The Man with the Golden Typewriter (8 page)

Nevertheless, Fleming felt there was something missing. The title, for a start, eluded him. As did the gung-ho certainty of his previous two books. It was almost as if by putting 007 on home territory he had shorn him of his vigour: Bond did not get his girl, the policewoman Gala; he won the war but not the battle – Drax's missile missed its intended target, but still caused multiple casualties; and the plot went beyond (or perhaps beneath) the usual romantic escapism. To compound Fleming's uneasiness the film deal with Korda came to nothing. He fell prey briefly to pessimism and wondered if Bond had any future at all.

He quickly regained his self-confidence. One of his mantras was that if you didn't make your own way then nobody else was going to do it for you. On 4 April 1954, under the title
Spur to Fame
, Atticus included a verse by poet laureate John Masefield:

Sitting still and wishing

Makes no person great.

The good Lord sends the fishing.

But you must dig the bait.

Noting that it had inspired hundreds of people – ‘mostly budding authors one suspects' – Fleming renewed his assault on Cape for higher royalties and better publicity. Remarkably, it worked.

There were other causes for optimism. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was interested in the book, as was Rank. Thus enthused, he flew to America in August to research his next novel. For once there would be no quibbles about the title. It was to be called, from the start,
Diamonds are Forever
.

FROM SIR ALEXANDER KORDA, London Film Productions, 146 Piccadilly, London, W.1.

In a letter dated 1 January 1954 Sir Alexander Korda waxed enthusiastic about
Live and Let Die
– ‘Your book is one of the most exciting [books] I have ever read. I really could not put it down…' – but didn't think it was one his company would take up. Nevertheless, he encouraged Fleming's future efforts in that direction: ‘I feel that the best stories for films are always the stories that are written specially for films. Would you be interested in working on one?'

TO SIR ALEXANDER KORDA

6th January, 1954

Thank you for your most exhilarating letter. I hope the public will share your views.

I think my next book, which I shall start to write on Sunday in Jamaica and finish around March 10th, may be more to your liking as it is an expansion of a film story I've had in my mind since the war – a straight thriller with particularly English but also general appeal, set in London and on the White Cliffs of Dover, and involving the destruction of London by a super V.2, allowing for some wonderful settings in the old Metropolis idiom.

I have never written a film synopsis as I haven't known what shape this sort of thing takes but if your office would care to send me along a specimen – as short as possible – I will dash it off and send it on to you from Jamaica.

I shall see Little Bill on my way through New York on Friday, and will pass messages.

TO WREN HOWARD

Replying to Howard's enquiry about an offer from Bonnier, a Scandinavian publisher, Fleming gave vent to an unusual display of despair and self-doubt.

12th March, 1954

Thank you very much for your letter of March 1st, which I held until my return here.

I quite see your point but I think that Bonnier's letter verges on blackmail!

They have now had CASINO ROYALE for a year without publishing it, and they now say they like the second book better than the first, but are not prepared to pay the same money for it.

All this seems odd and unbusinesslike.

At the same time I agree with you that Bonnier are the best publishers I could have, and I am perfectly happy to leave myself entirely in your hands in this whole matter.

But do you think it would be wise to wait a month or so and see how the second book goes? If, by any chance, it is a real success it would strengthen our hands.

I am terribly sorry to hear that Jonathan has been ill, although I am afraid this is a fate that none of us will escape at the age of 75.

Would you please send him my very warm regards when next you write.

I have written a third book of James Bond's adventures but I'm afraid it requires a great deal of work before it will warrant the eagle eyes of William Plomer and Daniel George.

It has been written too hastily – 70,000 words in six weeks – and I have a horrible feeling that I have begun to parody myself, which is obviously a great danger when one is writing of characters like James Bond in whom one doesn't believe.

Readers don't mind how fantastic one is but they must feel that the author believes in his fantasy.

As soon as I can I will try and put more flesh on the grisly bones and cut some of the clichés which are beginning to festoon my hero. And then it will come along for your judgement.

Incidentally, Curtis Brown have sold the serial rights of the second book to “Blue Book”, which is a good American adventure magazine, and Macmillan have done a very good job on CASINO which appears on the 23rd in America.

But I can see that the future of James Bond is going to require far more thought than I have so far devoted to him and if your firm is likely to continue to be interested in him, I do think the future of the series and the development of Bond himself should be given some careful consideration by the brains of Messrs. Jonathan Cape.

At present I can see nothing but a vista of fantastic adventures on more or less the same pattern, but losing freshness with each volume.

Some words of encouragement and inspiration from you will help.

TO WREN HOWARD

While Howard's reply is lost, it seems to have given Fleming the encouragement he sought.

19th March, 1954

Thank you very much for your letter and please don't take my cri de coeur too seriously.

I think there are plenty of bullets left in Bond's gun. It is the freshness of the situations I put him into that are most important and for these there are no wits to rely upon except my own.

If I write more optimistically today it is because I am much impressed by the reception of booksellers, etc., to LIVE AND LET DIE. Some reviewers may lambast it but I have a feeling that it may conceivably sell, particularly as it will be coming out just in time for Easter.

That being so, I am going to be irritating and urge that you will be very kind and see that it doesn't go out of print.

Considering the dreadful muck in the thriller line that sells 10,000 copies, I really am rather worried, purely as a result of talking to booksellers and others, that there might be a run on it.

Whatever its merits or otherwise, people do seem to be quite incapable of putting it down once they have started it, and that is the sort of book that people want when in pain or train or 'plane.

An author is bound to get an inflated view from the talk of his own friends but, being myself in the newspaper and publishing business, I do think that in my case some of this false optimism can be discounted.

Would you consider putting another edition in hand without more ado or is that asking you to indulge in too great a hazard?

If you have any doubts on this score, I do hope that on this occasion you will take a gamble.

It does seem to me that in this thriller business a certain amount of barn-storming is desirable and I would be greatly encouraged if I felt that I had a publisher who was prepared to allow a wild light to creep into his eye when the omens appeared to be propitious.

TO W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, ESQ., Villa Mauresque, St. Jean, Cap Ferrat, A.M., France

9th April, 1954

Forgive me for dictating this letter but since it is half business I want to be able to remember what I said.

First of all thank you for my wonderful day off in the sunshine and for my night out amongst the bright lights with dear Alan
²
who really is the most enchanting companion.

Even my two hours' wait at the airport was not wasted as I sat behind Mr. Orson Wells [sic] in the buffet and eavesdropped on his views on the wide screen cinema which, for your information, he says is a hopeless shape for an intelligent producer.

Annie hung on my words when I got home and she sends you her love in exchange for the Avocados which I insisted we should take down to the country tonight and eat by ourselves.

As for the “Big Project”,
³
Kemsley continues to be vastly enthusiastic, and I went and had a talk with Frere
⁴
this morning who is equally so.

The only trouble is going to be the technical problem of finding space in the paper. We want to dress each extract up attractively and give it plenty of air and typographical embellishment, all of which eats into the page [. . .]

Having carried things so far I shall now bow gracefully out of the scene and leave the rest of the machinations and negotiations to the “Sunday Times”.

And it only remains to thank you again for having received me so kindly and for having allowed yourself to be persuaded to cast a generally favourable eye over the project.

By the way, the Kemsleys are going down to Monte Carlo next Wednesday and they will be staying at the Hotel de Paris. Perhaps you might like to invite them to call on you.

FROM WILLIAM PLOMER

31st May, 1954

My dear Ian,

Have just finished and much enjoyed the new book, & shall send it over to Daniel on Wednesday. I have been through it with minute care and a pencil & have applied both to your punctuation and spelling. You don't have to accept my corrections but they are reasoned ones.

  1. General impressions. You have a tendency, as the climax approaches, to increase the strain on the reader's credulity. This was evident in
Live and Let Die
,
and is here evident again. I am not sure how important it is to
lessen
that strain. Ideally, you ought not to slacken the tension.

  2. First hundred pages particularly good I.F. Blades is excellent & the card-game
most
exciting.

  3. I enjoyed the car-chase, all the stuff about racing cars and technical – or astronautical – details about the Moonraker set-up.

  4. Much enjoyed local chalky colour, down to bee-orchids. Full marks for botany.

  5. Not pleased with title. I should like HELL IS HERE.

  6. It might be a good thing in the blurb to refer to Bond as “Commander James Bond, C.M.G.” It would give a Buchanish flavour.

7. Joke about Loelia Ponsonby
⁵
more conspicuous than character-drawing of
this
L.P.

8.
I
cannot agree that moustaches are “obscene”, even with short hair-cuts.

9. I don't think M. ought so often to speak “drily.”

10. I think you should be careful about letting your characters grunt, bark, and snarl too freely.

11.
Whittaker's Almanac
is in fact
Whittaker's Almanack
, and a
murrain
is not the same as a
moraine
(examples of pedantic fine-tooth-combing by W.P.)

12. I don't know, in view of the current morality drive, whether the indecent insults in German are better left in or taken out or disguised.

13. I am uncertain of the propriety of committing the Queen & the D. of Edinburgh to such conspicuous patronage of Sir H. Drax.

14. I send you all these carpings, in case some of them are helpful when you give the typescript its final tuning-up for the printer. They don't prevent me from taking off my hat to you for another really exciting story which, in my opinion-for-what-it-is-worth, will quicken the metabolisms of your public, and enlarge it. Your readers will certainly not find the English setting any less sensational than the more exotic ones of your previous books.

15. You might consider a story in which Bond loses every battle but the last one.

16. I have said nothing about Gala, that super hour-glass or figure-of-eight. You might do worse than bring her back again in your next, even if she is Mrs Vivian by then, with a little Pygmalion (Pygma for short) at her apron-strings.

17. I wish you much luck with this book, and can hardly wait for the next.

18. You don't have to answer all this – just acknowledge it on a p.c.

FROM DANIEL GEORGE, Laurel Cottage, Hammers Lane, Mill Hill, N.W.7.

Daniel
George, Plomer's fellow reader at Cape, sent him a brief critique, with the note: ‘I.F. telephoned this afternoon & asked my opinion: so I read him this letter.'

4th June, 1954

My dear William,

I may be doing you wrong but I think you said that – for you – Ian's new book got away to a flying start but lost speed later. I feel almost the opposite. We've tooled along for fifty pages before we get really going. After that, we have to hold our hats – and personally I feel as though I'd broken through the sound-and-fury barrier and am still slowly descending to earth. In every way this seems to me an enormous advance on the other two bits of Bonderie. With the worst will in the world I can't find much wrong with it. However, one is not a critic for nothing (though almost), so here are some comments which you may pass on to the author if you feel it desirable to do so.

p. 55 Bond here talks as though he were Sherlock Holmes and M Dr Watson. Would M really need telling about peripheral vision? Boy Scouts are taught how to increase theirs.

p. 67 And would M or anyone else also need telling about the effects of Benzedrine? (As you know, it's my favourite breakfast food.) The ‘business' of taking it as a white powder in champagne seems overdone.

p. 120 I'm rather dubious about the use of ‘mild steel' for the engine. Why should mild steel (i.e. unhardened, ordinary, commercial steel) be
used? If there's a technical reason for this strange choice it isn't made clear. Or if it is, I've stupidly missed it.

274 et seq. The long spiel by Drax needs close revision, I think. It sags here and there into “Well” and “However, to continue” and “God knows how long I lay in the ditch” and “It gradually became an obsession.” Also “Faugh!” The whole piece, I suggest, must be much tighter. The author should try reading it aloud.