Sheldon Lane - For Bond Lovers Only

[dem bones]

Sheldon Lane (ed.) - For Bond Lovers Only (Panther, 1965)

Introduction

Jack Fishman Presents 007 and Me by Ian Fleming
Sean Connery takes apart The Blood, Guts & Girls Man
Donald McLachian - Room 39
Rendezvous with The Man From The Ipcress File (Len Deighton)
Jack Thomas inspects The 007 Armoury (with Geoffrey Boothroyd)
Bond's Broads
I Spy - through the camera eye: 007 & friends - choose your weapons
The Thriller Business; a verbal exchange between Simenon & Fleming refereed by Frederick Sands
J. Bernard Hutton - Talking about spies with Ian Fleming
Raymond Chandler talking about Iced Water and Cool Customer
The Man Who's Got 007's Number: The personal fine on Sean Connery, opened by Henry Gris & Sheldon Lane
The Spy Boss Who Loves Bond: Allen Dulles

Blurb

He is a handsome, elegant, womaniser in a world of sex, snobbery and sudden death - the friskiest, most ruthless and definitely the most bedridden, best-loved spy in the world. There are many imitations, but Bond stands alone.

This is the spotlight turned revealingly on his world and that of his creator, Ian Fleming, intimately presented by such distinguished personalities as GEORGES SIMENON, RAYMOND CHANDLER, SEAN CONNERY, LEN DEIGHTON, JACK FISHMAN ALLEN DULLES, former head of CIA, and espionage authority J. BERNARD HUTTON.
The Man, The Legend, The Girls vividly examined (and illustrated)
FOR BOND LOVERS ONLY

Despite reassurances that his novels include sequences of torture and sadism to rival Poe's, i've never read any Ian Fleming but that's likely to change on the strength of For Bond Lovers Only, published shortly after his death, a nice mix of interviews, essays and remarkably generous photo-supplement giving the whole a very attractive magazine-in-paperback feel; I set out to make a start on this last night, ended up reading it cover to cover and could have cheerfully taken more. The Jack Fishman and Georges "Inspector Magrait" Simenon interviews are particularly riveting. Fishman, a longstanding friend and Admiralty colleague of Fleming's during WWII was in on the entire Bond adventure since its inception while the Simenon reminiscences reveal both men at their best (i.e., it's loaded with Vault sentiments: if, for example, Fleming found a rack of paperbacks by authors unknown to him, he went for the one with the best cover). I particular like this exchange.

"He told me he always read my books in French because he their style and preferred reading them in their original form. I pointed out that some French critics considered I had no style at all! In many respects they are right because for some years I have tried to avoid anything which is like literature. I like to keep my writing as simple as possible.'

'My friends think my writing isn't literature and therefore deserves no sympathy at all,' Fleming said. "Thrillers may not be Literature with a capital L, but it is possible to write thrillers designed to be read as Literature. Practitioners in this vein have included such people as Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and of course, Simenon. I see nothing shameful in aiming as high as these.

'There is no top limit to writing well. I try to write neatly, concisely, vividly, because I think that's the way to write. I think that approach largely comes from my training as a fast-writing journalist under circumstances in which you damned well have to be neat, correct, concise and vivid. My journalistic training was far more valuable to me than all the English Literature education I ever had.'

'I think that communicating enjoyment is a very good achievement even in the fairly modest seam of literature that comprises thriller writing.'

'I think a writer should try to get an accurate ear for the spoken word and not, so to speak, put on a top hat when he sits down at his typewriter. He mustn't make the mistake of thinking that literature has to be literary.'

'That is absolutely correct,' Simenon agreed. 'It is not that we should write less in a literary manner, but we must avoid pretentiousness.'

Aside from this heartening stuff, the book is littered with many a gloriously un-PC gem, mostly, it has to be said, from Mr. Fleming himself ("The reason why women love my stories is because women are all masochistic and I suppose they like the way the female characters are bashed about"). The Bond's Babes chapter is pretty slight (there hadn't been that many movies up to that point) while Raymond Chandler is devoted only two pages although he still manages to tackle the big ones - 'Marlowe versus Bond:who would win?' and 'who's your favourite thriller writer?' (you already guessed his answers).

Right. All set and raring to go. So which novels should i look out for?

[andydecker]

What a lovely cover. Great design, very sexy.

Heh, I also bought a Bond omnibus a couple of years ago on Ebay for cheap, a hardcover edition. I have read so many spy novels, but never Bond. Was kind of annoyed that they didn´t package the novels in chronological order, so a few years later it still stands unread. *sigh

As - according to some articles I read - the novels have a strong continuity I guess it would be best to read them in chronological order.

Lane had a strong line-up here. Can´t imagine doing such a book today. 45 years later there are so many successful writers, still none of them - except King of course - had the impact these guys had. Says a lot about popular culture.

[dem bones]

You'd never have guessed, but it was the cover that decided me. It's one of those where the action continues across the spine and onto the back.


The format is equally clever, in terms of content it's not dissimilar to how you'd imagine a Paperback Fanatic Bond special although that would be much heavier on the cover scans! it suits the book perfectly and the fact that it's actually encouraged someone to read further tells its own story.

can't see me going the chronological order route because it's gonna be more a case of which (if any) i find, but the guy i got this from had about five Bond's on his stall so if they've not been snapped up ..... Franklin reviewed Casino Royale on Vault MK 1 so maybe he'll be good enough to copy it across if he sees this?

[Craig Herbertson]

Just finished a couple of Bonds - Moonraker and some shorts at a friends where there was nothing else to read that appealed to my morbid tastes. I was thoroughly impressed. He writes very concisely. They are nicely non pc

[franklinmarsh]

Great stuff, lads! Here's the review -

Casino Royale - Ian Fleming. First published 1953 by Jonathan Cape Ltd. Published by Pan in 1955.
What with the 'new' film due in about a month I thought I'd have a crack at this. Like The Spy Who Loved Me it's a bit unique within Fleming's ouevre. The first James Bond novel written with his marriage pending, using his expertise as a journalist and vivid life experiences as, not only a journo, but also working for Naval Intelligence during WWII.
Typical of a first book (and judging by the ending first in a series - although the series didn't turn out as expected) it's quite low key and low budget - bearing in mind the excesses, particularly of the films, that were to come much later.
Fleming wanted to be a best-selling author and was a little disheartened that Cape only produced a small print run (hence the outrageous price of a first edition) and sold the film rights to a US TV company to make a fast buck. A TV film was made and promptly forgotten, at least until the 1970s when a print (or most of it) was discovered. The rights found their way to producer Charles K Feldman who, when shown the door by Saltzman & Broccoli (who had the rights to all Flemings other Bond books) after trying to get in on a co-production deal a la Kevin McClory & Thunderball, went ahead with an abortive send up vaguely in the style of his previous smash hit What's New Pussycat?
So, up until now, the novel Casino Royale has been almost a separate entity from the others, not forming part of Eon Productions Bond bonanza.
The British Secret Services head of Station S (Soviet Union) has come up with an unconventional plan to discredit Le Chiffre, sinister paymaster of a communist-controlled French version of the Teamsters union, and agent for 'Redland.'
This seedy fellow is in a bit of a bind. Having control of the union's funds and an (ahem) prodigious sexual appetite, the cad bought up a chain of brothels with said funds, but (Doh!) barely three months later, the French brought in laws cracking down on this sort of thing, so Le Chiffre ('the cypher') is about 50 million francs out of pocket. In a desperate attempt to cover up his faux pas before his Soviet chiefs learn about it, he is attempting to recover some cash by gambling - at a formerly popular little casino in the obscure little French seaside town of Royale-Les-Eaux.
Head of S thinks it's pointless to assassinate Le Chiffre as the Russkies would doubtless turn him into a martyr and a hero, so why not pit the Services best gambler against him? Clean the bounder out financially and humiliation will follow.
Well. the man for the job is James Bond. Unfortunately, his cover is blown incredibly quickly, the bad guys almost assassinate him early on (luck and a Russian contempt for their hired killers aids our man) - and he's given a female assistant - the mysterious and highly strung Vesper Lynd. (Bond's, oh alright then Fleming's sexism is amazing in this book - not the leering,drooling kind, but the Get back to your kitchen! variety).
So far so bad - but the middle of this short (189 pages) thriller is where Fleming comes in to his own, showing what he would be capable of.
The baccarat duel with Le Chiffre is magnificently involving (Fleming would better this with (gasp!) bridge in Moonraker and (shock!) golf in Goldfinger).
Recovering our breath from this, we are soon thereafter plunged into the torture scene. Initially almost ridiculous, it soon reaches nerve jangling proportions and a cloud of dark, dense, perverse sexuality hangs over it. Bond, naked, bound in front of a clothed Le Chiffre who keeps referring to him as 'my dear boy'. The torture concentrated on Bond's buttocks and genitalia.
There's every chance that what follows this is bound to be anti-climactic, but somehow Fleming keeps the interest, what with Bond racked with fears of impotence and Vesper's increasingly erratic behaviour.
To me, the ending is very downbeat. I'm not sure whether it was intended this way, but that's how it comes across.
A quite inauspicious beginning for a character who would go on to become so iconic, but then thats what always brings me back to this novel.

Spoilers - PS I was struck by rereading CR that On Her Majesty's Secret Service owes a heavy debt to it. OHMSS was a bit of a comeback as, after the wonderful comic strip hi-jinks of Dr No and Goldfinger, Fleming had quite a bad run. The stop-gap short story collection For Your Eyes Only, Thunderball's attendant court case which (allegedly) contributed to Fleming's failing health, and the experimental The Spy Who Loved Me which failed to please critics and/or the public - Fleming vetoing a paperback release and demanding only the title be used if filmed. It's ironic that the films of Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me would both be highly successful and lucrative in their day. Still, OHMSS starts off in Royale (there's a wonderful shot of CASINO reflected upside down in water in the film) and ends with the death of someone Bond loves, or at least loved. In CR, Bond is about to ask Vesper to marry him when he first notices her odd behaviour.

[franklinmarsh]

And here's a few covers