8 replies to this topic

[moorebond82]

I saw this topic about TSWLM so i thought i'd start one on my favorite Ian Fleming novel and would like to hear what everybody else thinks of it.

[Qwerty]

Of all the Fleming novels, this is my least favourite (but I do really enjoy every single one of them).

The Man With The Golden Gun does one thing in my opinion, that none of Ian Fleming's other James Bond 007 novels do: it proves that even with the weakest of his James Bond adventures (my opinion here) he still manages to have created a gripping story that makes it hard to put the book down.

The opening sequence is probably the most universally liked section of the story, and for good reason. It sets the tone for the rest of the book: fast-paced and quick to the point. It's quite different from the magnificence of previous books like Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, or You Only Live Twice. It's a rather simple and straightforward adventure, but it somehow works in the end.

Francisco Scaramanga steals the show as the villain of the story, and is most definitely one of the high points of the entire book. Simplicity is again stressed here in my opinion--he's not in the same league as Hugo Drax or Ernst Stavro Blofeld--but this gangster-type villain has a terrific entrance in the story line and stays pretty much up to par throughout.

No matter if it is Moonraker or The Man With The Golden Gun that a Bond fan is reading, they all work. Different strengths and weaknesses to each, but none of them are failures.

The Man With The Golden Gun:

[moorebond82]

Yeah he isn't Blofeld or Drax but i think the character of Scaramanga is a bit more raw which is what makes him such a good character. If only fleming had lived long enough to edit the book before it was released who knows how the book would have changed? I read a article here on CBn on the subject of possible homosexual undercurrents in TMWTGG. If fleming had lived to edit the book these undercurrents may have been alot more clear and who knows where the character would have gone after that.

Edited by moorebond82, 17 December 2006 - 05:03 AM.

[crheath]

It is well known that Fleming died before he could finish it. Gilrose publishing had to release it as it was since the previous Bond, YOLT, ended on a cliffhanger...

[00Twelve]

I liked the novel myself, thought it was better than its reputation. I, too, love the opening section, as well as the hunt/duel at the end. Still waiting for a suspenseful hunt like that one on screen! (No, Octopussy doesn't really get there on suspense. ) And I admit, I love Felix being there with Bond in the last Fleming novel!

[Qwerty]

...who knows how the book would have changed?

Exactly.

[wattenscheid09]

Golden Gun has a very special place in my heart - as it is one of the books that is so very different from the film version. I always like that in a Fleming novel. Also, I like the "Bond Reborn" concept - and, funnily enough, after the overtly-mind-sould-searching YOLT protagonist the dry, underdeveloped Bond of TMWTGG is a change. Add to this an exciting finale AND the touch of Bond hooking up with his ex secretary. Oh, and one final point... (blushes) when i was a teenager the dance scene with the hand left a deep impression on me.

So I like this one much more that I should.

[Fro]

It's definitely unfinished... the writing style is quite different than any of the other novels in some of the chapters.

Edited by Fro, 13 February 2007 - 10:38 PM.

[blackjack60]

It's such a feeble book--Fleming really was right when he said he was running out of puff. Were it not for that slam-bang beginning I'd wish he'd never written it.
The brainwashed Bond opening is terrific, but everything afterward is problematic. Fleming utterly skimps over how Bond was cured, briefly pausing to give an offhand reference to electroshock therapy once Bond is in Jamaica.
And why Jamaica again? This is the third time Fleming's used the location. The island was hardly such an espionage hot-spot. Why not send Bond to Cuba, where Scaramanga actually operates from? Or any other location--Fleming loved hong Kong, why couldn't he have set a Bond story there? Setting the story yet again in Jamaica was an act of laziness.
As for Scaramanga--what a letdown. After all that great buildup about how he's the greatest assassin on Earth, how even Bond can't compete with him, how he's psychologically warped and may even have homosexual tendencies and phallic worship--after all this, he just turns out to be a thug, nothing more than a brother of the hoodlums in The Spy Who Loved Me. And unlike Sluggsy and Horror, he's an idiot--why on Earth would he hire Bond out of the blue?
Fleming screwed up with the character. After telling us what a great shot Scaramanga is, we don't see him do anything flashier than kill a couple of birds. And his possibly homosexual impulses are forgotten about--Kingsley Amis once suggested that Scaramanga hired Bond because he was attracted to him. If only Fleming had had such an idea, the book would be a hell of a lot more interesting. And what the hell is Scaramanga's big scheme again? Something about sugar futures? I've read the book three times and still can't remember what it is. All I know is that it's smalltime and boring compared to the schemes of villains past. And the rest of the book's action is similarly dull--once again we get a villains' meeting and a train fight. The final confrontation between Bond and Scaramanga is an utter let-down, since Scaramanga just sits there injured while Bond rather pathetically and stupidly asks him if he's got any last requests. So much for a death duel between her majesty's secret servant and the world's greatest gunman.
Mary Goodnight seems like a fun character--demure but willing, and Bond's love of shocking her is cute. Too bad she's hardly in the novel! She's got so little to do. Compare her with Kissy Suzuki, who not only saved Bond's but kept him in captivity! Of course, back then Bond was actually an interesting person. The Bond of TMWTGG hardly has a personality. He's been through hell but you'd never know it. It's as if he'd never been married and widowed. And what is it with a professional government assassin suddenly becoming so wussy about killing people? Scaramanga has already tried to kill him, and yet Bond dawdles like an idiot. Had Fleming actually developed Bond's growing weakness as a killer in detail, Bond's weakness might not look so suicidally stupid. As it is, he's lucky to have survived at all. M really ought to retire him.

By the time Fleming wrote TMWTGG, health problems had forced him to cut his daily writing time in half. The result of this was a novel that was a weak shadow of its predecessors, a book that, as one hostile critic wrote, could have been written in 1911. It's to Fleming's credit that he knew the book needed a rewrite. But it's also disturbing: Fleming was not a multiple-drafts type of writer. He bashed out a draft and then corrected and added bits and pieces to it. It's not likely that any of his books had a first draft as poor as TMWTGG's. Revising it and bringing it up to usual standards would have required massive rewrites, which Fleming might not have been capable of. Had Fleming survived, his ill-health and desire to keep the Bond factory running might have resulted in him cranking out increasingly weaker, feebler Bond novels. Perhaps death helped save the series' quality: there's only one outright stinker of a novel in the Bond series, and it's The Man With the Golden Gun, a book that reads like the work of an elderly Fleming imitator.

Edited by blackjack60, 11 February 2007 - 05:45 PM.