47 replies to this topic

[David Schofield]

You can read about The Heart of Erzulie on the CBn main page. I'm afraid I do not know a whole lot about Per Fine Ounce, but simply search through the older literary threads on CBn, it has been discussed.

Seems like IFP are sitting on a fortune of cult stuff with all these unpublished efforts.

[Qwerty]

It would be terrific to see that story, along with the other three Benson short stories released in a book collection.

[David Schofield]

It would be terrific to see that story, along with the other three Benson short stories released in a book collection.

Isn't there a fuller, more detailed version of the first Benson short story - its name slips my mind at the time (so memorable!) but the one where Bond's son gets killed - in the vault at IFP?

[Qwerty]

In a different language, I'm nearly postitive there is. (The title is “Blast From The Past”.)

[David Schofield]

In a different language, I'm nearly postitive there is. (The title is “Blast From The Past”.)

Sarcasm here, Qwerty, and I'm sorry but... by "in a different language" you don't mean better written/by someone else, do you?

[Qwerty]

Published in a different language, I believe there is a longer version. Not in English. That's all I really know.

[spynovelfan]

Sorry if I came over as Benson-bashing earlier. I know he didn't have an easy job. I may well try to read ZERO MINUS TEN or one of the others - part of my dislike for HIGH TIME TO KILL was that some of it was set in Brussels, and it was either heavy-handed (he meets his contact at the Mannekin Pis, which is a little like going to Paris and having a secret rendez-vous at the Eiffel Tower, or London and Big Ben - it's just very obvious) or wrong (Bond parks in the Grand'Place, which anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the city will laugh at; and so on). So that kind of put me off.

But I never say never again. Usually. Unless I'm dreaming of dying, of course.

Edited by spynovelfan, 16 February 2005 - 01:31 PM.

[David Schofield]

Sorry if I came over as Benson-bashing earlier. I know he didn't have an easy job. I may well try to read ZERO MINUS TEN or one of the others - part of my dislike for HIGH TIME TO KILL was that some of it was set in Brussels, and it was either heavy-handed (he meets his contact at the Mannekin Pis, which is a little like going to Paris and having a secret rendez-vous at the Eiffel Tower, or London and Big Ben - it's just very obvious) or wrong (Bond parks in the Grand'Place, which anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the city will laugh at; and so on). So that kind of put me off.

But I never say never again. Usually. Unless I'm dreaming of dying, of course.

Spy, try a doubleshot and keep going. It makes them slightly more bearable!

[Qwerty]

Quite, there are a few reviews in the CBn Literary 007 section on the main page if you're trying to find an idea of which book might be a good read. You may want to check them out.

[GreggAllinson]

Presumably Per Fine Ounce must be really for it to be kept under wraps and Benson's stuff released.

The reason seems to be that it's supposedly yet another diamond smuggling novel (after Diamonds Are Forever and Fleming's The Diamond Smugglers). But, hell, it couldn't be any worse than DAF.

[spynovelfan]

Do we actually know if PER FINE OUNCE is a complete and final draft? I'd be interested in seeing it, of course, but I read a few Geofrrey Jenkins novels years ago. They're pretty similar to Desmond Bagley, Alistair Maclean, that kind of thing - but not as good. I mean, they're okay, he can write, he knows how to construct a thriller, and so on. But he wasn't Desmond Bagley or Alistair Maclean, let alone Ian Fleming. I also feel - and this may be a bit silly - that you really do need to have a British writer, or someone brought up in Britain, to write this character. Otherwise, it's pastiche. Even had I not known before reading HIGH TIME TO KILL that Benson was American, I'd have realised very quickly, because there's an extravagance to the depiction of the relationship between Bond and his nemesis (can't remember the name) that a Brit would have avoided. Non-Brits will invariably either leave out the Britishness, or overplay it. I can't see Jenkins getting across that clubland smoky urban feel very successfully - I think he usually wrote about the countryside, nature, wide open spaces, frontier stuff. You need both in a Bond novel - the city sophisticate in the jungle.

Is there a thread about Jenkins somewhere? Perhaps I'll have me a little search.

[GreggAllinson]

Do we actually know if PER FINE OUNCE is a complete and final draft?

I could be totally wrong here, but I believe Raymond Benson has said that it is.

[David Schofield]

Yes, Benson told me that PER FINE OUNCE was a completed manuscript, and when it was rejected by Glidrose, he said the Jenkins used the plot and changed the characters for one of his own published later books after that.

Therefore, do we suppose this is in the vault at IFP and that there's no chance of it being published now as it would probably show up some of the efforts of Gardner and Benson?

[spynovelfan]

Yes, Benson even says in one of his interviews that it is in the IFP vaults, and that he supposed he could have asked to get seeing it and have read it, but he didn't ask them when he was Bond author.

Yes, I read that. I do find it a bit odd. A life-long Bond fan, particularly of the literary Bond, well aware of the existence of an unpublished Bond novel in the hands of Fleming's estate, is asked by Fleming's estate to write another novel. And doesn't think to ask to see the unpublished one. He didn't even seem curious about it! Very very odd. The whole continuation saga is full of oddities. Gardner not seeming to like Bond. Glidrose not really thinking Gardner was any good, but asking him to do it anyway. Refusing Benson's idea of period novels, but askign Higson to do it, when Bond's 13. Vetoing THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH as a title for a continuation because it wasn't Fleming enough (!), but coming up with titles like OH, NO, MR BOND! instead.

Utter bizarrity.

Edited by spynovelfan, 18 February 2005 - 11:30 AM.

[David Schofield]

Yes, Benson even says in one of his interviews that it is in the IFP vaults, and that he supposed he could have asked to get seeing it and have read it, but he didn't ask them when he was Bond author.

Yes, I read that. I do find it a bit odd. A life-long Bond fan, particularly of the literary Bond, well aware of the existence of an unpublished Bond novel in the hands of Fleming's estate, is asked by Fleming's estate to write another novel. And doesn't think to ask to see the unpublished one. He didn't even seem curious about it! Very very odd. The whole continuation saga is full of oddities. Gardner not seeming to like Bond. Glidrose not really thinking Gardner was any good, but asking him to do it anyway. Refusing Benson's idea of period novels, but askign Higson to do it, when Bond's 13. Vetoing THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH as a title for a continuation because it wasn't Fleming enough (!), but coming up with titles like OH, NO, MR BOND! instead.

Utter bizarrity.

Spy, don't you think the whole point of Benson's not wanting to read Per Fine Ounce might have something to do with his own lack of confidence in his writing? For example, if he had read it and found it to be a higher standard of work than his own - yet it had been rejected by IFP when their standards were higher - how would he hve reconcilled his own rather poor (IMO) efforts?

[spynovelfan]

I doubt that, frankly. I could understand why he might not ask when he was writing his first one, for that reason. But after he'd done a few and had seen that IFP were accepting and publishing his stuff, why not ask then? Anyway, they'd published Gardner's stuff, hand't they? He'd read all that, and didn't think they were much cop (despite his understandable PR job rectifying that later on). So he can't have been *too* worried.

I doubt that they rejected Jenkins' novel because it wasn't good enough, anyway, considering their form.

[David Schofield]

I doubt that, frankly. I could understand why he might not ask when he was writing his first one, for that reason. But after he'd done a few and had seen that IFP were accepting and publishing his stuff, why not ask then? Anyway, they'd published Gardner's stuff, hand't they? He'd read all that, and didn't think they were much cop (despite his understandable PR job rectifying that later on). So he can't have been *too* worried.

I doubt that they rejected Jenkins' novel because it wasn't good enough, anyway, considering their form.

Well, I suppose it depends on WHY Jenkins wasn't published. The most detailed version I'd heard was that Jenkins was supposed to be Markham 2 but IFP chose not to publish the manuscript due to it quality. I totally agree this doesn't fit in with their usual low standards (unless Jenkins efforts was useless) but why else wouldn't IFP publish?

[spynovelfan]

I don't think the book will have been anywhere near as good as Fleming's or even Amis'. As I say, I read a few many moons ago, and they were fun, competent, but not especially earth-shattering thrillers. There's very little verve or style to them. Workmanlike woul be unfair, but he wasn't a writer you'd become obsessive about, or marvel at.

That said, he was a best-seller in southern Africa, and for me to have read his stuff at a British boarding school he must have broken out beyond there. At the time of Fleming's death, he'd had five novels published, all best-sellers in Africa and I think moderately so in Britain. Compare to Benson. There are hundreds of reasons why Glidrose might have rejected PER FINE OUNCE, but I doubt quality was one. Could have been that it was 'not the right time' for continuations, or whatever. I read somewhere that COLONEL SUN actually sold rather badly, which is why Amis never wrote the second one. Could have been that he was not a Brit, and someone at theclub thought that wasn't on. Could have been because he lived in Rhodesia, which was becoming inreasingly combative with the British government - by the time Jenkins submitted his final draft, it might well have been headline news, with Ian Smith declaring independence from the Commonwealth. So having a Rhodesian writer taking on the icon of the British Empire might have been very bad pubklcity. Could have been that someone thought 'we've rather done diamonds, no?'. Or someone said 'I don't like that bit with the snake'. Could have been that Bond slept with a black woman. Or didn't. Or Bond died in it. Could have been *anything*. Could have been that they thought it was unpublishable, too. But that it *was* unpublishable? Considering the career he had had and that he went on to publish around a dozen more thrillers, I find that unlikely.