No Dawn For Men: A Novel of Ian Fleming, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Nazi Germany (2013)

By James LePore and Carlos Davis

This book has a fascinating premise – two important writers of the 20^th century meeting in October 1938 Germany under cover of a putative consultation between J. R. R. Tolkien and a prospective German publisher for his recent novel, The Hobbit, journalist Ian Fleming being there to document a meeting Tolkien would also make with an eminent medieval scholar. Of course, with the Shadow of Nazism about to descend across Europe, nothing is as it seems; Tolkien's meeting with his fellow academic has been arranged by British Intelligence – with Fleming as his MI-6 “minder” – to discover what historical secret the professor has uncovered to so embolden the Nazis. In the end, Fleming and Tolkien – with the help of a group of allies collected over the course of their adventure – thwart the unleashing of diabolical forces that would have otherwise assured Germany's quick victory in the imminent global conflagration. Moreover, having witnessed True Evil, Tolkien is wrenched from a state of depressed writer's block to a new determination to direct the clamored-for sequel to The Hobbit toward a similarly epic confrontation between Good and Evil.

Live and Let Die (1954)

By Ian Fleming (James Bond 007 vol. 2 [ previous volume here ])

As is well known, the order of the James Bond series of films is totally different from that of the original novels. And my own fleeting hope a few years back that with the release of the 2006 Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale showing a James Bond near the beginning of his career we might actually have a total reboot that would indeed remake the movies based on the books in their proper order did not prove out … but that's a separate story. The point is that this second James Bond novel was the eighth to be filmed (“officially” – i.e, not counting the parody production of Casino Royale from 1967), way down in 1973, more than a decade into the film series. Another oddity is that with this one we still haven't gotten to a novel that became a film starring “my” James Bond, Sean Connery. … But that's a separate story as well, except that in what few comments I make relating this book to the movie of the same name I may be referring to Roger Moore.

I actually finished this book a couple of weeks ago, but all kinds of things got in the way of me sitting down to write up a post about it except for the introductory paragraph above. And when I checked my Notes app on my iPhone where I customarily jot down my thoughts as I read, the page seems to have disappeared. So I'm winging it from memory from here on out. And frankly, my memory sucks, but here goes. Mainly I'm lacking the specific examples and quotations I had intended to use.

I'm not absolutely sure this
 is Solitaire – I just wanted to
include a picture of Jane Seymour!

It's another great read, this time with the action beginning in the United States. “Mr. Big” is a Harlem crime lord and agent of SMERSH who has seized a recently discovered treasure trove from a British pirate of the Caribbean and is smuggling the coins into the US to finance SMERSH's operations there. Mr. Big has cultivated an identity as a Voodoo god incarnate to intimidate a vast network of African Americans as well as a white Caribbean psychic named Solitaire into his service. In short order Solitaire has defected to Bond but is recaptured by Mr. Big in Florida. The climax comes in Jamaica, where Mr. Big comes to a grisly end.

Perhaps the most jarring element in this novel for the modern reader is the overt racism that pervades it. African Americans as well as black Caribbeans are portrayed almost uniformly as childish caricatures who hold Mr. Big in gibbering superstitious awe. It's quite embarrassing, really. Perhaps this novel should come with a warning similar to that included at the beginning of the pulp reprints published by Sanctum Books (The Shadow, Doc Savage, etc.): “These stories are works of their time. Consequently, the text is reprinted intact in his original, historical form, including occasional out-of-date ethnic and cultural stereotyping.” The film is characterized by Wikipedia as part of the “blaxploitation” era of the early 1970s, but frankly the racism inherent in that genre is nothing compared to that which spilled from the pen of Ian Fleming here!

In very broad strokes, once again the stories of the novel and the movie are similar. But only in very broad strokes. (Again, the late 1950s newspaper comic strip adaptation of the novel reprinted in The James Bond Omnibus [ see my review of Casino Royale ] is very faithful but condensed, as well as toned down both in sex and violence.) The motivation and goods smuggled by Mr. Big are drugs in the movie, for one thing. Most interesting to me, however, is how a couple of the more memorable scenes from this novel did not make it into the movie of the same name, although they ended up being used in later James Bond movies. First – and this surprised me because he has been such an omnipresent character in the films (although played by even more actors than played James Bond himself!) – this is where James' CIA friend Felix Leiter is half-eaten by a shark and left to be found by Bond with the taunting note, “He disagreed with something that ate him.” He survives although he loses an arm and a leg. In the films, however, Leiter would continue as an ally to James Bond for another decade and a half or so, until 1989's Licence to Kill (and of course, be “rebooted” hale and whole for 2006's Casino Royale). Secondly, at the end of the novel, Bond and Solitaire are dragged behind a ship across a coral reef in shark- and barracuda-infested waters, a sequence that would remain unfilmed until four movies later, 1981's For Your Eyes Only.

Cheers!, and Thanks for reading!

Casino Royale (1953)

By Ian Fleming

A few weeks ago our local parish library had its annual fundraising book sale, which my wife and I like to hit. Great deals can be had. Among my finds this year was an all-but-complete set of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels in excellent condition, recent Penguin paperbacks. They were 50 cents apiece. I grabbed them. I was missing two – including this first volume in the series – but the very next day my son had a soccer game in Alexandria so I checked at Hastings there. I paid more for Casino Royale than I did for all the others put together! Compulsive completist that I am, that evening I placed an order through Abebooks.com for the other missing volume, and within a few days an all-but-pristine full set perched proudly on my bookshelf. I just recently got around to starting it.

It's not the first time I read one of the original novels that inspired the cultural phenomenon that is the 007 movies – or at least attempted to read one. Many years ago, when the movie Moonraker came out, after picking up the movie adaptation which is basically a transcription of the script into prose, I attempted the original novel upon which it was based. I did not get very far into it. The James Bond movies are notoriously different from the books, often bearing no resemblance to the original beyond the title. This was especially the case with the immediately post-Star Wars Moonraker. And I never really felt drawn to the originals for a very long time after that.

A couple of years ago, however, I did happen across a curious volume in Books-a-Million – a compendium of black-and-white newspaper strips from the 1950s that, as far as I can tell thus far, very faithfully adapt the original novels into graphic format. The James Bond Omnibus, “Volume 001,” looks to contain comic strip versions of about the first half of the book series, through Thunderball, including the various short stories as well as the novels, in the order they were published. I read through about half the volume, as I recall, before my attention drifted to other things. I always kept meaning to get back to it, and gave thought to delving into the original novels, but never got around to it. So many books! – So little time!

Then I came upon the library book-sale find. My immediate excitement was doubtless augmented by the synchronicity that I had just started reading Bronze Shaped as Clay, which of course includes a thinly-veiled James Bond as a major character. As indicated above, I grabbed them – along with an interesting albeit thin hardcover, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond by Ben MacIntyre, which I found on a different table. This latter book is heavily illustrated, sort of a semi-coffee-table book overview of the life of Ian Fleming heavily geared toward the writer's most famous creation.* It's a fascinating story. My point is, everything seemed to come together, and as soon as I cleared out some other backlogged reading intentions I started Casino Royale.

I'm not going to engage in a full-blown review here. Suffice it to say that if you have seen the 2006 film with Daniel Craig, you know the basic story – although there are considerable changes in detail as well as additons to the story, the central plot is there more or less intact: Agent 007's battle over a casino card-table with Le Chiffre, an agent of the enemy; his reluctant attraction to yet ultimate betrayal by a beautifuly fellow agent, Vesper Lynd; even the harrowing torture that he suffers at the hands of Le Chiffre (although the most memorable line from that scene, Bond's defiant “Now the whole world's gonna know you died scratching my balls!,” is nowhere to be found). I already suspected from the comic strip adaptation that those beats would be there, pardon the pun. That adaptation is very accurate, with only minor differences necessary to condense the story as well as tone it down a bit.

Art by John McLusky
for Daily Express

This was quite an enjoyable read and I look forward to continuing the series. There is something special about seeing characters such as this in their original settings. In this case, the story is very much informed by the still-fresh memories of World War II in the context of deepening 1950s Cold War tensions. And here we see a much more down-to-earth, human Bond than the virtual super-hero he became in the movies. He's less “cool,” less sure of himself, indeed less likable, with less of the boyish roguishness. It's one major difference between the motion picture medium and prose that the latter allows the reader to have considerable insight into the core of the character – depending on the author's intent as well as skill, of course, and Ian Fleming was a natural storyteller. That can be good – or it can, as in this case, lay bare an uglier side of our hero's nature. One thing that I've heard commented on through the years is that the literary James Bond is colder, with a real misogynistic streak to him. That is very much the case. He has definite negative feelings toward the very idea of women engaging in his line of work. How much of that was Fleming and reflective of the time in which he wrote as opposed to the character he was drawing I could not say, but I know I was a bit taken aback by the punch line, so to speak, of Bond reflecting on his growing feelings for Vesper near the end of the book, before the climax:

“He found her companionship easy and unexacting. There was something enigmatic about her which was a constant stimulus. She gave little of her real personality away and he felt that however long they were together there would always be a private room inside her which he could never invade. She was thoughtful and full of consideration without being slavish and without compromising her arrogant spirit. And now he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape” (pp. 158-159).

Uh-huhhh....

Anyway, despite the lack of CGI-worthy pyrotechnics and a diabolical world-threatening super-villain – evil though he be, Le Chiffre is in the context of the larger world very much a small fish – this is an engaging little character drama that leaves me wanting more. And, similar to the movie, the book's conclusion sets up what must have been a central overarching conflict in Fleming's novels as the ambiguous character of Vesper Lynd and her fate give Bond a driving purpose going forward – to hunt down and destroy SMERSH.

Cheers! – and thanks for reading!

* * *

* Fleming's only other creation, for a single children's book, was – I kid you not! – Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.