'You Only Live Twice': Fleming's Best?

Apologies as I am not a member of the book reding club, but my thoughts are detailed in another (very similar) topic in the Ian Fleming forum. This is what I said then:

Perhaps one of Ian Fleming's strengths was that he never repeated himself. The Bond series ranges wildly from the 'down-to-earth' (if one will pardon the term) MOONRAKER to the truly fantastical YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. From the conventional to the adventurous. It is the breadth of styles, characters and structures that the Bond series encompasses that makes it truly remarkable, and yet throughout the protagonist remains very much the same character; despite his gradual descent into the turmoil which Fleming inflicts upon him in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

Risky, bold and imaginitive is YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. The novel is the most important of the Bond series; moreso, perhaps, even than ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. It represents the depth of the downward spiral that Bond goes through from the beginning, to the point that in the second chapter Bond is in the grip of abject depression. We see Bond at his most interesting, and Fleming seems to have thoroughly enjoyed putting his character through the grinder. We have a vulnerable Bond throughout; at first due to the loss of his wife as a result of his previous mission and then at being a gaijin in a society he does not understand. It is not a vulnerability in the feminine sense but an uncertainty about his life, his work and, indeed, his abilities.

The other characters are amongst Fleming's best drawn. Dikko Henderson, the brash Australian, has a good claim to be one of Bond's best allies. Tiger Tanaka, whom Fleming uses as an example of and statement on Japanese society, gives the piece some added depth. And Kissy Suzuki, who does not appear until around half way through the book, nevertheless makes an indelible impression. As so often in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, part of her strength is simply that she is so interesting and unconventional; and her actions at the end of the novel suggest that she is more than capable of getting what she wants.

Fleming drenches the entire piece in a sumptuous atmosphere, partcularly through the use of the Japanese locale. One really gets a sense that Fleming was enthused while writing YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, so richly and vividly does he infuse the novel with Japanese culture and character. It is almost as if Fleming was aware of the bizarre nature of what he was writing and really pushed the envelope. The Garden of Death. Toad sweat. The geyser in the Question Room. Yes, by the final page events take a most wonderfully weird and warped turn that the novel could certainly be described as Fleming's most interesting and daring.

Indeed, by delaying the revelation that Doctor Shatterhand - the collector of death - is in fact Blofeld and his ugly wife Irma Bunt and the resulting action until the final third of the book Fleming ensures that as well as in terms of ideas his structure is similarly daring and, ergo, engaging. So meticulous is the plotting and build-up that the reader is gripped from page one, while being absorbed by the atmosphere Fleming evokes and the prose that ensures YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is a classic in any sense of the term. His writing is truly magnificent, and what some other commentators have described as the 'Fleming sweep' is discernable throughout the passages. There are times when he is quite simply poetic with a use of words that will draw awe even in the most pretentious of readers.

So; is YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE Fleming's best? In the view of the author of this piece of slavish fanboy rambling masquerading as some sort of review, yes. It has much to recommend it: Fleming's undeniable sadism, its ludicrousness, the lyrical beauty of much of Fleming

Edited by Lazenby880, 30 December 2005 - 03:39 AM.

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