Literary References in Ian Fleming’s James Bond Novels

For most, especially those familiar with him from his screen appearances, James Bond is a man of action – someone who acts rather than thinks. Indeed, Terence Young, who directed three of the first four Bond films once remarked “I have never seen Bond read or go to the theatre, or to a concert. I believe he is mentally weak.”. Similarly, Ian Fleming’s novels, which provided the original source material for the films, have been described by Nicholas Lezard in his introduction to The Blofeld Trilogy as “aggressively anti-literary”. I think this is overstating the case and a close reading of Fleming’s work reveals that Bond is depicted reading a surprising number of times, providing us with further insight into his character. 

Ironically the most iconic fictional secret agent of the twentieth century is regularly shown reading thrillers, with the first reference to this genre appearing in From Russia with Love where we see him reading “The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler” on his flight out to Istanbul. Later on the Orient Express, during his encounter with the Soviet assassin Donovan Grant Bond is still trying to read “his Ambler”. However, he is distracted by Grant’s presence such that “After a few pages he found that his concentration was going.”. Much of the action of The Mask of Dimitrios takes place in Istanbul and, like Bond, Fleming read Ambler’s fifth novel (first published in 1939) on a flight out to the Turkish capital where he attended an international police conference.

 

At the conclusion of Goldfinger, Bond buys “the latest Raymond Chandler” in the bookshop at Idlewild airport whilst waiting for his flight back to England. Goldfinger was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 23 March 1959, which coincidentally was just three days before Chandler’s death. Although it is impossible to be certain, as Fleming would have written his manuscript the previous year he may have been referring to the Chandler’s 1958 Philip Marlowe novel Playback. What is more certain though is that Fleming was a friend of Chandler’s during the latter years of his life and owed at least some of Bond’s popularity in America to an endorsement that Chandler wrote for Live and Let Die in which he stated that ”Ian Fleming is probably the most forceful and driving writer of what I suppose must still be called thrillers in England”. The more prosaic reference in Goldfinger is simply Fleming returning the compliment.  

In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond endorses the work of another American thriller writer. He is visiting M’s home – the only time when Fleming allows us  a glimpse into his boss’s domestic life - to discuss what can be done about Blofeld when M asks “What the devil’s the name of that fat American detective who’s always fiddling about with orchids, those obscene hybrids from Venezuela and so forth? Then he comes sweating out of his orchid house, eats a gigantic meal of some foreign muck and solves the murder. What’s he called.”. Bond is evidently a fan of these novels since he responds “Nero Wolfe, sir. They’re written by a chap called Rex Stout. I like them.”. Rex Stout created the character of Nero Wolfe in 1934 and he was to feature in a total of 33 novels over the next 40 years. Wolfe is a man of expensive tastes and, in addition to the fondness for orchids and food which M notes, he also has a strong liking for beer – a drink that seldom passes Bond’s lips!

  

Finally, the most dubious example of Bond’s reading material is provided in the short story The Living Daylights. Whilst on an assignment in Berlin which requires him to assassinate a Soviet operative, he kills time by reading a lurid German pulp novel entitled “Verderbt, Verdammt, Verraten” which features “a spectacular jacket of a half-naked girl strapped to a bed”. Fleming informs us that “the prefix “ver” signified that the girl had not only been ruined, damned and betrayed, but that she had suffered these misfortunes most thoroughly.”. The book serves to distract Bond from the task in hand as he temporarily loses himself  “in the tribulations of the heroine, Gräfin Liselotte Muntzenbacher”. 

This is interesting in that it confirms that Bond can speak German – we are told in You Only Live Twice that he learned German and French whilst spending much of his early life abroad on account of his father’s job as a representative of the Vickers armaments company. However, whilst John le Carré’s fictional spy George Smiley uses his knowledge of the language to read obscure German poetry, by contrast Bond’s choice of reading matter is much less erudite. 

For further consideration of the literary references in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, see my recently published e-book The Books of Bond.