with FRWL he was fell victim in a sense to his own trap and to the limitations of Bond’s growing success.
It is not enough to understand the writers Fleming obviously emulated in creating Bond, but also literary influences like Maugham and his mentor Phyllis Bottome. For all the shadows of Eric Ambler, Chandler, Peter Cheyney, Sax Rohmer, Buchan, Sapper, and Yates in Fleming there is also a more serious writer more interested in other things than just adventure, suspense, and thrills seeking expression.
That dichotomy between the storyteller and artist, the man who writes for money and the man who wants some critical acceptance is what gives his books their unique cachet. That’s what Kingsley Amis saw in them in his writing, what a William Boyd or Sebastian Faulks sees in Fleming and Bond, and why the Andrew Lycett and Nicholas Shakespeare biographies find such rich ground in his life and contradictions.
It’s also why comparisons to most of the Bond imitators are usually inadequate. Ironically, much as he despised the whole Bond phenomena, Le Carre is probably the only other spy novelist equally torn between the spy novel as thriller and as serious novel. For my money he went too far the other way, but the same dichotomy exists in both.