Quantum of bondage

Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming, 1953. "Bond--James Bond." This is where it all began, with Ian Fleming's first novel of the series. I read it in high school in the early 60s, along with a couple of other Bond books, loving of course the movie Bond of the era, Sean Connery. Now I return to it having seen and enjoyed the splendid recent entries in the movie series starring Daniel Craig, among them Casino Royale, finally.

Encountering the original Bond in book form is a bit of a shocker, really. He's a stone killer and a sexual beast, chiseled out of Cold War sensibilities and gender stereotypes. Completely politically incorrect. There is considerable power in this persona: huge, coiling energy that is capable of anything. In this sense of latent brutality, Daniel Craig is perhaps a more convincing Bond even than Connery. (Still, Connery has that quintessential core of Bonditude that cannot be denied.)

I was taken aback by the strength of the novel. Fleming's prose is not pretty, but it is authoritatively rough-hewn and terse--not, however, lacking in English flair. I enjoyed Fleming's daring in devoting a good large piece of the book to the description of one card game. I didn't recall the movie allowing such a large block of time to covering the incident. Fleming makes it work. He also goes on for an age about the torture administered to Bond's genitals while he is tied to a chair. The recent movie amply documents that extended pummeling in excruciating fashion. But to turn to Bond's tender side, so to speak, Fleming also shows James as tentative and vulnerable around Vesper Lynd, the "Bond girl" of this book. Before we even have a handle on Bond as a recurring series character, we already see his range of emotion--his ambivalence about women and ability to get his heart broken.

I love the last line of the book: "Yes, dammit, I said 'was'. The bitch is dead now." What a dash of cold water! James nearly lost his testicles trying to save Vesper--and he was betrayed. Something has died here for this newly minted double-0 agent: his last illusions about being able to rely on anything else in life beyond his resilient body and  keen mind and finely honed instincts. As for women--"the bitch is dead now." THE END. That's pretty powerful.

We know of course the women are going to come back, though, again and again, like Ursula Andress in the first Bond film, Dr. No, emerging in her iconic white bikini like Venus from the foam, fetchingly carrying her conch shells. But that's another book for another time. I'll read or reread all of these eventually. They have tied me to the chair!