The 007 Re-Read Project: James Bond: The Authorised Biography by John Pearson

James Bond: The Authorised Biography is a rather odd, but fascinating, book. A bit of online research reveals that Pearson, after writing his acclaimed biography of Bond creator Ian Fleming, conceived of a similar biography of James Bond himself, treating him as if he actually existed. Ian Fleming Publications, then called Glidrose, was intrigued by the idea, and officially sanctioned the book. Like Colonel Sun, I had not heard of it during my numerous bookstore raids back in the '90s. Unlike Amis's opus, I didn't have the good fortune to stumble across it, so it was a few more years before I learned of its existence. It was out of print at the time, and like the movie tie-in novels by Christopher Wood, used copies on the secondary market were priced beyond my comfort zone. I put it on the backburner and basically forgot about it for a number of years. It was made available as an ebook in 2012, and I finally got it shortly afterward. However, I pretty much forgot about it once again until I began this series of posts, so I've just finished reading it for the first time! As always, I endeavor to avoid giving away everything, but there will be SPOILERS AHEAD!

The novel kicks off with the author receiving a letter following the publication of his Fleming biography that reminisces about meeting Fleming in the company of a young James Bond decades earlier. Pearson is taken aback by this, and initially dismisses it as the confused rambling of an elderly lady, but is intrigued by the other possibility. Further investigation draws the attention of the secret service, who eventually takes him to where Bond is recuperating in Bermuda. Over the course of several weeks, a sometimes reluctant Bond tells Pearson the story of his life, covering quite a bit of ground that had been only vaguely alluded to in the Fleming novels, at best. We get an actual date of birth for the first time-- 1920-- and details about the climbing accident that claimed his parents' lives, followed by young Bond being taken in by his aunt Charmian. Pearson draws from the obituary that appeared in You Only Live Twice, nicely fleshing out the bits of information which readers had been drip-fed previously. There are quite a few missions detailed outside of what we see in the Fleming novels, many of which are on par with Fleming's own short stories. For the first time ever, we see what Bond was up to during World War II, as well as the origin of his facial scar. Suffice to say, it's a visual reminder of an event that harmed him far more emotionally than physically. Bond's relationship with Fleming is explored at length, and it is a rather complicated one. Bond seems to have felt great affection and dislike for him in equal measure. In any case, Fleming is a pivotal figure, even in a world in which Bond actually exists. 

I do think the in-universe reasoning for the publication of the Bond novels is pretty nonsensical, however. It's posited as a solution to SMERSH's vendetta against Bond-- a remnant of the failure of their assassin to kill him during the events of Casino Royale-- by making them, and the world at large, believe that he is merely a fictional character. But surely the relation of actual events, many of which SMERSH was directly involved with, would blow the whole thing? I suppose that maybe it was intended to create the illusion that "James Bond 007" was a codename used by multiple agents who had done these things, along the lines of the severely misguided theory some hold in relation to the film series, but that doesn't really work, either. If that were the goal, SMERSH would simply endeavor to figure out who the agent in question was in the Casino Royale mission, discover it actually was Bond, and they'd be right back where they started. But whatever, it's one of those things you have to simply hand-wave away for the whole thing to function. By the time you reach this point in the book, what's gone before has been engaging enough to make it worthwhile. 

I also had some issues' with M' characterization in parts of the book, particularly a certain revelation that rears its head late in the story. It really just didn't work at all for me, and seems massively out of character, but it's a small enough part of the whole that it doesn't do any real harm. Another minor issue is the sudden rise of larger-than-life supervillains once the narrative reaches 1953, where the Fleming novels begin. All but one of the novels are said to be true events, but everything prior to them was so grounded and realistic that the abrupt appearances of such epically malevolent beings as Goldfinger and Dr. No is rather incongruous. It's as if Mr. Freeze and Clayface suddenly popped up in The Dark Knight Rises. Again, though, you're immersed enough in the narrative by this point that it's easy to simply go with the flow. 

Notable quotes: 

James loved his father but could not speak to him of anything that mattered, worshipped his mother, but could not forgive her for rejecting him. In years to come a lot of women were to pay the price of this rejection.

War is a dirty business, but some men's wars are dirtier than others.

He knew that whilst in ordinary war it is the last battle that counts, in the secret war there could never be a final battle, only the ceaseless ebb and flow of murder and betrayal.

I asked him if he saw the James Bond films.

"Oh yes... At first I was a bit put out to see that Connery fellow supposedly playing me, but I suppose that's normal... it was rather, shall we say, disturbing. I felt as if my character, my whole identity, had gradually been usurped by someone else."

In the end, the "real" James Bond turns out to be quite different from his pop culture counterpart, but quite like him, as well. This book isn't a quick read, but for anyone who loves a good biography, even a fictional one, it's a damn good one. For Bond fans, it's essential. I find myself wishing that Pearson had written more Bond novels, featuring the "real" Bond or otherwise. Recommended.

That's it for today, but blast your way back next Monday for more! 

Rant Reads: The 007 Re-Read Project

As longtime Rant readers remember, this blog began as a classic horror blog. It quickly expanded to encompass pretty much anything that interested me, and has been taken over by toy reviews in the past few years. While there's nothing at all wrong with that, I've been wanting to expand the range of content again recently. As part of that, the 007 Re-Read Project was born.

I've been a Bond fan for decades. My fascination with the character and his world extends nearly as far back as my love for MOTU, dinosaurs, and Batman. Roger Moore is the first Bond I remember seeing; I have hazy memories of watching The Spy Who Loved Me when I was very small. I would come across the movies on TV every so often, and would usually drop whatever else I was doing so I could watch. While I enjoyed the goofy excess of the Moore Bonds, Sean Connery was darkly charismatic in a way unlike anyone else I had ever seen, almost like a charming villain who was on the side of the "good guys." He quickly became my Bond of choice. I remember seeing trailers for License to Kill when I was 10, and I badly wanted to see it. Trips to the theater were rare, however, so I didn't get to see it until I got a VHS copy of it a couple of years later. (And it didn't disappoint! Contrary to the dismissive views of it you'll find scattered across the internet, I think it's one of the best in the series. It also ranks with Dr. No and From Russia with Love as the movies that are closest to the Fleming novels.)

I was vaguely aware that there were James Bond novels, but I don't remember ever seeing any of them in stores. During the six year gap of the early '90s, which saw no Bond movies, and very little media featuring the character at all, Bond kind of faded into the background for me. I would still watch the occasional movie on TV, but that was pretty much it. Then, 1995 rolled around. A new Bond was on the way! Goldeneye was the first Bond movie I got to see in the theater, and it reignited my love of the franchise. I was talking about it with a friend at school some time later, and suddenly remembered that there were all these books I'd never read. I mentioned this to my friend, and he revealed that he had actually read some of them, and proceeded to rave about how awesome they were! I resolved then and there to track some of them down.

This was easier said than done in the US in the '90s. The original 007 novels by Ian Fleming were inexplicably out of print, so one was limited to any remaining stock that might be lingering at local bookstores, along with whatever they could find at the library. I managed to find a paperback copy of a single book at the local Books-a-Million. Thus, my first Bond novel was The Man with the Golden Gun. Definitely not the best choice, as this is generally considered some of Fleming's weakest work, but it was good enough to make me want more. A trip to a the local library turned up another half dozen or so novels, and I resumed my reading with the novel version of my favorite movie: Goldfinger. I was hooked.

Over the next couple of years, I tracked down all 14 of Ian Fleming's Bond books, even accruing a couple of first editions along the way. Thanks to a gift from a friend, I discovered that there were an additional fourteen novels and two movie novelizations penned by John Gardner, who picked up 007's adventures beginning in 1981. (The gift was a hardcover copy of Seafire, which he had come across while perusing the BAM sale tables. As much as I had dug through those myself, I have no idea how I missed seeing it!) I hunted all of these down in short order, though his novelization of the film License to Kill took a bit of doing. 

A year or so later, I had started working at BAM, and had a customer ask me if we had any copies of Zero Minus Ten by Raymond Benson in stock. I checked to make sure that we carried it-- BAM had no inventory system, you could only check the microfiche to make sure that we carried a title before going to look for it on the shelf, a system that was woefully outdated even in the late '90s-- and took him to the fiction section to show him where it was. Removing it from the shelf, I saw that it was a James Bond novel! (I'm still shocked that the publisher's promotion of the books was so poor that even someone like me, who made it a point to buy and read these novels, and even worked in a bookstore, had no idea that it even existed prior to this!) Handing the customer a copy, I grabbed the other one for myself. I quickly devoured it, and while it wasn't on par with the best of Fleming, I enjoyed it quite a bit. A quick search of the author's name on the BAM computer revealed that Benson's second Bond novel had recently been released in hardcover, so I ordered a copy, and the collection continued to expand.

In the midst of this, while in a used book store in town, I came across a paperback Bond novel I had never heard of before. It had nice pulpy painted art on a white background, with the title Colonel Sun emblazoned across the cover in large block letters. Written by Kingsley Amis under the pen name Robert Markham, it was a curiosity to me. It had been published only a couple of years after Fleming's final Bond book, yet the lists of books I'd hunted down had not mentioned it. As I commence re-reading the Bond continuation novels, we'll begin with it. Be here next Monday!