On a damp spring evening in 1955, Ian Fleming returned home to find his wife, Ann, hosting a salon at their house in Victoria Square. Raucous laughter was emanating from the drawing-room downstairs. One by one, the cream of London’s literati — Cyril Connolly among them — were reading aloud passages from the Bond novels and collapsing in fits of giggles. As humiliations go, this is hard to top. Fleming may have been modest about his abilities as a writer (in a letter to Sir Winston Churchill he described Live and Let Die as ‘an unashamed thriller’ whose ‘only merit is that it makes no demands on the mind of the reader’), but that modesty was entirely false. In common with many commercially successful authors, he craved the sort of praise routinely doled out to lesser-known writers with a fraction of his sales.
The snobbery which has hampered Fleming’s literary reputation ever since was exemplified by Sebastian Faulks when he was approached to write a Bond novel to celebrate the centenary of Fleming’s birth. ‘It was like asking someone who writes complex symphonic music if they would like to write a three-minute pop song,’ Faulks responded, with magnificent hauteur. ‘I do inner lives, not underwater explosions.’ However, careful study of the Bond backlist, doubtless combined with a whopping cheque from Ian Fleming Publications, convinced the author of Birdsong that he would be wise to follow in the footsteps of another literary giant, Kingsley Amis, who had himself written a paean to 007, Colonel Sun, in 1968.
The result is Devil May Care, an almost faultless replica of Fleming’s Bond, right down to the Arnott supercharger in 007’s customised Bentley and the three gold rings on his Morland Specials. With an unnervingly accurate ear for Fleming’s bracing dialogue and taut, energetic prose, Faulks has given Bond fans a hugely enjoyable entertainment, expertly paced and cleverly imagined.
In several ways, Devil May Care marks an improvement on the original Bonds. Fleming wrote at terrific speed, churning out 007’s adventures at the rate of one a year to satisfy the demands of a ravenous reading public. Too often, it shows. Some of the books are inexpertly structured — think of the interminable game of bridge which clogs up the first half of Moonraker — and there are passages in The Spy Who Loved Me which would shame a pornographer.
Comments
David Short
June 16th, 2008 8:44pmThe Spy Who Loved Me was not a 'book' but a short story. And it was written in the first person, from a woman's viewpoint. I don't think any other writer has equalled Fleming's perception in that task, except perhaps William Boyd with Braazaville Beach.
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David Leigh
June 14th, 2008 5:12pmThe Arnott supercharger, three gold rings and various other details are just two instances of how Devil May Care is nothing more than a "paint-by-numbers" Bond novel and capture the essence of neither Ian Fleming nor Bond. All involved should be ashamed.
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Graham Rye
June 6th, 2008 12:58pmAnyone believing that Sebastian Faulk's new Bond novel DEVIL MAY CARE is *anything* like an Ian Fleming 007 novel, and heaven forbid, is an improvement on the original is either one of the following or all of them: (tick box as applicable)
1. Haven't read any of Ian Fleming's Bond novels.
2. Didn't understand any of Ian Fleming's Bond novels.
3. A complete idiot!
If this 'novel' had come across any decent editor's/publisher's desk in manuscript form with the author's name Fred Bloggs on the title page it would have ended up in the wastepaper basket where it belongs.
An insult to the memory of Ian Fleming and everything he wrote!
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Ryan R. Scott
June 6th, 2008 2:00amWell-written article, Charles. Nice to read your thoughts on Devil May Care. Only one nagging little error sticks out for this Fleming purist - you mention Leiter lost his limbs to the shark in Thunderball, when it was actually Live and Let Die. But no harm done! Keep up the good work.
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