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[Willowhugger]

Colonel Sun Review

I got an old copy of this book and decided to review it. I've read it before and the book has always invoked strong feelings within me. It's strange why this is the case. I personally think the book is one of the few James Bond continuation novels to be sufficiently seamy. By seamy I mean that there's atmosphere and its dark and moody as a proper James Bond novel should be.

I happened to like the Gardner and Benson novels but they're continuations from the movie series in everything but technicality. I don't honestly mind this and buy them because I like reading about movie James Bond. I haven't purchased Devil May Care because I've become accustomed to the "new" style and don't want to read a Bond book written in the 21st centuries set in the 1960s.

I had heard of Ian Fleming's widow writing an inflammatory review of the work and that it had been suppressed because of libel. I don't know the contents of this work, though I would certainly love to read it. Unfortunately, I suspect that such a thing is lost to the ages.

Having established that I think the book is wonderfully written, extremely seemy, and that there's a very James Bond-ish plot (the literary James Bond not the movie James Bond); I want to warn people that the rest of this review is going to be extraordinarily hostile. I don't like giving bad reviews but I'm not going to hide my feelings about the work or what they invoke.

So, if you don't want to read further then note that if you're not interested in subtext then you are absolutely welcome to check out Colonel Sun and will undoubtedly walk away with the book with a wonderful reading experience. Purely classic Bond and you'll definitely get your money's worth from the experience. I say this in terms of writing and plot 7/10. Now, my actual review is going to start with a 1/10.

Now what do I hate about Colonel Sun? Ultimately, I will have to say the absolutely discordant elements of the obvious Author Bias on the part of Robert Markham/Kingsley Amis. The man can write like Ian Fleming in a way that few writers can but the things that characters say and do are so Anti-Fleming that it creates a sort of weird dictonomy like you've stepped into a Mirror Universe of James Bond.

What is this 800lb elephant in the room? Bizarrely, it's Communism and Racism. Ian Fleming's work is not for the politically correct. Judging a man born in 1908 by the standards of a man born in 1980 would be the height of arrogance and disgusting cultural bigotry on my part. Ian Fleming's bias against the Soviets is understandable enough. Certainly, Stalinism and Soviet oppression was real enough and pretending that the horrid legacy of persecution in the United States invalidates the problems of the communist system is just wishful thinking. Detente wasn't really a popular word until the period of Ian's death. As for racism, Live and Let Die and Goldfinger are hardly going to win any awards. I take it in stride like I do Robert Howard's Conan and H.P. Lovecraft's own feelings and I have a higher respect for Sir Ian than them.

Colonel Sun takes an apologetic and sympathetic tone towards the Soviet Union and its communist allies. I don't intend to speculate on Kinglsey Amis' own real life views influencing his beliefs. Ariadne Alexandrou, however, is a mouthpiece for Soviet apologism in the work and James Bond just takes it in stride. Ian Fleming is no stranger to treating communist characters sympathetically but he draws a sharp contrast between "I was born in the Soviet Union and work for the government" Tantiana Romanova with the almost demonic portrayal of SMERSH's agents.

Bond's bitter and biting contempt to the system that almost destroyed London in Moonraker, tortured him in Casino Royale, and nearly stole all the gold in Fort Knox in Goldfinger is wholly absent. For all the way he is meeting with a subversive intelligence agent for a hostile foreign government, he might as well be meeting with Mathis. The issue is handwaved over and that would almost be tolerable in a movie influenced Bond. No, what is irritating is the blatant hypocrisy that comes from what Aridane Alexandrou represents.

Whereas the Soviet Union is presented in a sympathetic light and nothing wrong with Communism, the demonic portrayal of SMERSH and the Soviet Union's evil leadership is transferred wholesale to the delightfully Fleming-esque villain Colonel Sun. A student of the Marquis De La Sade and a cackling madman, Colonel Sun is wonderfully appropriate for the Fleming world. What is inappropriate is the fact that the Yellow Peril positively leaks all over the page whereas the Soviets are apologized for.

Honestly, I've always believed that Fleming's viewed towards other races softened in his own lifetime. This is just my interpretation but there's a huge difference between the subhuman treatment that Bond gives Koreans and the amiable views accorded the Japanese in You Only Live Twice. Just my interpretation that there might have been a change in Ian's views. However, the issue that grinds me is the fact that Colonel Sun is a figure that stands alone in his embodying of Fu-Manchu villainy. Unlike Live and Let Die's film version, Kingsley Amis doesn't even spare a captive female Chinese girl for Bond to seduce. The beautiful women of Colonel Sun's tower are conspicously white.

The subtextual message that I read from the work seemed to be that Soviet Communism was misunderstood and the West just need to foster peace with it before those damn evil Easterners ganged up on us both. Admittedly, it's a viewpoint that has occasionally shown up in the films. No one has ever commented on the fact that the Chinese are the movie villains behind Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice or what reprocussions this might have for that nation even if they are working through catspaws. Still, it is not nearly so obvious as it is in dripping off the page here with Colonel Sun's villainous grandeur. It's a strange world we live in where Doctor No comes off as positively enlightened by comparison.

Ultimately, the work's enjoyment is spoiled by these elements for me. Laying them aside, the plot is rather ingenous and I'm glad that they stole elements of it for The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day (though I wish the later had just been a flat out adaptation of Moonraker and saved the world a lot of trouble). M being kidnapped is a perfectly valid plot device and allows the fatherly relationship that he shares with Bond to be transferred out into the field. It's just moments where a former Greek Resistance fighter and Pro-West operative happily "tuts tuts tuts" away the fact that his daughter is a Soviet agent now like she's infatuated with the wrong sort of boy in school.

If you think I'm concentrating on a small element, you may be right. The problem is that this is actually a major theme of the work. Upon M's kidnapping, Bond immediately hooks up with Miss Alexandrou and spends much of the book listening to her wax poetically upon her work for the Warsaw Pact Nations before eventually finding out where M is and going to rescue him. There's not much else to the book in question. Ariande is nothing more than a straw woman for the sexy communist image that the author is projecting. Given the only other scenes in the book are about the Satanic portrayal of Colonel Sun's obsession with inflicting pain, there's really not much else that can be said about the book.

I do confess, I actually will say that the author can write a death scene. Bond, having escaped from torture and death traps confronts the horrified Colonel Sun who immediately "breaks character" and starts apologizing to James Bond for his numerous mistakes about how the world works. You can actually see Colonel Sun regaining his sanity as Bond stalks towards him like the Grim Reaper to enact his horrifying vengeance upon the man. There are many villain deaths in the Bond books but few so satisfying as this one.

I welcome your thoughts.

[Loomis]

I love COLONEL SUN. For me, it's probably the best Bond novel ever, after YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and perhaps FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

I enjoy Amis' style, his characters and his action (oh, and the rather nice way he brings Greece to life as a location), and I confess that I've never really thought about how COLONEL SUN fits into the Bond canon or whether it's faithful to Fleming.

However, as with your thread on THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, you've caused me to see a much-loved work of Bondage in a new light.

I'm sorry you haven't read DEVIL MAY CARE, because I'd be extremely interested in your views on it. For me, it's the biggest disappointment in the history of James Bond. I'm a huge admirer of Faulks (about to start reading his recent ENGLEBY for the third time, it's just so good) who'd been looking forward to seeing his phenomenal creativity and amazing penmanship unleashed on 007, only to find that those things had not been unleashed at all; instead, Faulks had seemingly written a "Will this do?" novelization for an imaginary 1960s Bond film. It's no better than, say, Benson's DIE ANOTHER DAY, and indeed Benson's DAD may well have a more interesting story and is certainly more Bondian and Flemingian. The "plot" of DEVIL MAY CARE is feeble, scribbled-on-the-back-of-a-napkin stuff, while Faulks displays all the feel for Bond and Fleming of a man who'd maybe read a couple of Sunday Times articles on the world of 007.

Obviously, DEVIL MAY CARE was always going to be more "Bond" than "Faulks", and Faulks was clearly doing it as a one-off without any regard for where the book would fit in his own canon. However, that's no excuse for the complete absence of any Faulks brilliance or literary interest (other than as a experiment that failed in every respect apart from the commercial arena), and (despite the hype) there's no evidence of a successful attempt at "Writing as Ian Fleming", either (although reviewers who clearly didn't know their Fleming half as well as they made out seemed to think otherwise).

For me, DEVIL MAY CARE fails A. as an attempt to mimic Fleming (the "style" Faulks adopts doesn't even come close to any Fleming I've ever read), B. as an exciting non-Fleming Bond yarn (because it's not, well, exciting), and (most disappointingly) C. as a Faulks novel.

I see COLONEL SUN and DEVIL MAY CARE as the same book, with one crucial difference: COLONEL SUN works as entertainment and as an above-par piece of middlebrow literary fiction. DEVIL MAY CARE.... doesn't.

[MkB]

Very interesting thoughts, Willowhugger! Thanks for sharing.

Actually, you made me realize that Goldfinger may very well be the most racist of all Fleming novels, far worse than LALD, despite what is usually said. I already dislike this Goldfinger novel for its own literary "qualities", but this point may be added too... Bond's attitude to Koreans, the allusion to Jews, all this seems to weigh more heavily than in LALD.
However, coming back to Colonel Sun, I didn't see as an element of racism the fact that "the beautiful women of Colonel Sun's tower are conspicously white". Maybe they're white, but they also are prostitutes, which makes them totally unlikely to be the Bond Girls. They are tools in the storyline, not Bond Girls per se. Having a Chinese Bond Girl could have made sense, but here I don't see the point for Sun to bring prostitutes from China, whom he couldn't let out and be seen on the terrace, so I suppose it made sense for him to use white women.

It is funny that you are put off but Bond's relationship with Ariadne, a communist agent. In fact, I was put off by Bond's relationship with her friend (Niko? I can't remember at the moment), who in fact was doubtless a supporter of the military junta of the "Regime of the Colonels".

About the plot, I am left under the impression that M's kidnapping was
1) not a good idea from Sun's viewpoint, because M was a too high ranking official to plan a coup like his (if he were using two British field agents to prepare his operation, fine, but using the head of MI6 for a supposed undercover field operation is so other the top...)
2) not very well used from a story point of view: given the kind of father/son relationship between Bond and M, M being kidnapped doesn't seem to unsettle Bond that much.

But all in all, I must say that I, too, enjoyed Colonel sun.

[MHazard]

Col. Sun is probably the best of the continuation novels, but although I have enjoyed many of them its still rather a low bar (just put one down and read a few pages of Ian and it becomes clear). I believe Fleming himself was toning down his anti-Soviet rhetoric in the 1960' s which is why he invented Spectre as his villain in most of the later novels. I wrote my own review of Col. Sun shortly after I re-read it earlier this year and I won't repeat it here. I will say that I think Amis was trying to show an evolution because as of approximately 1967 the mind-set was that the inscrutable Chinese (who were not even allowed into the UN) were the greater danger after at least some communication was on-going between the West and the USSR following the Cuban Missile Crisis. My biggest criticism is a plot one that I think MkB also caught which is that it is silly to think that the world would believe that the head of the British Secret Service would personally travel to a Greek Island to launch mortar shells at a Soviet conference-no one would believe that. I also thought that Amis was on the verge of telling us about where James was emotionally following the events of YOLT and TMWGG, what kind of Bond we now have, but sort of backed off. Finally, and I leave this to more refined English scholars, but I believe that Amis, who was a noted author in his own right (Lord Jim) flirted with Socıalısm so this may have also accounted for some of his softening to the Soviet Union. Fleming, who reported on some Stalin era show trials, undoubtedly had few illusions about the Soviet system, at least while Stalin was alive as well as his own upper class British prejudices. Yet, you'll recall Bond's sympathies if anything are with Castro's rebels. So, both Bond and Fleming were perhaps a bit more complex than we might think. Anyway, nice review.

[Jim]

Not terribly unusual for a continuing author to bend Bond to his or her own will; as others have observed, Colonel Sun may demonstrate a maturity in outlook towards the Soviet Union. That, or it may be a deliberate attempt to shake things up by having Bond with a sympathetic Soviet agent. This might be contrived - although that's hardly a unique criticism of Bond - but I prefer to consider it one of the more adult - in tone, violence and sensuality and, good word, seaminess - of all the Bonds. If this also has an element of subversion of the well-tried norms to it, then it's not uninteresting as a result. It does appear to be a far more intentionally realpolitikal book than many of the others even if that does come across as slightly jarring when set against the rest of the series.

NB MHazard - it was Lucky Jim, not Lord Jim. Lord Jim is Joseph Conrad who, whatever Amis's faults, couldn't have written a Bond book to save his life.

[Hitch]

NB MHazard - it was Lucky Jim, not Lord Jim. Lord Jim is Joseph Conrad who, whatever Amis's faults, couldn't have written a Bond book to save his life.

Tut tut. Need I mention The Secret Agent and its rollicking follow-up about an evil genius and his Krakatoan lair? The invisible hansom in Nostromo was particularly effective.

[MkB]

My biggest criticism is a plot one that I think MkB also caught which is that it is silly to think that the world would believe that the head of the British Secret Service would personally travel to a Greek Island to launch mortar shells at a Soviet conference-no one would believe that.

Indeed, MHazard, that's exactly what I tried to express (in a very lame way).
This plot is too stupid to be Chinese.

[Mr. Blofeld]

I think it's a shame they didn't reprint Colonel Sun this year, with a Ritchey Fahey cover and all...

[Major Tallon]

NB MHazard - it was Lucky Jim, not Lord Jim. Lord Jim is Joseph Conrad who, whatever Amis's faults, couldn't have written a Bond book to save his life.

Tut tut. Need I mention The Secret Agent and its rollicking follow-up about an evil genius and his Krakatoan lair? The invisible hansom in Nostromo was particularly effective.

Well, the guys at the Harvard Lampoon suggested that Fleming's works could have included "The Chigro of the Narcissus."

As to Colonel Sun, I read it for the first time back in the 1960's, and the politics of the novel were difficult even then. In particular, all the British-Soviet cordiality in Chapter 21 was difficult to reconcile with Fleming's world view. Amis even had Bond offered the Order of the Red Banner, presaging by almost two decades the rather weak conclusion to the film of AVTAK.

Of course, Colonel Sun was published at a time when people were hoping for a thaw in Soviet relations with the West, while "Red" China was in the grip of Mao's Red Guards and their frenetic waving of his Little Red Book. China, with its recent development of nuclear weapons, was seen as dangerous and unstable, while the Soviet Union was viewed as moderating. (Of course, the invasion of Czechoslovakia did tend to put that view back a bit.) It was against that background that Colonel Sun was written.

By and large, however, I like Colonel Sun. The last chapters of the book are something of a letdown, but I hear Fleming's voice in a lot of the book. I'd certainly rate it higher than Gardner or Benson.

[Willowhugger]

I have no doubt that the actual developments in the Soviet Union and Maoist China were a major influence on the portrayal of Colonel Sun's Chinese as well as the Soviet Union. Really I shouldn't let it bother me so much as well. You're also correct that a Chinese girl might actually be inappropriate for Colonel Sun's own in-character racist views. Still, the lack of any portrayal of the Chinese but as inscrutable villains did seem to throw the book into a slightly curvy territory for me.

It's problematic to ask for Fleming in a changing world when Ian Fleming, of course, died in a very specific time and place so it'd be impossible to understand how he'd view his characters changing and evolving. Kingsley Amis' handling of Bond is something I only disagree with because I think he comes off as needlessly coddling to Ariadane. This is the man whose reaction to Vesper Lynd, one of the three Bond girls who 'mattered' in the books (not including Tiffany Case), was to pretend that he was glad she was dead when he found out he was a Soviet Agent.

Of course, Fleming himself wasn't a man who went for obvious character development either. One of the appeals of the Bond novels is that they don't require much in the way of familiarity with earlier works in the series to appreciate. Bond doesn't really think back to any incidents with SMERSH except for the scar on his arm that is a rather visceral reminder of them either.

Still, you can't help but think Bond would go "You little twit. You actually think you matter to your handlers?"

As for Colonel Sun's plans, I actually think that they obviously wouldn't have worked and the author knows it. Clearly, the British and the Soviets are both on to Sun from the very moment that everything starts breaking down. We even see Colonel Sun start to realize that everything he's done up to this point hasn't accomplished anything but has been concealed from him due to his inhuman overconfidence.

NB MHazard - it was Lucky Jim, not Lord Jim. Lord Jim is Joseph Conrad who, whatever Amis's faults, couldn't have written a Bond book to save his life.

On this I disagree. All you need is Bond to have sex with Kurtz's fiance at the end and shoot the man in the face rather than let him die and you could do a game adaptation of Heart of Darkness into one.

Hehe. Just kidding.

[MkB]

Kingsley Amis' handling of Bond is something I only disagree with because I think he comes off as needlessly coddling to Ariadane. This is the man whose reaction to Vesper Lynd, one of the three Bond girls who 'mattered' in the books (not including Tiffany Case), was to pretend that he was glad she was dead when he found out he was a Soviet Agent.

Did he pretend? I'm not sure about that. The situation was rather different: Vesper had betrayed him from A to Z, and he discovered that only when she died. I can believe that he was genuinely angry and mad at her when he discovered that (mad because of she betrayed him, but also mad because by committing suicide she prevented him from having any active role in this story). My understanding is that it took time to Bond to forgive her and make peace with their story.

In Colonel Sun, Bond has grown up. He's a seasoned man and experienced secret agent. Ariadne maybe tries to get him into a trap, but he knows it from the beginning, he is in fact always leading the game. This is why I can understand his "coddling" attitude, the one of an older, experienced man confronted with a younger, fresher woman whom he knows is under the influence of her ideal, and who is starting to learn his own trade...

[Willowhugger]

Well I'm sure he's genuinely betrayed and hateful to Vesper but his attitude does seem to have softened after the initial moment of outrage and disgust. Personally, I always regretted that Craig wasn't more hateful towards Vesper but in the movie but I think that wouldn't have flown with audiences.

[spynovelfan]

In the mid-to-late Sixties, many people were optimistic about detente - including Ian Fleming. As mentioned, it's the reason he changed SMERSH to SPECTRE. From the posthumously published Playboy interview:

'I closed down SMERSH, although I was devoted to the old apparat, because, first of all, Khruschev did in fact disband SMERSH himself, although its operations are still carried out by a subsection of the K.G.B., the Russian secret service. But in that book---I think it was Thunderball that I was writing at the time of the proposed summit meeting---I thought well, it's no good going on if we're going to make friends with the Russians. I know them, I like them personally, as anyone would like the Chinese if he knew them. I thought, I don't want to go on ragging them like this. So I invented SPECTRE as an international crime organization which contained elements of SMERSH and the Gestapo and the Mafia---the cozy old Cosa Nostra---which, of course, is a much more elastic fictional device that SMERSH, which was no fictional device, but the real thing...'

He also discussed his views of detente in the interview with Canadian TV - he felt things were starting to thaw.

Amis was writing around four years later, and COLONEL SUN was published as detente was getting underway. It was also the time of the Sino-Soviet split. Fleming had abandoned the Soviets as an enemy, so Amis decided that he'd use the Chinese. It was topical, they seemed pretty threatening and there was dramatic potential: as you say, Fleming had himself used a Fu-Manchu-esque villain, Doctor No, and the name and title of Amis' novel clearly recall that.

But I don't think he spared the Soviets: Gordienko is deeply unpleasant and a paedophile to boot. It's a much more overtly hostile accusation than any of Fleming's villains ever received, perhaps as over-compensation for the games he played elsewhere with Ariadne. Those games, one suspects, were related to Amis' own political views, a semi-playful exploration of his own conversion from Communism to the right-wing of the Conservative party. It is extraordinary that Bond is offered the Order of the Red Banner at the end.

But far from thinking all this disqualifies the novel in some way, I think it's most of the best bits of it! Imagine the pressure of delivering the first post-Fleming Bond novel, and imagine what most people would have done: a pale and predictable pastiche, recycling all the obvious motifs. A Bond novel with another Soviet villain and the same sort of politics as when Fleming had been alive would have been dull: Amis had original ideas, and many of them were fitting. I think the opening of the novel, with the kidnapping of M, was also highly innovative but still had Fleming's spirit: it's not the kind of thing he'd already done, but the kind of thing he might have done had he lived. The torture scene is also rightly praised.

The weakness in the novel for me is the writing itself, which a lot of people (or some hardcore Bond fans on the internet, at any rate!) seem to think was very Fleming-esque. Well, compared to Gardner, yes. And there are some lovely moments, and some decent atmosphere, and a good authoritative tone. But much of it reads (to me) like it was written in the voice of a minor Fleming character, someone rather dull and pompous who has been led into M's office to explain something to Bond. It's very long-winded and legalistic much of the time. Here's an example, where Bond is waiting for von Richter to arrive:

'He had no doubt that his basic reasoning was correct and that von Richter would come. When he would come was another question. First light was favourable, but arrival at some other time could not be ruled out, even possibly well on into the morning with everything out in the open, von Richter and his companions welcomed as house guests. That would almost certainly put paid to any reasonable hopes of effective counter-measures.'

As well as being very hard to read, this is terrible plotting! Bond is halfway up a mountain waiting for this guy. Amis suddenly realises that there's no good reason to suspect the man will even turn up. He tries to build some suspense with Bond worrying about it, but only succeeds in sending the reader to sleep or, if he perseveres, making him realise that Bond is acting idiotically. He ends it with a huge fudge of a sentence stuffed with contradictory qualifiers in an effort to put us off the scent. So what will Bond do if his calculations have been wrong? We don't know, because Amis just has him put the whole beastly problem out of his mind.

There's a lot of fudging like this in COLONEL SUN, I'm afraid. There's not enough plot, and Amis resorts to using Long Words in Long Sentences to try to wiggle free. Fleming frequently ran out of plot, but he could dance his way out of it like an angel.

[Mr. Blofeld]

You're quite right; that is a nasty brick of text you've quoted there. I think, however, that although Amis and Fleming did not share the same prose style, they clearly knew how to make a plot tick into action.

[spynovelfan]

Your smiley winky has thrown me a bit there, Mr. B. My view is that Fleming could indeed make a plot tick into action, although he sometimes struggled (DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, for instance). I don't think Amis could in this particular form, in his one shot at it. After the first rush of excitement, the plot resolutely stopped ticking for me. Bond heads to Greece, but there's no sense of urgency. It's such a brilliant idea - M has been kidnapped! - but I felt it was wasted. Fleming's Bond would have been distraught, his father figure possibly in the hands of torturers. Desperate not to show it, but distraught. 'Come on Tanner, who's got him, what do we have here, give me some gen on this. Let's trace the chap with the sunglasses again, how he got into the country. Don't Five have anything? Let's do some footwork here! Are we completely sure they're Chinese, not Japanese or Koreans? Christ, you know the way the Chinese could torture him. He's an old man, he won't be able to stand for it. And he has every major operation of ours in his brain: if they get enough secrets out of him, the whole balance of world power could be shifted. We need to get to these people, and bloody soon!' That's the kind of thing I wanted to see. Instead, we have:

'James Bond sat in the bar of the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens and waited for something to happen.'

I'd carry on the quote to put it in context, but it really is too dull! A four-point plan ('for want of a better word'), the first point of which is:

'Ideally, 007 should identify the enemy agents entrusted with his abduction, evade capture and tail them to the next higher echelon with a view to locating M.'

Oh. Really? Isn't that effectively:

'Ideally, 007 should now figure out who kidnapped M, follow them (making sure they don't capture him) and find out where M is. Then rescue M. The End.'

Only using words like 'evade' and 'echelon'? It's not a plan, or even point one of a plan. It's dreadful thriller-writing! At the risk of making a nuisance of myself, I do recommend reading Geoffrey Jenkins' first half a dozen novels to get a taste of how someone else could really have done this. I get the feeling people compare the book to Fleming novels, and nothing else, and conclude that it was brilliant as a result. But Fleming was not the only brilliant-thriller writer around (and Amis was not a thriller-writer at all).

[Hitch]

I can never work out why spynovelfan's posts aren't pay-per-view.

[MkB]

I can never work out why spynovelfan's posts aren't pay-per-view.

Because the best things in life are free?

[Willowhugger]

Personally, I think that Bond acted reasonably appropriately for the fact that they kidnapped M. While there's a father figure-son relationship with Bond and M, it's also something that's appropriately handled for the fact that there's a professional distance between them. That is something that Kingsley glosses over though, the fact that everyone should pretty much be working to get everyone prepared for the fact that M is almost certainly likely to crack under torture. In fact, the head of the British Secret Service's "secrets" are probably more important than anything Colonel Sun could frame Sir Miles Messervy for. He's perhaps not distressed ENOUGH at the fact that Miles has been kidnapped but he's certainly distressed.

It's almost a shame we never got to see anymore Kingsley Amis books because that would have provided another perspective on the works as were being developed here. While I never much cared for Gardener who seemed a bit too eager to plunder the movies and Fleming's works to shore up his own material (and didn't seem to think that Bond having sex with his old enemies and friend's offspring was bad), I never felt that he was unwilling to establish a continuity. At one book, Kingsley's works come off a bit like Lazenby's portrayal of James Bond.

If there's one serious objection I have to Colonel Sun it's the fact that he's a mostly off-stage presence. Unlike Doctor No who looms through the books the entire time, despite not being on presence, Colonel Sun appears a couple of times and then disappears until the end of the book. It creates a remarkably impersonal relationship between Bond and his foe.

Even the fact that Colonel Sun tortures Bond and laughs it up against him doesn't end the fact that we rarely get to know the crazy nutter.

Edited by Willowhugger, 28 December 2008 - 01:06 AM.

[MkB]

If there's one serious objection I have to Colonel Sun it's the fact that he's a mostly off-stage presence. Unlike Doctor No who looms through the books the entire time, despite not being on presence, Colonel Sun appears a couple of times and then disappears until the end of the book. It creates a remarkably impersonal relationship between Bond and his foe.

Even the fact that Colonel Sun tortures Bond and laughs it up against him doesn't end the fact that we rarely get to know the crazy nutter.

Actually, I've re-read my review of Colonel Sun to refresh my memory, and this is one of the conclusions I came to. For instance, we're heavily told Sun is fascinated by the British, but I am yet to really understand the reason for it in his backstory. Plus, with Amis's insisting on his perfectly gratuitous sadism, Sun appears more like a nutcase than like a charismatic Villain.

The henchmen, by the way, are flimsy and instantly forgettable.

[Willowhugger]

Actually, I've re-read my review of Colonel Sun to refresh my memory, and this is one of the conclusions I came to. For instance, we're heavily told Sun is fascinated by the British, but I am yet to really understand the reason for it in his backstory. Plus, with Amis's insisting on his perfectly gratuitous sadism, Sun appears more like a nutcase than like a charismatic Villain.

The henchmen, by the way, are flimsy and instantly forgettable.

Nice review, MKB

I get what Kingsley Amis was trying to do with Colonel Sun actually. Colonel Sun is drunk on power. Drunk on the power of his position and drunk on the sadistic pleasure he gets from torturing his opponents. Colonel Sun isn't just a sadist because it's an unendearing character trait, Kingsley genuinely wants to examine what being a sadist does to a man in a position of power. Sun thinks he's invincible and is thus willing to do things that no sane man would think of doing because he doesn't actually think that failure is a possibility.

It's only when Bond has broken free does Colonel Sun get snapped back to reality and goes out with less dignity than any other Bond villain because he suddenly realizes that all of his belief in the power of pain and his own invincibility was incorrect.

It's just,...well....that's all covered up because Colonel Sun is a scene chewing cartoon for most of the book.

[Revelator]

Actually, you made me realize that Goldfinger may very well be the most racist of all Fleming novels, far worse than LALD, despite what is usually said. I already dislike this Goldfinger novel for its own literary "qualities", but this point may be added too... Bond's attitude to Koreans, the allusion to Jews, all this seems to weigh more heavily than in LALD.

But the allusions to Jews aren't derogatory. Lots of country clubs back then didn't take Jews, and Fleming is using this to indicate that Goldfinger isn't Jewish. Later on Bond again says that Goldfinger isn't Jewish, but in fact, a Balt. It seems to me that Fleming went out of his way to make sure Goldfinger wasn't Jewish, probably because he realized this would be too hoary a stereotype, and that Goldfinger, as a Soviet agent, would work better as a Balt. Antisemitism doesn't occur in the Bond novels--from what I can tell, Fleming had no problems with Jews (he certainly liked having them as mistresses). On the other hand, Bond is definitely bigoted toward Koreans, though his reasons don't make any sense, since the Japanese behaved far worse during the war (and yet Fleming adored the Japanese, go figure).
As for Amis and politics: by the time Amis wrote Colonel Sun the USSR had passed out of its most horrific period and Mao had taken up the baton with his Cultural Revolution. The Chinese were thus far more promising villains. By this time Amis had already drifted rightward and supported the US in Vietnam, so any leftward sympathies on his part were negligible.

[Willowhugger]

On the other hand, Bond is definitely bigoted toward Koreans, though his reasons don't make any sense, since the Japanese behaved far worse during the war (and yet Fleming adored the Japanese, go figure).

I have the personal theory that Ian Fleming was just operating on stereotypes at this time and looking for a way to write up Oddjob as a way that was incredibly terrifying and get the English blood boiling. Unfortunately, that's pretty much the basis of a racist caricature. Ian, of course, knew more about the Japanese and treated them like human beings. Which makes the whole thing look rather ridiculous to modern eyes.

Course, I can't lend my Bond books to my Korean girlfriend either who just knows him from the racially friendly movies.

[MkB]

Actually, you made me realize that Goldfinger may very well be the most racist of all Fleming novels, far worse than LALD, despite what is usually said. I already dislike this Goldfinger novel for its own literary "qualities", but this point may be added too... Bond's attitude to Koreans, the allusion to Jews, all this seems to weigh more heavily than in LALD.

But the allusions to Jews aren't derogatory. Lots of country clubs back then didn't take Jews, and Fleming is using this to indicate that Goldfinger isn't Jewish. Later on Bond again says that Goldfinger isn't Jewish, but in fact, a Balt. It seems to me that Fleming went out of his way to make sure Goldfinger wasn't Jewish, probably because he realized this would be too hoary a stereotype, and that Goldfinger, as a Soviet agent, would work better as a Balt.

Well, we may just have to agree to disagree on that but my reading of all this is that a certain degree of antisemitism was not publicly acceptable after WWII and the Shoah, but many stereotypes still lived on (and still live on nowadays, to a certain extent). That may be why Fleming made sure Goldfinger wasn't Jewish. But some little notes reveal antisemitism through those stereotypes (some silly things in CR about Le Chiffre's earlobes that "reveal" Jewish blood, for instance - I cannot remember if there was something said about Goldfinger's physique in that respect?), and Bond's absence of reaction when he's told that GF certainly wouldn't be allowed in the hotel if he was Jewish.

Antisemitism doesn't occur in the Bond novels--from what I can tell, Fleming had no problems with Jews (he certainly liked having them as mistresses).

Ahem...

On the other hand, Bond is definitely bigoted toward Koreans, though his reasons don't make any sense, since the Japanese behaved far worse during the war (and yet Fleming adored the Japanese, go figure).

I wonder if the reason was that Fleming never set a foot in Korea, whereas before writing YOLT he spent some time in Japan? About Korea, he lived only on stereotypes and xenophobia, but about Japan he had his own travel experience to share.

As for Amis and politics: by the time Amis wrote Colonel Sun the USSR had passed out of its most horrific period and Mao had taken up the baton with his Cultural Revolution. The Chinese were thus far more promising villains. By this time Amis had already drifted rightward and supported the US in Vietnam, so any leftward sympathies on his part were negligible.

Indeed. Yet, I am under the impression that his (or Bond's) indulgence towards Ariadne may have something to do with his own indulgence towards the young man with communist sympathies that he, himself, had been?

[Loomis]

There's a lot of fudging like this in COLONEL SUN, I'm afraid. There's not enough plot, and Amis resorts to using Long Words in Long Sentences to try to wiggle free. Fleming frequently ran out of plot, but he could dance his way out of it like an angel.

Yes, but a lot of Fleming's prose is awful. I've nothing in particular to quote at the moment (although if I were in a quoting mood I'd be looking mostly - but not exclusively - at LIVE AND LET DIE, MOONRAKER and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER), but Fleming's prose is more than occasionally longwinded, repetitive and/or confusing.

Obviously, Flemmmmmmmmign™ was a genius, wrote some terrific stuff (YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is one of my favourite books), and were it not for him we'd all be posting on Gregorysallust.net, or something. However, he also penned some whopping great puddings of purple prose that just sit there on the page rather limply. Not always did he "dance his way out of it like an angel" - "bull in a china shop" was sometimes more like it.

Here's my take on it: COLONEL SUN is A Mixed Bag™. But so is Fleming. And how do we know that Amis, had he continued writing Bond, wouldn't have improved? His own YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE might have been just around the corner. It seems somehow harsh to write off Amis on the strength of one book, while cutting acres of slack to Fleming on the basis of his twelve novels, quite a few of which are really not very good at all.

At any rate, COLONEL SUN remains, for me, the only must-read continuation novel, along with JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY.

[spynovelfan]

Yes, but a lot of Fleming's prose is awful.

I don't agree, Loomis. I think his prose could sometimes be very digressive and slow down the plot, but he was almost always entertaining with it. I think Fleming sometimes struggled with plotting and characterisation, but he was a brilliant prose stylist, and has rarely been equalled in the thriller field on that count. Show me the money.

[Loomis]

I think his prose could sometimes be very digressive and slow down the plot

Yes. That's what I'm driving at when I say that "Fleming's prose is more than occasionally longwinded, repetitive and/or confusing".

but he was almost always entertaining with it.

Hmmm.... I often find it merely tedious. Sell the piano, Ian!

he was a brilliant prose stylist

Sometimes.

Show me the money.

Later, perhaps.

[Safari Suit]

I do think Fleming was guilty of using proper nouns ad nauseum. "Bond did this... And Bond reacted by... Bond then" etc.

[Hitch]

*headmostdecidedlyandrepeatedlydesk*

[Willowhugger]

Ian Fleming is what is called a "quirky" author and you don't find many of those anymore. Basically, he's a bit like Lovecraft in that his prose stands in marked contrast to the rest of the standardized prose therein. What separates Ian Fleming from Kingsley is that the dialogue is incredibly evocative.

To use the Gardener example, the biggest problem with Gardener's women is that they're all bland and obnoxious. At least Benson's don't all speak with the same voice (Still, I wanted Never Dream of Dying to end with Bond slapping his love interest) but they were just said to be beautiful. The Bond movies don't need Fleming's talent because they can just hire ridiculously beautiful women.

Ian Fleming had a tremendous ability to describe all the quirks and weird little notes that a man truly interested a woman would tally up and create evocative mental images thereof. It wasn't just a quality limited to women either. Colonel Sun is the closest of the Bond villains in the book Expanded Universe to get it right but he's still not up to Fleming's standards.

I can't actually do Fleming but I might try this.

"Colonel Sun's face was classically Eastern with a severe countenance and Mongolian bearing that hinted at ancestors who had long served as the killers of the ancient Emperors long before the fall of the old order. His face was tiny and crushed with a mouth that was too wide and filled with compact teeth. Sun's smile, which he only rarely showed during torturous escapades to satisfy his raider ancestry, was almost to akin to the grinning of a skull without flesh."

And then he'd go on for about four paragraphs and it would WORK. The above example would drip with a certain amount of racism undoubtedly but it'd be successful.

[Loomis]

*headmostdecidedlyandrepeatedlydesk*

?

Would you mind translating that into English for those of us who don't speak Hitch?