What made Fleming seemingly keep changing his mind? Was it because President John F Kennedy, a voracious reader of all the Bond novels, said that his favourite story was From Russia With Love (published in 1957)? On the other hand, the author Anthony Burgess said emphatically that Goldfinger (1959) was the best writing he’d seen from Fleming.
‘All this is, in some measure, a great joke, but Fleming’s passion for plausibility, his own naval intelligence background, and a kind of sincere Manicheism, allied to journalistic efficiency in the management of his récit, make his work [Goldfinger] rather impressive.’
What about Raymond Chandler who admired the first two books but was less keen on Diamonds Are Forever (1956). In 1958, the two recorded a conversation for the BBC. When Chandler said he thought that up until then Casino Royale (1953) was best, Fleming immediately replied ‘Yes, yes, I can see that. Yes, it probably was.’ Fleming then hints he might be just as proud as his second Bond outing, Live and Let Die (1954). ‘But Live and Let Die was as serious a novel. Writing is an arduous process, you are constantly depressed by the progress of your opus and feel that it is all nonsense and that nobody will be interested.’
Later Fleming went on to say, ‘It’s true he [Chandler] wanted me to raise my sights. He seemed to think I had it in me to write proper novels and I was just being lazy about it. My talents were extended to their absolute limits in writing books like Diamonds are Forever and From Russia with Love.’
Indeed Fleming was to write to Chandler before he set forth on From Russia With Love,
‘Probably the fault with all my books is that I don’t take them seriously enough…You after all write ‘novels of suspense’ – if not sociological studies – whereas my books are straight pillow fantasies…’
Are we getting any closer to what Fleming really thought? Or is this a wild goose chase where every time a writer is asked the ‘what is your favourite?’ question they offer a different opinion.
In 1963, Ian Fleming was asked once again which of his books was his favourite, this time by Allen W Dulles. Dulles tells Fleming that From Russia With Love is his own favourite, and Fleming replies,
‘Well it’s great fun. I like it best too, as a matter of fact…’
On a second occasion in later life, Fleming confirms that From Russia With Love is his best book. ‘Personally I think From Russia with Love was, in many respects, my best book,’ going on to say ‘but the great thing is that each one of the books seems to have been a favourite with one or other section of the public and none has yet been completely damned.’
Not quite true as The Spy Who Loved Me received a pretty much universal panning.
So why, when looking back at his oeuvre, did Fleming come to the (right?) conclusion that From Russia With Love was his best? As noted above, Fleming thought that its writing had stretched his abilities. He was always clear that his books first and foremost were meant to entertain. In the early books, he wrote not with a single narrative arc where the plot needs to hang together across a coherent storyline but as a succession of episodes – like a journalist writing a series of articles and then only needing the flimsiest of bridges to connect them. In other words he was ‘just being lazy about it.’
Now, with From Russia With Love, his style of writing had changed. Had Fleming matured as a writer? Would he now be seen as another Graham Greene? (Who he admired and yet was jealous of in equal measure. He once named Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Eric Ambler and Graham Greene as his primary literary influences.)
At the outset, From Russia With Love was going to be the fifth and final novel as Fleming believed he had run dry of ideas. It was almost as if Fleming was making one last supreme effort to write a decent novel in the vein of Greene rather than a four penny horror – as Fleming called them and which he had grown up on – or the Victorian penny dreadful. In fact behind the scenes his editor William Plomer was encouraging Fleming to write in a more literary way and, despite all of Fleming’s self-doubts, to see himself as a ‘serious writer.’ So Fleming had both Chandler and Plomer urging him to write the great literary spy story.
‘Breathing became difficult. Bond sighed to the depth of his lungs. He clenched his jaws and half closed his eyes, as people do when they want to hide their drunkenness. Through his eyelashes he watched the basket being carried to the door. He prised his eyes open. Desperately he focused Mathias. ‘I shan’t need a girl, Rene,’ he said thickly. Now he had to gasp for breath. Again his hand moved up towards his cold face. He had an impression of Mathis starting towards him. Bond felt his knees begin to buckle. He said or thought he said, ‘I’ve already got the loveliest…’ Bond pivoted slowly on his heel and crashed head-long to the wine-red floor.’
These beautifully composed words from the end of of the novel. Was Bond dead? Did it reflect how Fleming himself felt as he wrote these last words? Fleming was in poor health at the time, and was struggling with a bout of depression. This is seen in the story, where Bond for the first time becomes both a more fleshed out character and yet one who now articulates his own doubts and fears about what he needs to do to complete his mission – just as Fleming has his own doubts about whether he could ever complete the great novel. That despite not appearing in the first 77 pages.
Some years later when he had lunch with Len Deighton, Deighton wrote that Fleming had seriously toyed with the idea of killing off Bond at this point and perhaps giving up writing all together. He said that for Fleming, writing was not a joy as it was for many professional writers, that he was quite open about hating it – and the revision process even more.
In the end it did not matter. Just as Bond was to rise from the dead so Fleming was persuaded to continue the series not least for the simple reason that From Russia With Love proved to be a major sales success, and received glowing reviews from the critics and friends. How could he give up now? Clearly more money was to be made.
But while he was persuaded to continue writing, and despite the applause, he decided that From Russia With Love was too bold an experiment: Bond not appearing until half way through; a narrative based on real life? It seems as well that the effort to write in this more literary style was just too exhausting for Fleming. In his future stories he would stick to a tried and trusty formula – the first of which was to be Dr No. They were, as he said, fictional fantasies showing the ‘romance and adventure’ of the spying game as in truth much of spying is rather dull. He said ‘the best agents, the real professionals quietly do their jobs and seem very unimpressive.’ And as he wrote to Al Hart, he would ‘write the same book over and over again.’ He had decided that it was better to be a money-making best seller than an obscure literary genius.
Hence come Dr No we are back to the convention of having a larger than life villain, with an outlandish hideout (nothing could be more bizarre than guano mine), and a plan to blow up American missiles. Whether it delivered on his and his friends’ aspirations or not, Fleming was most comfortable writing of the fun, romance and fantasy of the spy game. (And in a story where Bond appears from the start.) He also returned to stringing together a series of episodes that ultimately led to a certain chaos in the plotting.
With From Russia With Love Fleming had reached a pinnacle. It is not that the subsequent books are weak – well other than The Man with the Golden Gun, the failed experiment of The Spy Who Loved Me and the short stories– it’s that he slips back into his comfort zone.
So what had Fleming done to reach these heights? Whether consciously or subconsciously Fleming has adopted the structure of all the best thriller writers. He also improved his handling of character and his ability to lift the villains off the page. This description of Rosa Klebb is nigh on repulsively perfect. ‘The thinning orange hair scraped back to the tight, obscene bun; the shiny yellow-brown eyes that stared so coldly at General G. through the sharp-edged squares of glass, the wedge of thickly powdered, large-pored nose; the wet trap of a mouth, that went on opening and shutting as if it was operated by wires under the chin.’ Fleming must have hated her, and she clearly represent the type of woman who featured in Fleming’s nightmares, leaning over him and bringing her horrible mouth slowly closer.
He now used an extended set-up which lays out what the Russians plan to do and how to do it. We are taken through a story that is fast but wholly believable. But Bond is nowhere to be seen. Where is he? When is he going to make an entrance? The reader is being tantalised but, at the same time, is engrossed with the set-up.
In Part One – The Plan, readers are afforded a privileged and wholly authentic glimpse into the Russian intelligence machine. A honey trap is being prepared to humiliate the British by murdering 007 as he participates in a sordid sexual tryst. None of this is far-fetched. And Fleming’s knowledge makes for gripping reading as the puzzle is assembled in the conference rooms of SMERSH, although he had more than one reader write in to say that elements of his descriptions of Moscow were incorrect.
In second part, the Execution, we are taken through a sequence of superb set pieces such as the gypsy encampment fight, and the assassination of the killer Krilencu as he peers through the mouth of Marilyn Monroe. The reader is unaware whether Bond will fall for the Russian’s trap or catch them out before it is even sprung.
A number of distractions, red herrings and unplanned events then take place such as the arrival of Nash, and the death of Darko Kerim on the Orient Express. Here we see for the first time, Bond showing emotion and regret.
‘This wonderful man who had carried the sun with him. Now he was extinguished, totally dead.’
Perhaps he isn’t so cold hearted after all. In fact before this he is critical of the way that Kerim has killed in cold-blood. That’s not his way.
Then finally, after he does prevail over the Russians, we have the confrontation with Klebb where we expect that he will prevail yet again but in fact is poisoned and, for all the reader knows, is left for dead. We were all wrong. Our presumptions proven incorrect. Bond is fallible, and finally pays the ultimate price.
It is therefore unsurprising that From Russia With Love is nearly always in any list compiled of the best Bond novels. Sometimes it takes the number 1 position, and always for the same reasons as spelt out above. The publisher William Plomer realised how good it was, that it was a break from the past. ‘I greatly enjoyed it and all its verbal inventiveness,’ he wrote after reading the first draft manuscript. Fleming’s friend Daniel George (and a reader at Cape) read a copy and advised there were a number of stylistic anachronisms that he would correct, such as too many ‘there was.’ He then goes on to say that ‘I think this is your best book, the most tightly and ingeniously constructed, the most original.’
With such enthusiasm, Plomer took the decision to create a new style of cover illustration by employing the talents of the artist Richard Chopping. As my favourite Fleming web-site says ‘The impact of Chopping’s work was to elevate Ian Fleming’s book sales and leave a lasting legacy on book jacket designers.’
When he put his mind to it, Fleming surely knew what was good and what was bad, although the novel still suffers from characteristic Fleming faults: sometimes silly and avoidable coincidences, an over indulgence with back stories such as the biographies of the Russian generals, and definitely too much exposition. Fleming was not confident at using information gaps or the power of mystery.
It is sometimes written that From Russia With Love catapulted sales of the Bond books but this is a slight exaggeration. Since the publication of Casino Royale, sales had grown exponentially with the help of the Pan editions and serialisations in the Daily Express. As the Bookseller trade magazine had written, ‘between 1956 and 1958, Fleming’s UK paperback sales doubled to more than 100,000 copies a year. By the end of 1959, sales topped 200,000.’ Big growth yes but in part down to inherent growth as the Bond phenomena increasingly became part of British culture.
So sales were always going to grow and, of course, once the films appeared they skyrocketed until the bubble burst with the publication of Octopussy.
If Fleming sold his writing soul for the money what did it matter. He was rich and famous. Yet he was honest enough not to pretend that he had written a better book than From Russia With Love. He knew it was the best, and he was rightly proud.
Background
(For the best list of the best James Bond novels go to Literary 007.)
References:
James Bond: The Man and His World. London. Henry Chancellor. John Murray. 2005
The Life of Ian Fleming. John Pearson. Bloomsbury. 1966.
CIA files online.
The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters. Edited by Fergus Fleming. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2015.
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Mid-Century Bond 