Book-A-Day 2010 # 251 (10/12) -- Alligator by I*n Fl*ming

Last week, the review blog Bookgasm covered a Harvard Lampoon parody from 1962 -- actually written by Michael K. Frith and Christopher B. Cerf, they said, and who am I to doubt them? -- of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. The book was Alligator, credited to "I*n Fl*ming," and it was published the same year as the novel The Spy Who Loved Me and the release of the first film, Dr. No.

So Alligator came out at the peak of literary James Bond, and at the last moment that a satire could be primarily about the books -- before the pop-culture steamroller of a major movie franchise flatted all of that mental real estate and remade it in a notably different style. So of course, as soon as I heard about it, I had to read Alligator right away. (After all, didn't I spend much of last summer reading straight through all of the Fleming Bond books?) Luckily, Bookgasm aimed me at Munsey's, where Alligator is available, for free, in a variety of ebook formats. Two quick plane flights later, I was at the tail of the Alligator.

The Bookgasm review covers Alligator's plot in great depth and detail, so I'll direct any intensely interested parties there; what interested me the most is its wry aping of Fleming's world-weary, depressive tones, the way that it's only a half-step more silly than a real Fleming Bond novel. B*nd orders all of his food and drink in massively intricate detail -- any one instance of which would be perfectly in place in a Fleming novel, and serve to show that Bond has definite tastes -- making a running joke at each meal. (Even the one that Lacernus Alligator, the requisite mad plutocrat, serves B*nd before attempting to kill him.)

There are no obvious jokes in Alligator, no nudges to the ribs, and no broad, slow winks -- this is a smart satire for readers who know the original, and will be amused by the twists that Frith [1] and Cerf take to Fleming's original. It's a much drier parody than the later, more famous Harvard Lampoon work of the next generation -- Henry Beard and Doug Kenney, with Bored of the Rings and then the National Lampoon -- based much more closely on knowledge of the original than on adding in as many jokes as possible. Alligator isn't a laugh-a-minute riot, but it's quite funny, and gets funnier as it goes along and the jokes accumulate -- and as the reader settles in, realizing that Frith and Cerf know their Fleming idiosyncrasies dead to rights and will be poking them all in turn.

Since it is available for free -- in fact, it's much easier to find for free than to pay for -- there's no reason for any Ian Fleming fan not to read it.


[1] Who, if I'm linking the dots correctly, later was a major designer and executive for Jim Henson's Muppet empire, including creating Fraggle Rock.

Book-A-Day 2010: The Epic Index

James Bond Daily: The End of Bond?

James Bond Daily ends, appropriately, with the end of The Man With The Golden Gun, as 007 ponders recuperating under the care of Miss Mary Goodnight on pp. 181-182:

'And James, it's not far from the Liguanea Club and you can go there and play bridge, and golf when you get better. There'll be plenty of people for you to talk to. And then of course I can cook and sew buttons for you and so on.'

Of all the doom-fraught graffiti a woman can write on the wall, those are the most insidious, the most deadly.

James Bond, in the full possession of his senses, with his eyes wide open, his feet flat on the linoleum floor, stuck his head blithely between the mink-lined jaws of the trap. He said, and meant it, 'Goodnight, You're an angel.'

At the same time, he knew, deep down, that love from Mary Goodnight, or from any woman, was not enough for him. It would be like taking 'a room with a view'. For James Bond, the same view would always pall.

And thus concludes "James Bond Daily." We now return to your regularly scheduled Antick Musings, already in progress.
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Listening to: Kate Tucker & The Sons Of Sweden - In The End
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James Bond Daily: For the Love of Gold

Auric Goldfinger waxes rhapsodic about the joys of gold-ownership on pp.183-184 of Goldfinger:

'Mr Bond --' For the first time since Bond had known Goldfinger, the big, bland face, always empty of expression, showed a trace of life. A look almost of rapture illuminated the eyes. The finely chiseled lips pursed into a thin, beatic curve. 'Mr Bond, all my life I have been in love. I have been in love with gold. I love its colour, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I love the texture of gold, that soft slimness that I have learnt to gauge so accurately by touch that I can estimate the fineness of a bar to within one carat. And I love the warm tang it exudes when I melt it down into a true golden syrup. But, above all, Mr Bond, I love the power that gold alone gives to its owner -- the magic of controlling energy, exacting labour, fulfilling one's every wish and whim and, when need be, purchasing bodies, minds, even souls. Yes, Mr Bond, I have worked all my life for gold and, in return, gold has worked for me and for those enterprises that I have espoused. I ask you,' Goldfinger gazed earnestly at Bond, 'is there any other substance on earth that so rewards its owner?'

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Listening to: Josh Ritter - Golden Age of Radio (live)
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James Bond Daily: A Handkerchief Code for Spies?

007 is surprised on p.93 of The Man With The Golden Gun:

Bond cursed himself. This was always happening in his particular trade. You were looking in the dark for a beetle with red wings. Your eyes were focused for that particular pattern on the bark of the tree. You didn't notice the moth with cryptic colouring that crouched quietly near by, itself like a piece of the bark, itself just as important to the collector. The focus of your eyes was too narrow. Your mind was too concentrated. You were using 1 x 100 magnification and your 1 x 10 was not in focus. Bond looked at the man with the recognition that exists between crooks, between homosexuals, between secret agents. It is the look common to men bound by secrecy -- by common trouble.

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Listening to: The Mendoza Line - The Queen of England
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James Bond Daily: American Values

A rich American explains to 007 how the world works, from the story "The Hildebrand Rarity" on pp.157-158 of For Your Eyes Only:

Mr Kest slowly shook his head. He said sorrowfully: 'Feller, you sure were born yesterday. Money, that's all it takes. You want a panda? You buy it from some goddam zoo that can't afford central heating for its reptile house or wants to build a new block for its tigers or something. The sea-shell? You find a man that's got one and you offer him so much goddam money that even if he cries for a week he sells it to you. Sometime you have a little trouble with Governments. Some goddam animal is protected or something., All right., Give you an example. I arrive at your island yesterday. I want a black parrot from Paslin Island. I want a giant tortoise from Aldabra. I want the complete range of your local cowries and I want this fish we're after. The first two are protected by law. Last evening I pay a call on your Governor after making certain inquiries in the town. Excellency, I says, I understand you want to build a public swimming-pool to teach the local kids to swim. Okay. The Krest Foundation will put up the money. How much? Five thousand, ten thousand? Okay, so it's ten thousand. Here's my cheque. And I write it out there and then. Just one little thing, Excellency, I says, holding on to the cheque. It happens I want a specimen of this black parrot you have here and one of these Aldabra tortoises. I understand they're protected by law. Mind if I take one of each back to America for the Smithsonian? Well, there's a bit of a palaver, but seeing as it's the Smithsonian and seeing I've still got hold of the cheque, in the end we shake hands on the deal and everyone's happy. Right? Well, on the way back I stop in the town to arrange with your nice Mr Abendana, the merchant feller, to have the parrot and tortoise collected and held for me, and I get talking about the cowries, Well, it so happens that this Mr Abendana has been collecting the dam' things since he was a child. He shows them to me. Beautifully kept -- each one in its bit of cotton wool. Fine condition and several of those Isabella and Mappa ones I was asked particularly to watch out for Sorry, he couldn't think of selling. They mean so much to him and so on. Crap! I just look at Mr Abendana and I say, how much? No no. He couldn't think of it. Crap again! I take out my chequebook and write a cheque for five thousand dollars and push it under his nose. He looks at it. Five thousand dollars! He can't stand it. He folds the cheque and puts it in his pocket and then the dam' sissy breaks down and weeps! Would you believe it?' Mr Krest opened his palms in disbelief. 'Over a few goddam sea-shells. So I just tell him to take it easy, and I pick up the trays of sea-shells and get the hell out of there before the crazy so-and-so shoots himself from remorse.'

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Listening to: The Pharmacy - Adeiu, Adeiu
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James Bond Daily: In Which Fleming Opens a Chapter By Stating the Obvious

Beginning 'Un-Real Estate,' the 7th chapter of The Man With The Golden Gun, on p. 073:

When he arrives at a place on a dark night, particularly in an alien land which he has never seen before -- a strange house, perhaps, or a hotel -- even the most alert man is assailed by the confused sensations of the meanest tourist.

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Listening to: The Deathray Davies - I'm From The Future
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James Bond Daily: Time for a Rest Cure

At the beginning (page 003, to be exact) of 1961's Thunderball, a newly health-faddist M reads the doctor's report on 007 prior to sending him off to purge his poisons at Shrublands:

'This officer,' he read, 'remains basically physically sound. Unfortunately his mode of life is not such as is likely to allow him to remain in this happy state. Despite many previous warnings, he admits to smoking sixty cigarettes a day. These are of a Balkan mixture with a higher nicotine content than the cheaper varieties. When not engaged upon strenuous duty, the officer's average daily consumption of alcohol is in the region of half a bottle of spirits of between sixty and seventy proof. On examination, there continues to be little definite sign of deterioration. The tongue is furred. The blood pressure a little raised at 160/90. The liver is not palpable. On the other hand, when pressed, the officer admits to frequent occipital headaches and there is spasm in the trapezius muscles and so-called 'fibrositis' nodules can be felt. I believe these symptoms to be due to this officer's mode of life. He is not responsive to the suggestion that over-indulgence is no remedy for the tensions inherent in his professional calling and can only result in the creation of a toxic state which could finally have the effect of reducing hos fitness as an officer. I recommend that No 007 should take it easy for two to three weeks on a more abstemious regime, when I believe he would make a complete return to his previous exceptionally high state of physical fitness.'

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Listening to: Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
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James Bond Daily: Scaramanga Is Hep, You Dig?

A bit of dialogue to a female bartender at a whorehouse after a trick-shot demonstration has just killed her two Jamaican grackles, which the screenwriters didn't try to adapt for Christopher Lee, from p.066 of 1965's The Man With The Golden Gun:

Scaramanga uttered a harsh bark of laughter. He extracted a hundred-dollar bill and threw it on the table. 'No hard feelings, cool cat. You'd be okay if you didn't always keep your legs together. Go buy yourself some more birds with that. I like to have smiling people around me.'

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Listening to: The New Pornographers - Mystery Hours
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James Bond Daily: Gay Panic!

M detours through his own fears while reading a dossier on Paco "Pistols" Scaramanga, killer for hire, on p.33 of The Man With The Golden Gun:

'... In listing his accomplishments, Time notes, but does not comment upon, the fact that this man cannot whistle. Now it may only myth, and it is certainly not medical science, but there is a popular theory that a man who cannot whistle has homosexual tendencies. (At this point, the reader may care to experiment, and, from his self-knowledge, help to prove or disprove this item of folklore! C.C.)' (M hadn't whistled since he was a boy. Unconsciously his mouth pursed and a clear note was emitted. He uttered an impatient 'tchah!' and continued with his reading.)

No mention is made of Bond trying, or failing, to whistle. And, in the cause of full information, I might mention that I myself had great trouble whistling most of my life -- though something seemed to click about a decade back, and now I'm not bad at it.
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Listening to: Hot Springs - Pink Money
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James Bond Daily: 007's Thoughts During the Monologue

As Ernst Stavro Blofeld explains his plots and purpose in life to a captive Bond, his prisoner ponders his captor, on pp.192-193 of You Only Live Twice:

Blofeld was a big man, perhaps six foot three, and powerfully built., He placed the tip of the samurai sword, which has almost the blade of the scimitar, between his straddled feet, and rested his sinewy hands on its boss. Looking up at him from across the room, Bond had to admit that there was something larger than life in the looming, imperious figure, in the hypnotically direct stare of the eyes, in the tall white brow, in the cruel downward twist of the white lips. The square-cut, heavily draped kimono, designed to give the illusion of bulk to a race of smallish men, made something huge out of the towering figure, and the golden dragon embroidery, so easily to be derided as a childish fantasy, crawled menacingly across the black silk and seemed to spit real fire from over the left breast. Blofeld had paused in his harangue. Waiting for him to continue, Bond took the measure of his enemy. He knew what would be coming -- justification. It was always so. When they thought they had got you where they wanted you, when they knew they were decisively on top, before the knock-out, even to an audience on the threshold of extinction, it was pleasant, reassuring to the executioner, to deliver the apologia -- purge the sin he was about to commit. Blofeld, his hands relaxed on the boss of his sword, continued. The tone of his voice was reasonable, self-assured, quietly expository.

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Listening to: Blonde Redhead - Misery Is A Butterfly
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James Bond Daily: The Plight of the Aging Spy

007 muses about life, on pp.018-019 of You Only Live Twice:

The state of your health, the state of the weather, the wonders of nature -- these are things that rarely occupy the average man's mind until he reaches the middle thirties. It is only on the threshold of middle-age that you don't take them all for granted, just part of an unremarkable background to more urgent, more interesting things.

Until this year, James Bond had been more or less oblivious to all of them. Apart from occasional hangovers, and the mending of physical damage that was merely, for him, the extension of a child falling down and cutting his knee, he had taken good health for granted. The weather? Just a question of whether or not he had to carry a raincoat or put the hood up on his Bentley Convertible. As for birds, bees, and flowers, the wonders of nature, it only mattered whether or not they bit or stung, whether they smelled good or bad. But today, on the last day of August, just eight months, as he reminded himself that morning, since Tracy had died, he sat in Queen Mary's Rose Garden in Regent's Park, and his mind was totally occupied with just these things.

First his health. He felt like hell and knew that he also looked it. For months, without telling anyone, he had tramped Harley Street, Wigmore Street and Wimpole Street looking for any kind of doctor who could make him feel better. He had appealed to specialists, GPs, quacks -- even to a hypnotist. He had told them, 'I feel like hell. I sleep badly. I eat practically nothing. I drink too much and my work has gone to blazes. I'm shot to pieces. Make me better.' And each man had taken his blood pressure, a sample of his urine, listened to his heart and chest, asked him questions he had answered truthfully, and had told him that there was nothing basically wrong with him. Then he had paid five guineas and gone off to John Bell and Croyden to have the new lot of prescriptions -- for tranquillizers, sleeping pills, energizers -- made up. And now he had just come from breaking off relations with the last resort -- the hypnotist, whose basic message had been that he must go out an regain his manhood by having a woman. As if he hadn't tried that! The ones who had asked him to take them to Paris. The ones who had inquired indifferently, 'Feeling better now, dearie?' The hypnotist hadn't been a bad chap. Rather a bore about how he could take away warts and how he was persecuted by the BMA, but Bond had finally had enough of sitting in a chair and listening to the quietly droning voice while, as instructed, he relaxed and gazed at a naked electric light bulb. And now he had thrown up the fifty-guinea course after only half the treatment and had come to sit in this secluded garden before going back to his office ten minutes away across the park.

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Listening to: Bess Rogers - Only One
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James Bond Daily: The Inscrutable Orient

007 negotiates with Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese Secret Service, and remembers what his handler, the casually obnoxious Australian Richard Lovelace "Dikko" Henderson, has told him about Tanaka in particular and the perfidious Easterner in general, from p.008 of You Only Live Twice:

This kind of joking about their different cultures had become a habit between himself and Tiger, who, with a first in PPE at Trinity before the war, prided himself in the demokorasu of his outlook and the liberality and breadth of his understanding of the West. But Bond, having spoken, caught the sudden glitter in the dark eyes, and he thought of Dikko Henderson's cautionary, 'Now listen, you stupid limey bastard. You're doing all right. But don't press your luck. T.T.'s a civilized kind of a chap -- as Japs go, that is. But don't overdo it. Take a look at that mug. There's Manchu there, and Tartar. And don't forget the so-and-so was a Black Belt at judo before he ever went up to your bloody Oxford. And don't forget he was spying for Japan when he called himself assistant naval attache in their London Embassy before the war and you stupid bastards thought he was okay because he's got a degree at Oxford. And don't forget his war record. Don't forget he ended up as personal aide to Admiral Ohnishi and was training as a kami-kaze when the Americans made loud noises over Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the Rising Sun suddenly took a backward somersault in to the sea. And, if you forget all that, just ask yourself why it's T.T. rather than any other of the ninety million Japanese who happens to hold down the job as head of the Koan-Chosa-Kyoku. Okay, James? Got the photo?'

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Listening to: Camphor - Confidences Shattered
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James Bond Daily: 007 Will Gamble on Anything

Remember when Bond called blackjack a children's game? Well, he doesn't necessarily mean that in a derogatory fashion, as you can guess from this even more childish game, played on p.006 of You Only Live Twice with the head of Japan's Secret Service, Tiger Tanaka:

It was the old game of Scissors cut Paper, Paper wraps Stone, Stone blunts Scissors, that is played by children all over the world. The fist is the Stone, two outstretched fingers are the Scissors, and a flat hand is the Paper. The closed fist is hammered twice in the air simultaneously by the two opponents and, at the third downward stroke, the chosen emblem is revealed. The game consists of guessing which emblem the opponent will chose, and of you yourself choosing one that will defeat him. Best of three goes or more. It is a game of bluff.

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Listening to: The Mendoza Line - Tougher Than the Rest
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James Bond Daily: More About Bond's Fast Cars Fetishism

Bond catches the first glimpse of the woman who will become his wife, on pp.012 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service:

It was then, on a ten-mile straight cut through a forest, that it happened. Triple wind-horns screamed their banshee discord in his ear, and a low, white two-seater, a Lancia Flaminia Zagato Spyder with its hood down, tore past him, cut in cheekily across his bonnet and pulled away, the sexy boom of its twin exhausts echoing back from the border of trees, And it was a girl driving, a girl with a shocking pink scarf tied round her hair, leaving a brief pink tail that the wind blew horizontal behind her.

If there was one thing that set James Bond really moving in life, with the exception of gun-play, it was being passed at speed by a pretty girl; and it was his experience that girls who drove competitively like that were always pretty -- and exciting.

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Listening to: Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins - You Are What You Love
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James Bond Daily: Honor Among Thieves

From an internal SPECTRE briefing session, on p. 227 of Thunderball:

During the planning stages, months before in Paris, Blofeld had warned Largo that if trouble was caused by any members of his team it was to be expected from the two Russians, the ex-members of SMERSH, No 10 and No 11. 'Conspiracy,' Blofeld had said, 'is their lifeblood. Hand in hand with conspiracy walks suspicion. These two men will always be wondering if they are not the object of some subsidiary plot -- to give them the most dangerous work, to make them fall-guys for the police, to kill them and steal their share of the profits. They will be inclined to inform against their colleagues and always to have reservations about the plans they are agreed upon. For them, the obvious plan, the right way to do a thing, will have been chosen for some ulterior reason which is being kept hidden from them. They will need constant reassurance that nothing is being kept hidden from them, but, once they have accepted their orders, they will carry them out meticulously and without regard for their person safety. Such men, apart from their special talents, are worth having. But you will please remember what I have said, and should there be trouble, should they try and sow mistrust within the team, you must act quickly and with utter ruthlessness. The maggots of mistrust and disloyalty must not be allowed to get a hold in your team., They are the enemies within that can destroy even the most meticulous planning.'

Immediately afterward, coming out of from this flashback, one of the Russians does try to sow mistrust, and Largo goes act with utter ruthlessness.
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Listening to: R.E.M. - Body Count (live)
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James Bond Daily: Octopussy and The Living Daylights

And then we came to the end.

Octopussy and the Living Daylights was originally published a good two years after Fleming's death, and then collected the two novelette-length stories in the title. Since then, it's accumulated two other, shorter stories, the last stray pieces of the Bond corpus. The resulting book, even in its four-story expanded incarnation, is barely half the length of even the shortest novels of the series; it's very much an afterthought. So Penguin's recent book Quantum of Solace, which collects these stories along with the ones in For Your Eyes Only to make a Complete Shorter James Bond, is probably a better bet for the casual reader.

And those four stories are:

"Octopussy," originally serialized in the March and April 1966 issues of Playboy -- It's from the point of view of a gone-to-seed British colonial (in Jamaica, of course) whose sordid wartime past comes back to confront him in the person of 007. Along with The Spy Who Loved Me, it's one of Fleming's very few stories that show Bond from another point of view. And the "Octopussy" here is an actual octopus, much like the Pus-feller of Doctor No.

"The Property of a Lady," from a 1963 Sotheby's annual (and reprinted a year later in Playboy, which would take any Bond it could get) -- Bond uses a known Soviet mole's payoff -- a fabulously valuable Faberge globe -- to find and target for diplomatic expulsion the KGB's local Resident Director at a Sotheby's auction. It's probably the most bloodless Bond story, and one whose plot doesn't entirely make sense -- if the KGB doesn't have a good sense of the value of this object, how could they possibly be able to bid it up at the auction without risking being the winning bidder?

"The Living Daylights," from a 1962 color section of The London Sunday Times and reprinted in the US in Argosy (which I'm always surprised to find survived as late as 1962) -- Bond acts as a sniper in Berlin to stop a KGB sniper and allow a British agent to get across the border. This is the only Fleming Bond story to take place in Berlin, the heart of the Cold War, and it's one of the great contradictions of the series that such a Cold Warrior spent most of his time so far away from the serious battlefields. Also notable for being another example of how the literary Bond does not find it easy to kill, particularly when he has an extra reason to leave a target alive.

"007 in New York," a vignette added to the first US edition of Fleming's Thrilling Cities (as a consolation prize to soften the nasty things he said about real NYC) after first appearing in the New York Herald Tribune -- Bond muses about the splendors of New York and about his mission to tip off an ex-colleague that her boyfriend is a Soviet agent upon whom the American net will very shortly fall. Not really a story at all; the action happens entirely offstage, and there's little of that. If it were funny, it would be a shaggy dog story -- what's the equivalent for a thriller?

And that ends the Bond stories. I still have a pile of interesting quotes, which will keep "James Bond Daily" running for another ten days or so. (Unless someone has a copy of Colonel Sun lying about that they'd be willing to lend me?)

James Bond Daily: A Drink Fit for a Man

Bond drinks a lot of different things, but he's often fond of something much like this drink, from p.157 of Doctor No:

'And I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini -- with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka.'

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Listening to: Josh Ritter - Man Burning
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James Bond Daily: The Man With The Golden Gun

This is the last Bond novel by Fleming; he didn't consider it finished when he died in 1964, and the question of just who made it publishable (and how much work went into that effort) has been hotly debated since then by the kind of people who care about such things. It's one of the thinnest of the Bond novels -- about the same length as Casino Royale, the first novel, and only slightly longer than the overgrown novelette The Spy Who Loved Me.

Golden Gun is somewhat programmatic as well, running quickly through its plot without the customary asides and thoughts that Fleming incorporated into the earlier novels -- leading me to assume that writing those was part of Fleming's revision process, that the first draft was to get the plot down and correct, and afterwards was to bring the book up to the necessary polish. (I may be wrong; I clearly haven't made a serious study of the subject.)

It begins a year after You Only Live Twice; Bond has been missing and presumed dead since then. But a man claiming to be Bond -- and knowing more than most of those who have claimed to be Bond -- has contacted the Secret Service and asked to be put through to see M. This man -- who is Bond, of course -- does get in to see M, but it turns out that he came home via the Soviet Union, and had been brainwashed into an assassination plot.

But this is still the early '60s, so brains can always be washed and re-washed. Bond is captured, sent off for the rest cure, and -- more quickly here than I assume Fleming would have wanted it to be in the final draft -- propped back up in his suit and license to kill, and sent off on a mission. If he succeeds, then he's back in grace. If not...well, he'll have died in harness, which is what everyone expected.

The job is to kill Paco "Pistols" Scaramanga, a killer for hire working for the Castro government in Cuba (still fairly young, and assumed to be shaky, at this point), who is also the point man for a consortium of organized crime cartels investing in a Jamaican casino. (Once again, Fleming's own connections to Jamaica drag Bond there, out of all of the places in the world -- for a superspy in the height of the Cold War, he spent an awful lot of time in the topical heat, and most of it before the Cuban revolution at that.)

The plot is pure Fleming, and there are many of his usual touches along the way -- in the final confrontation between Bond and Scaramanga, on a train and off it, and in the return of Bond's CIA friend Felix Leiter -- but Golden Gun feels as unfinished as the shell of a hotel that hosts the gathering of mobsters at the center of its plot.

James Bond Daily: The Law of the Quantum of Solace

From the story of the same name, on pp.092-093 of For Your Eyes Only:

The Governor paused and looked reflectively over at Bond. He said: 'You're not married, but I think it's the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good. That particular insult to the ego -- worse, to the instinct of self-preservation -- can never be forgiven. I've noticed this in hundreds of marriages. I've seen flagrant infidelities patched up, I've seen crimes and even murder forgiven by the other party, let alone bankruptcy and every other form of social crime. Incurable disease, blindness, disaster -- all these can be overcome. But never the death of common humanity in one of the partners. I've thought about this and I've invented a rather high-sounding title for this basic factor in human relations. I have called it the Law of the Quantum of Solace.'

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Listening to: Moonbabies - Forever Changes Everything Now
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James Bond Daily: You Only Live Twice

Bond is a broken man as You Only Live Twice begins, the one thing he cared about in life (however clumsily Fleming had set that thing up in the previous novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service) taken from him. He's fumbled two missions in a row, and this time he's not amusing himself with writing mental resignation letters -- he's beginning to expect M to demand his resignation, for cause, at any time.

You Only Live Twice is the Bond novel I remembered most clearly from when I read them all about twenty-five years ago, and it's probably the best book in the series. (And that must be gratifying to the shade of Fleming, since this is the last book he finished and saw published.) Series novels often have trouble making credible threats to their heroes, but Live Twice starts out with Bond still in shock from an event that happened eight months before, has his obituary prominently featured, and ends with him walking unknowingly into the worst possible danger for a man in his line of work. And that doesn't even include what happens to him at the Castle of Death -- a refurbished medieval pile on a rocky Kyushu cliff, filled with the deadliest flora and fauna of six continents and its own indigenous volcanic fumaroles -- or at the hands of its mysterious master.

You Only Live Twice is a "you've got one last chance" novel -- I believe that wasn't nearly the cop-movie cliche in 1964 that it became in subsequent decades -- in which Bond's boss M sends him to Japan on a secret diplomatic mission: to ingratiate himself with Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese secret service, and to get the British access to the Japanese sources of Soviet intelligence. (At the moment, those are heading directly to the USA, which is not inclined to share with a country they're more and more considering a very junior partner.) So it is grounded in the specifics of that moment in the Cold War, like the best Bond stories -- tied strongly to the geopolitics of two large blocs facing each other, and elbowing sharply within the ranks on each side.

Bond spends some time with Tiger, and the two become something like friends -- across a gulf of cultures that Fleming portrays well, if in the terminology (and with the unexamined biases) of his time. And Tiger decides that he'll give Bond what he wants...if Bond does a mission for him.

And that's where the Castle of Death, owned by an eccentric Swiss biologist, comes in. The Japanese government is concerned by the ever-growing number of suicides that the Castle is attracting, but has no aboveboard reason to expel him and can't be seen to move against him directly. So Tiger tells Bond to kill the man, shut down his bizarre garden of death, and then all will be well. It doesn't go that smoothly, even with the aid of Kissy Suzuki, a gorgeous young Ama shellfish diver from a nearby village; the secretive lord of the Castle of Death is an old enemy of Bond's. The last fifty pages of Live Twice are a series of attacks on Bond -- mentally, physically, and emotionally -- and nearly all of them strike home, and most of them do permanent damage.

You Only Live Twice is a doom-laden book, filled with death, decay, and the promise of mortality. It's easily the best of the Bond novels, folding the by-now-familiar spycraft and smirking, self-satisfied villain into a larger context and making a world in which Bond is no longer larger-than-life, just a damaged man who's no longer even as good at the one thing that used to distinguish him. I'm unsure if it works quite as well out of the context of the other novels, but it's well worth reading, even for readers who have no interest in working through the rest of Fleming.
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Listening to: Laura Cantrell - Love Vigilantes
via FoxyTunes