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Next selection is Bond, James Bond
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By Carol Campbell
For the Sunday Gazette-Mail
Following last month’s classic spy novel “The Riddle of the Sands,” the Monday Book Club will take up a classic of another kind. There is no doubt that Ian Fleming’s spy James Bond (007) has become a modern classic character, a somewhat autobiographical one for Fleming just as Davies was for Erskine Childers.
Beginning in 1939, Ian Fleming worked for British Naval Intelligence, rising to the rank of commander and becoming right-hand man to one of Britain’s top spy masters. He became famous for his ingenious plans and entertaining reports, the “Fleming flair.”
Fleming was also famous for his way with women and his drinking, but mostly for his charm as a host at his Jamaican winter estate, Goldeneye, which he bought after the war.
There is good news and bad news in selecting a James Bond novel for the Monday Book Club. The good news is that everyone is familiar with 007 and his exploits; the bad news is that everyone is familiar with 007 and his exploits.
This extremely widespread knowledge of Bond presents challenges in discussing “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” purely as a novel without confusing it with the 007 created by the movies and the actors who have portrayed him.
Fleming |
Bond has a particular image: He is a competent, hard, unemotional, self-confident master spy. He seems never to be weak or at a loss. However, in this novel, Bond has his weak moments when he doubts whether he can go on.
“He leaned against the comforting soft snow for a moment, the breath sobbing in his throat. Then he drove himself on again. He had got so far, done so well! Only a few more hundred yards to the lights of the darling, straggling little paradise of people and shelter!” That doesn’t seem like the Bond we all know.
Our “mental image Bond” also has a particular attitude toward women. He is always successful in seducing the women he wants and equally successful in leaving them behind in a casual way. But in this book, it is a woman who comes back into his life to rescue him from the despair and danger he’s feeling in the passage above.
The novel begins with Bond’s encounter with this woman, the widow of the Count Giulio di Vicenzo, which makes her La Comtesse Teresa de Vicenzo. But she likes to go by Tracy and she likes to drive fast cars.
As Bond makes his way to Casino Royale for his annual visit, Tracy blows past him in her Lancia Flaminia Zagato Spyder and wins the ensuing race against him in his Continental Bentley. So the stage is set, and the casual sexual encounter results as per the Bond formula, but in this case Tracy initiates it and intends to drop him the next morning.
Bond has been on special assignment to find Blofeld after he escaped the Secret Service in the “Thunderball” episode. After a year of fruitless searching, Bond has been ready to call it quits — both with the search and with the Service. He had been composing his resignation letter in his head when Tracy so rudely passed him on the road.
Tracy just happens to be the daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the Union Corse, “more deadly and perhaps even older than the Unione Siciliano, the Mafia.”
Draco becomes Bond’s ally in his pursuit of his old nemesis. Blofeld has set up a mountain fortress to spread a kind of biological warfare into England by unusual means involving 10 beautiful, naive young women.
Bond infiltrates the Blofeld installation posing as a researcher from the College of Arms who will help Blofeld establish his family lineage so he can claim a title.
After the usual “spy stuff” of close calls and midnight investigation — and finally being found out — Bond escapes by skiing off the mountain.
That is when Tracy reappears in Bond’s life and spirits him away from danger. Draco and his men raid Blofeld’s complex, but Blofeld escapes to wreak his revenge on Bond at the end of the novel.
The end of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” will recall the ending of the recent movie of “Casino Royale.” Fleming seems to have been revisiting the ideas as well as the setting of the first of the Bond novels.
Carol Campbell leads book discussions for the Sunday Gazette-Mail’s Monday Book Club and for the Kanawha Public Library.
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