Ian Fleming…the spy writer who eludes us
June 30, 2008 at 2:53 pm | In Books! Books! Books! | 1 CommentLast month saw the 100th birthday of Ian Fleming; it also saw the publication of a new James Bond novel, Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks, a novelist picked by Fleming’s estate to continue the exploits of the literary British spy. Faulks’ novel returns to the Cold War era plots and geography of Fleming’s original novels, in effect negating the many Bond novels written after Fleming’s death.
I’m probably not qualified to write about this. I haven’t read Devil May Care and I’m also very much an Ian Fleming neophyte. I’ve seen all the James Bond movies (what male in my marketing demographic hasn’t seen at least a handful of them?), but I always suspected that the films departed significantly from the source material of Fleming’s novels. Maybe Sean Connery’s James Bond seemed to have too much of the actor’s own personality. So in my recent quest to read anything that could possibly fall under the pulp fiction umbrella, I’ve come to Ian Fleming. Sure, Fleming’s spy novels are the product of a post-pulp fiction era, they have all the earmarks of those earlier works: swift pacing, outlandish settings and characters, compact plotting that occasionally veers into the lurid, and crowd-pleasing action. And while pulp fiction seemed to primarily be the domain of American writers (Lovecraft, Howard, et al.), Fleming’s British voice appeared to be the overseas equivalent of mid-twentieth century popular fiction that I’d been seeking. So I picked up Casino Royale and Live and Let Die.
Here’s the verdict. Like a lot of the popular genre fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s that I’ve encountered, Fleming’s Bond novels are a lot better than they have a right to be. Let me clarify that. When one thinks of Fleming’s spy novels, probably the last things to come to mind are crisp, almost poetic prose, beautifully rendered settings, and rounded characterizations. To be sure, the novels aren’t without their pulp cliches: spectacular violence, hard-drinking, womanizing, and improbable plot twists. However, the literary James Bond possesses a depth of character that is somewhat muted in the films (the truest portrayal of Fleming’s Bond is probably Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, which stays fairly close to the source material, especially given the very different political backdrops in the two eras in which the filma and novel are set).
I’m still chipping away at Fleming’s Bond novels, but I’ve already learned that the literary Bond is not even English (he’s half Scottish/half Swiss), that he doesn’t just drink martinis (he drinks everything in sight), that he’s not a wisecracking comedian (he is at times downright dour), and he possesses a fatalism mostly lacking in his screen counterpart. None of these discrepancies are shocking; it’s common practice that characters are altered for the big screen. What is shocking is that most people don’t seem to know much about Fleming’s Bond. I can’t believe that I haven’t already read these books. I feel like they should have been a part of my adolescence, alongside books by H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.
My advice: give Ian Fleming’s Bond a chance. If you’re at all a fan of briskly paced action-oriented fiction or you’re simply nostalgic for a time when popular fiction wore its genre tags proudly, then you can hardly go wrong. And if you need a recommendation weightier than mine, consider this: JFK was a fan.
Demon Dogs and Dainty Doilies
June 9, 2008 at 4:30 pm | In Books! Books! Books!, Uncategorized | Leave a CommentLately, I’ve become a fan of mysteries. At the library, the circulation of mystery titles is fast and furious, and we shelve them by the cartload. But, in discussing mysteries, I’ve come to learn that it is a varied genre that inspires strong preferences and author allegiances in its readers. There’s the hard-boiled crowd and the cat mystery crowd. There’s the horse race mystery crowd and the police procedural crowd. There are those who like humorous wise-cracking mysteries and those who prefer the darkest psychological suspense offerings. And all that says nothing of the growing number of supernatural sleuth stories. Saying “I like to read mysteries” is a bit like saying “I’d like to eat food for dinner” in that either statement could entail a wide variety of flavors. I’ve come to realize that when it comes to many of these flavors, I’m completely out of my depth.
I came to the mystery genre through the classics, and they are still my favorite. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, Ross MacDonald, and David Goodis hooked me with their hardboiled, tough-guy narratives. They led me to their narrative progeny: the crime fiction of the self-proclaimed Demon Dog of Crime Fiction, James Ellroy. Then, I looped back again, and read some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I found a wealth of great books that were just sitting there waiting to be read, books that I neglected because I’ve never cared for Agatha Christie-style mysteries. How could I have known?
I’m continually trying to win people over to science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I tell them that any genre is broad, and contains a wide array of material. Just because you don’t like Star Trek doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to find some science fiction that you like. Just because J.R.R. Tolkein is a lot of nonsense to you doesn’t mean you won’t like other fantasy authors. I guess when it came to the mystery genre, I should have listened more closely to my own advice. Just because I can’t ever see myself liking a book where a cat solves crimes and I can’t wrap my head around Miss Marple doesn’t mean I dislike mysteries. It just means I prefer the Demon Dogs to the the Dainty Doilies. And lucky enough for me, and for those who prefer the Dainty Doilies, the mystery genre is as varied as its readers.
The Meaning of Night: Avid Readers’ discussion 06/05/08
June 7, 2008 at 2:44 pm | In Avid Readers, Books! Books! Books!, Uncategorized | Leave a CommentThe Avid Readers book club convened on a very warm and windy Thursday evening to discuss Michael Cox’s debut novel The Meaning of Night. The novel is complex and lengthy, mixing mystery, suspense, and historical fiction into a potent literary cocktail. The book is subtitled A Confession and is a work of meta-fiction purporting to be the edited and footnoted compilation of a papers recently discovered in a university library. These papers are the first-person account of Edward Glyver, who reveals through twists and turns his meticulously plotted revenge against the one person he blames for his downfall: the rakish literary figure Phoebus Daunt.
The Meaning of Night is set in Victorian-era England, and Cox presents the reader with a thoroughly realized setting. Often the reader is shown the contradictory extremes of life in this era: the grand country estates with lavish sitting rooms, and the filthy gaslight-illuminated streets where thieves and prostitutes populate the night. Glyver is a man of both worlds. He is both highly intelligent and ruthless. He is capable of acts of charity, as well as acts of cruelty and violence. He has the ability to move inconspicuously in high society circles, but he also is a frequent visitor to opium dens and brothels. Ultimately, he is a man driven by a singular purpose: revenge. This complexity makes Glyver a three-dimensional character as well as a fascinating, though unreliable, narrator. Glyver spares the reader none of the sordid details, welcoming us to his narrative by casually describing his murder of random person before gorging himself on an oyster supper. Literally, this takes place in the opening sentences of Glyver’s confession, signalling to the reader that the road ahead will travel through some dark places.
Michael Cox populates his novel with a rich supporting cast of characters. There’s Le Grice, the taciturn soldier and athlete who is Glyver’s friend in London. There’s Glyver’s employer and benefactor, Mr. Tredgold, a lawyer whose firm provides the best defense money can buy, legal or otherwise. There’s Bella, the prostitute who harbors great affection for Glyver. And of course, there’s Phoebus Daunt, the criminal poet, who is the focus of Glyver’s hatred and the target of his vengeance.
The Meaning of Night is a historical fiction that not only captures the feel of the time in its setting, but also adheres to many of the forms and traditions of Victorian fiction. The plot structure and dialogue often echoes Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Indeed, these authors even figure into some of Glyver’s literary digressions. And the novel is full of digressions. Those who like a streamlined narrative that hurtles towards a quick resolution would do well to keep this novel at arm’s length. Glyver is a man of letters, a confirmed bibliophile with a love of obscure texts. Many of these literary allusions are illuminated by the footnotes included by the “editor.”
To say much more of the plot would be to spoil a great mystery. And The Meaning of Night is just that: a mystery. In much the same way that our earlier reading of The Stolen Child revealed other facets of the fantasy genre, our reading of The Meaning of Night showed us another side to the mystery genre. The Meaning of Night is a mystery hammered into the framework of historical literature. It is comparable in many ways to Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost and Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, two other great historical mysteries.
The Avid Readers will meet again on July 3 at 6:30 to discuss E. L. Doctorow’s The March, another work of historical fiction, set this time in the American Civil War. As always, newcomers are welcome. Copies of The March are available for extended checkout at the Information desk in the library. Drop in and pick up a copy, and we’ll see you at the next discussion.
Fiction…in bite-sized chunks
June 3, 2008 at 9:14 pm | In Books! Books! Books!, Uncategorized | 1 CommentBy now, we’ve heard so much about western society’s shrinking attention span that I believe most of us are willing to take it for granted. The blame gets passed around to television, video games, and the ubiquitous internet boogeyman. And it’s good fodder for discussions that involve the shaking of heads, the wringing of hands, and the wise stroking of beards. But I’m not willing to wholeheartedly throw my lot in with the woe-is-me-alas-our-downfall crowd. I have reason to believe that all hope is not yet lost. Working at a library as I do, I’m witness to the reading habits of the public. And this is what I see: tweens and teens lugging around doorstop-sized Harry Potter books, young adults filling up waiting lists for Stephanie Meyer’s latest epic, and adults choosing tomes by Stephen King, Robert Jordan, and Ken Follett (just three authors who have dealt in enormous word counts in their latest novels). The Avid Readers book club just finished putting to bed Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night, which weighs in at a healthy 700+ pages (although the jury is still out on how that particular work fared…expect an update soon). In short, it seems that people are still willing to unplug long enough to get lost in a good long book. And while that does my heart good, I wonder if something has gotten lost in the shuffle: the short story.
Some of my favorite authors dealt wrote extensively in the short fiction format: H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, Anton Chekov, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, and Philip K. Dick. Stephen King is gearing up to publish a new collection of short fiction (some fans, myself included, maintain that some of King’s greatest works are his short stories), promising to bring short stories to the bestseller list. And magazines like McSweeney’s, Weird Tales, and Harper’s still publish short fiction. What does all this mean? Short fiction is still out there, and although it is not the moneymaker (for both authors and publishers) that it once was, short fiction still finds an audience.
It seems strange to expound on the virtues of the short story in an age where the attention span has, if not exactly shrunken, been radically dissected by the myriad demands that our rapidly expanding technology has placed upon our senses. It seems counterintuitive that single-sitting fiction has lost its appeal in this age in which people insist that they’d read more if only they had the time. I have been on a bit of a short story kick lately. I polished off Ray Bradbury’s The October Country and have spent time cherry-picking in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age. Most of the stories are ideal for one-sitting readings. You can gulp down several on a lunch break. You can read one in the time it takes to brew and drink that evening cup of tea. It seems that if those who complain that they have no time for reading would perhaps give short fiction a try, they might soon rediscover their love for reading. And then…who knows…maybe they’ll end up lugging that huge Neal Stephenson book out of the library without even giving a second thought to the television they’re missing or their sadly neglected blogs (ha ha ha).
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