Spy writer vs. spy writer: John le Carre calls Ian Fleming’s iconic James Bond character a neo-fascist gangster
Regarding John le Carre’s recent critical remarks about fellow thriller writer Ian Fleming’s iconic character James Bond, the author of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is right about one thing.
Le Carre is correct in stating that the Bond films have overtaken the books. Its true that the general public’s image of the fictional secret agent is that of the often silly, superman-like film character, rather than the darker, more complex and more realistic Bond character in the novels.
Le Carre is wrong about everything else.
Le Carre, aka former British intelligence officer David Cornwell, upon reviewing a 1966 BBC broadcast in which he was highly critical of Ian Fleming, calling his character James Bond “a neo-fascist gangster,” noted that he would be “much kinder” in his remarks today.
The 78-year-old, bitter leftist spy novelist then went on to state that Bond “would have gone through the same antics for any country if the girls had been so pretty and the martinis so dry.”
So much for being kinder.
“I dislike Bond,” le Carre told the BBC in 1966. “I’m not sure that Bond is a spy. I think that it’s a great mistake if one’s talking about espionage literature to include Bond in that category.’
“It seems to me he’s more some kind of international gangster with, as it is said, a license to kill… he’s a man entirely out of the political context. It’s no interest to Bond who, for instance, is president of the United States or the Union of Soviet Republics.”
It was a pity that Fleming, who died in August of 1964, was not alive to respond.
I suggest that le Carre, like millions of thriller readers around the world, re-read the Fleming stories.
Although Fleming wrote the James Bond thrillers unabashedly for entertainment (the public’s as well as his own), the novels portray a character based on the secret agents and military commandos Fleming met while serving as a naval commander attached to British naval intelligence in World War II. He also added a good bit his own likes, dislikes and personality to the character.
The Bond character was driven primarily by a love of adventure and a strong sense of patriotism. He was all Queen and Country. He fought the good fight against communists, terrorists and criminals. He was a modern day knight.
As for le Carre’s comment that Bond was not truly a spy, if he were to re-read the novels, he would discover that the character was a senior intelligence officer in the British Secret Service – the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), often referred to as MI6.
Although he did not perform traditional intelligence officer duties, such as recruiting and controlling agents, Bond was sent out on missions to “spy” on potential enemies of the Crown. Bond was a special intelligence operative who undertook what is called in the trade “direct action.”
Although the double-00 license to kill was a fictional device, there are in reality special operatives in the intelligence services of both the U.S. and the U.k who have special operations backgrounds and have skills in guns, knives, unarmed combat and explosives. These men, and some women, are hunting al Qaeda today.
“Everything I write has a precedent in truth,” Fleming said.
Although his thrillers had fantasic elements, many of his plots and characters were inspired by true events. A case in point is the plot of Goldfinger, in which a gold-crazed criminal mastermind plans to rob Fort Knox.
Ben Macintyre recently wrote a good piece for the London Times in which he informs us that a German spy in WWII named Gustav Steinhauer planned to blow up the gold reserves of the Bank of England. Macintrye wrote that Fleming liked the interplay between truth and fiction.
In 1966, when le Carre recorded his disparaging remarks, Fleming was dead but the Bond-mania was in full bloom. Although le Carre’s novels sold well and he was critically acclaimed, Fleming’s thrillers were well on their way to selling 100 million copies world-wide. James Bond was a house-hold name around the world.
As for le Carre’s realism, I’ve interviewed a good number of former and current CIA and military intelligence officers who object strongly to the moral ambiguity found in his novels. Most Cold War intelligence officers were, like Bond, patriots who were dedicated to fighting communism.
British, American and other Western intelligence officers were certainly not like their utterly ruthless KGB and Eastern bloc counterparts who were defending a totalitarian, evil empire. There was a moral distinction between the Cold Warriors that you will not find not in a le Carre novel.
William F. Buckley Jr, the late author, columnist and political talk show host, noted that films and novels in the 1960s and 1970s often portrayed CIA officers as no better than the KGB.
Having served briefly as a CIA officer, he objected. Buckley, who wrote his own series of spy thrillers, believed the CIA and the Western intelligence services were a force for good in the Cold War. I agree.
Despite the moral ambiguity, I used to like le Carre’s novels. But his most recent novels have been marred by his increasing anti-Americanism and leftist opinions.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a first-rate spy thriller, but so is Fleming’s From Russia With Love.
Lastly, it should be noted that Fleming lost his father in combat in World War I and his younger brother in World War II. Ian Fleming was a British patriot, as was his creation, James Bond.
To learn more about Fleming, you can read some of my previous posts here
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Your analysis of cold war espionage strikes me as overly-simplified, Mr. Davis.
Although I am sure most western agents were well-intentioned, the sad fact is quite a few operations resulted in horrendous outcomes for the countries and peoples involved. Two that spring immediately to mind are the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and the overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddegh.
Repercussions from these actions are still being felt today. You can try to fool yourself and your readers into believing that the western powers have no blood on their hands and/or are utterly blameless when it comes to worldwide injustice and suffering, but a dispassionate reading of the facts leads to a very different conclusion.
Instead of pretending we can do no wrong, why not simply acknowledge past mistakes and pledge not to repeat them? Isn’t that what maturity and responsibility would dictate? Perhaps not if one’s only goal is merely to deride people as “bitter leftists” and the like.
Ah well. It must be nice to live in a black and white world where the ‘other side’ is always wrong and a guilty conscience is never heard from. Sleep well, Mr. Davis.
Fleming was not a terribly good writer, a weakness that showed up at the very start in “Casino Royale” and continued thereafter. Fleming’s English is not always the king’s. “As a woman, he wanted to sleep with her,” Fleming writes, unintentionally making himself a transvestite. And, “‘Shtop,’ had said the voice, quietly,” which a backward manner of writing is.
Then there is the sexist attitude toward women, which of course was common at the time, though Fleming tended to overdo it. “Women were for recreation,” Bond thinks, when he is told he must work with Vesper. “On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around.”
Also, in the books, at least, Bond tends toward a viciousness in the Mike Hammer manner. Not quite Hammer, but they would recognize each other.
Not surprising, one supposes: Mickey Spillane was not a terribly good writer, either, but his books flew off the shelves possibly even faster than Fleming’s.
Mr. Shire,
My point about the Cold War intelligence services was factual.
The KGB defended a ruthless, totalitarian, communist, evil empire that terrorized, repressed and murdered millions of people.
According “The Black Book of Communism” the communists murdered more than 94 million people.
Nowhere in my piece did I state that the CIA and the Western intelligence agencies were perfect or without blame for selected actions.
But it should be noted that the darker actions taken by the CIA throughtout the Cold War were under presidential order.
I suggest you read “The Black Book of Communism” as well as “The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB.”
Vasili Mitrokhin smuggled out the KGB’s own secret history and he write the above book with British historian Christopher Andrew.
Mitrokhin and Andrew also wrote a second on the KGB called “The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle For the Third World.”
Although I played a minor role in the later half of the Cold War, I and my fellow security and intel types, as well as the special ops guys, kept that great Soviet bear in check until he finally dropped.
We ensured that you and other Americans slept well at night.
Parsifal,
I feel silly addressing you by that name.
Don’t you feel silly signing it?
If you truly believed in your views you would man up and sign your real name.
But, to address your comments about Fleming’s work, I’ll only respond to state that Raymond Chandler and Kingsley Amis – two great writers – disagree with you.
They thought very highly of Ian Fleming and his Bond thrillers. They both called his books classic thrillers.
I should add that John le Carre, who is a fine writer, did not attack the quality of Fleming’s thrillers.
No, I do not feel silly using the name Parsifal. You can feel as silly as you like. Complaint about anonymity is the first and truest sign of failed argumentation. An argument is an argument, whatever the name it goes under.
There is always the possibility that Kingsley Amis and Raymond Chandler, wonderful as they are at writing fiction, are mistaken in judging it. In this case, they are, if they are willing to overlook the sort of mangled English adduced above, which is not limited only to “Casino Royale.” As to literary judgment, Amis did not think highly of Graham Greene, a greater writer than any other mentioned here.
It was kind of Le Carre not to attack the quality of Fleming’s writing. As you can see, he had plenty of reason to.
Good for you in keeping that Soviet bear in check in the Cold War. Since you saw fit to bring the subject up, I played a minor role in a rather hotter war.
AKA Parsifal,
Parsifal? You don’t feel like an ass? Really?
As for your role in a hotter war, I recall you claiming to be a Vietnam veteran in a previous response to one of my posts.
Claim is the operative word.
As you hid behind anonymity, I don’t believe you.
Far too many men (and I use the term “men” loosely) claim to be veterans when they are not, and too many men who are veterans claim a greater military status, pretending to be Vietnam veterans, Navy SEALs, POWs, and so on.
It is easy to make bold claims behind the anonymity of a keyboard. Too easy.
Whether you believe me or not is immaterial. Given the other silly things you believe, it is rather an honor that you do not.
I never said I was a Vietnam veteran. I hope you paid better attention when you were collecting your little “intel” facts to fend off the Communist hordes. I indicated only that I was a veteran.
Of Korea, in fact, the last war America fought that was worth fighting. Yes, I am old, but not too old to see through your petty posturing about “security and intel types” saving the world.
The other facts: rifleman, not quite 20 years old, Company B, 38th Regiment, 2nd Division. The Chinese Spring Offensive, May 1951. Unlike so many there, I avoided capture — purely by luck, and eventually came home.
I was drafted two months after the war broke out, in August 1950, in Albany, NY. No, I did not want to serve, but I had eight uncles, my mother’s and father’s brothers, who did not want to serve in WWII, either, but they did, in the Army, four of them in combat. Luckily, they too all came back. And they shut up.
Which I now propose to do. You can believe it or not, it is immaterial to me. I leave the floor to you for more of your thrilling personal spy adventures.
I have never read Fleming so can’t say anything about his novels or his prose. I have only seen some of the Bond movies.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is an excellent novel, whatever Le Carre’s politics. I don’t know anything about his other books or his politics.
I agree with Parsifal about this: “Graham Greene [is] a greater writer than any other mentioned here.” But that would probably be true about most posts that mention almost any writer.
Parsifal’s “Mickey Spillane was not a terribly good writer” does not sufficiently convey how bad he is. I wrote about that here.
Yes, Le Carre is in fact a second-rate Greene (which actually means he’s pretty good). Unfortunately, his angst-ridden, morally vacant protagonists tend to be existentialist cliches. Hard to imagine even a government agency hiring someone like Alec Leamas.
Scott,
You might like “From Russia With Love,” which is Fleming’s best Cold War thriller in my view.
It is the best film in the series as well, with Sean Connery as Bond. But the novel is better than the film.
If you like “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold,” as I do, try “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” This is a first-rate spy thriller.
I was a big fan of le Carre, even if I don’t share his world-view. Same with Greene.
But, as I noted in my post, le Carre’s more recent novels are spoiled by his anti-Americanism and his overpowering leftist opinions.
AKA Parsifal,
You responded to my December 9, 2009 post on “Obama, our wavering Commander-in-Chief,” that you were a Vietnam veteran.
I tried to link the post here, but I can’t seem to.
Today you claim to be a Korean veteran, rather than a Vietnam veteran.
You make my case for me.
I am not getting in the middle of Paul and Parsifal talking about their military service. Just providing the link that Paul could not post: http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/12/03/obama-the-insipid-wavering-commander-in-chief/
Well, folks, Parsifal does claim to have been 20 in 1951, which would make him nearly 80 now, and you know how the memory can start to slip a bit. “Company B, 38th Regiment, 2nd Division in Korea” or “Infantry, Vietnam” — what’s difference for the Universal Soldier?
Frank,
As Parsifal has been so sarcastic and insulting to us – writing insults as he hids behind his silly nickname and keyboard – I did a bit of research and I know who he is and I also know the name of the small newspaper where he worked for more than 30 years.
I won’t write his name here, but his is in fact 71-years-old, which means he was too young to have served in the Korean War.
I don’t think he served in Vietnam or any war. He is a fraud.
A difference of opinion is one thing, but our “friend’ gets far too personal.
And as you noted before, he would never say those insults to us face-to-face in a bar or a parking lot.
You call le Carre a “bitter leftist.” That’s wrong. Just because he questioned Bush Jr.’s idiotic war, for instance, doesn’t mean he is bitter. He’s too smart than to wallow in bitterness.
More important, though, you are dead wrong about his stature as a writer. Above all, le Carre’s novels strive to explore the human condition, in all its complexity and with all the difficulties of love and deceit and trust and (dis)loyalties and moral dilemma. The author happens to use the secret world as a metaphorical backdrop, and it serves him very well. It serves him well because it is a world that he got to know first-hand. But don’t forget, he has told interviewers that had be been in the merchant marine, for instance, he’d probably have set his books on ships.
Fleming, in contrast, created in Bond a simplistic one-dimensional character, a ruthless killer who uses women much as he uses fast cars and gadgets. Yes, Bond is patriotic, but in a blind, almost meaningless way, for Fleming makes no attempt to consider the possibility that “our” side might be stooping to quite dirty and immoral tactics in its fight against the bad guys, aka Communism. Le Carre puts across a much more honest and insightful notion of what the Cold War was really all about. Both sides were dirty, and let’s not forget it.
And so, it is quite clear that for this and many other reasons, le Carre will go down in history as a very good if not truly great writer, and one worth consulting for a good idea about what these times are like, while Fleming will be remembered mainly for fantasy-action plots and, even more, the bigger-than-life movie character – played best by the unquestionably sexy Sean Connery – and the big-money movie franchise that his books spawned. Bond is a comic book hero compared to the quite real, tormented people who haunt the messy, all-too-human terrain explored by le Carre. In short, it’s popcorn vs. a real meal.
Mr. Verity,
John le Carre decribed himself as bitter in several interviews.
As for your comment, “both sides are dirty,” the communists killed 94 million people during the Cold War (mostly their own people, and mostly cases of murder, not war).
The west can’t compete with that.
My point was that Western intelligence officers were defending democracies and the KGB and their Eastern bloc stoogies were defending an totalitarian, murderous, communist regime.
A distinction that le Carre misses in his novels.
If you read my piece again, you will discover that I did not question le Carre’s literary stature. I questioned his claim of realism.
I stated that I liked his earlier novels and thought “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” was a first class thriller.
I also wrote was that I believed his later novels were marred by his anti-americanism and leftist opinions, a notion even several liberal reviewers picked up on.
As for Ian Fleming, taking into account that he wrote the Bond thrillers for entertainment, Bond did in fact question his actions and orders in several novels, most notably “Casino Royale,” where Fleming spends an entire chapter doing just that.
He also questioned his killing of a Mexican contract killer in “Goldfinger,” even though it was in self-defense.
I believe you are confusing the movie character with the book character. (Le Carre noted that the Bond movies were overtaking the Fleming books)
But the original post was not about a comparison of le Carre with Fleming in regards to literary worth.
This was about le Carre’s disparging remarks about the character of James Bond.
Fleming based Bond on some very real British SIS secret agents and military commandos in World War II. Several of the real men did unbelieveable actions during the war – one could even ski backwards.
Fleming also knew about Sidney Reilly and Richard Sorge, two spies who drank, fooled with women, gambled and partied as part of their cover (and personal taste, I’m sure), much like Bond did in the novels. (The films took it way over the top, though.)
Have you read the Fleming novels? If you did, was it 30 or 40 years ago?
You seem to be speaking of Bond as a movie character. Gadgets, for instance are a staple of the films far more than the novels, although spies do in fact use gadgets.
During the Cold War the Soviets killed a man in London with a posion-filled little ball fired from an umbrella.
I spent more than 37 years working and training with intelligence officers and special operations officers. As a writer, I’ve interviewed many former and current intel officers and operators.
I always ask about how they feel about the fictional dipictions of them in films and novels, and nearly all of them don’t like le Carre’s portrayal of them.
William Buckley Jr said the KGB pushed little old ladies in front of buses, while the CIA pushed little old ladies out of the way of buses.
Buckley said that Western leftists (like le Carre) only see both sides pushing little old ladies around.
A little bit of irony here: despite le Carre’s knocking of the James Bond character, le Carre himself offered a Bond-like character in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” my favorite le Carre novel.
Supporting George Smiley, the frog-like and brainy fictional spy that is often compared (favorably) to Bond, is Peter Guillam, a young tough guy who performs the rough stuff for Smiley.
In the great “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” miniseries, Guillam is portrayed by a fine actor named Peter Jayston, who had been in the running to portray Bond in one of the films.
Jayston later portrayed Bond in a radio adaptation of “You Only Live Twice.”