Seriously, Mr Bond?
Apr. 12th, 2018 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOne feature of the famous Elm Tree pub quiz is the Book of the Moment: the promise that each week there will be one question about the text of that book, and that these will be spaced through the book in order, so that if you time your reading correctly, a point will be yours for the taking. Think of it as a sweetener for the regulars. For this reason I ploughed slowly through Treasure Island, which responded very well to this approach, and The Code of the Woosters which, surprisingly, didn't. The Book of the current Moment is Goldfinger: several members of the team read it when we were at school, and since others greeted it with more affection than I feel, I have been resisting reading it. Eventually I succumbed, because reasons. Picture me, therefore, reading Goldfinger carefully, attentively, but without enthusiasm.
The story opens with Bond at Miami airport, waiting for a delayed flight and thinking about the man he has just killed. It took me a while to register that in 1959, when this was published, airports were exciting locations, and Miami Beach was still a glamourous tropical resort. Bond is not trapped with the many fractious families on their way home from Walt Disney World, and his original readers were as unlikely to share his ennui at being stuck at the airport as to sympathise with his mixed feelings about having killed a Mexican drug dealer. The setting is exotic, but Bond finds it tedious.
Luckily, he is rescued from tedium by an American with a problem he challenges Bond to solve. They have met before, and Bond initially recalls Mr Du Pont as "harmless", but he soon reassesses him as "shrewd" and "a wolf in ... Brooks Brothers clothing." (To be fair to Bond, this reassessment takes place before Mr Du Pont has bought him more than a bourbon on the rocks.) So when he reveals that he has been playing cards, and consistently losing, at a game where the players have equal chances, Bond is prepared to agree that his opponent is probably cheating. But how? They run through the possibilities: the cards aren't marked, the players are opposite each other so they can't see each other's cards, there is no assistant ("no kibitzer") to tip him off. But as the narrative proceeds, we realise there are three things Du Pont has not thought worth mentioning about his opponent. Goldfinger (because of course, that is who it is) is "very deaf" and wears an earpiece; he insists (because he suffers from agoraphobia) on playing out of doors, at a particular table, at which he faces the hotel and Du Pont has his back to it; and he is accompanied by his secretary, but although it is hinted that her services go beyond the secretarial, she remains in the hotel suite all day, instead of enjoying the pleasures of the resort. None of this seems at all suspect to the shrewd American, but Bond has no trouble working out what is going on.
He solves the case using his intelligence, but also a pass key, some professional quality photographic kit ("an M3 Leica, an MC exposure meter, a K2 filter and a flash-holder") and his irresistible personal magnetism. It's a cliché that many plots of the past would fall apart if their characters had had mobile phones, but I hadn't previously considered that the phone is also a camera: James Bond, packing for an assignment to tackle the Mexican drugs trade, has found room in his suitcase for flash bulbs, just in case.
Which was a piece of luck, because this fancy equipment wasn't part of his actual assignment, and back in London he doesn't even bother to have the film developed. When he decides to enliven a dull night shift by finding out more about the mysterious Mr Goldfinger, he provides Records with a picture not from his camera but by using the Identicast system. From the description of how this works, it either is the system now known as Identikit or something very similar. I think of it as something very long established, but the description suggests that it was new enough for Fleming to feel that it required explanation. Or perhaps I've got this the wrong way round, and he included it because it was an excuse for a chunk of explanation ("It works on the magic lantern principle."). I wonder how much Stieg Larsson learned from Ian Fleming: not only do they share a passion for brand names and model numbers, Fleming is the master of the infodump: already we have had explanations of the Mexican drugs trade, the game of canasta and now the Identicast; coming up, a lecture about gold.
If I were treating Goldfinger as a book to be read for its own sake, I'd probably be rushing through at breakneck speed, enjoying (or not enjoying) the plot. I might be reflecting on the character of James Bond, and wondering whether he agreed with this statement, or realised how a woman might interpret something he's just said... As it is, I've just done a search to find out about the Boris Anrep mosaics on the floor of the Bank of England (there are some in this leaflet, but his work at the National Gallery is better documented). Which is more entertaining than I expected...
The story opens with Bond at Miami airport, waiting for a delayed flight and thinking about the man he has just killed. It took me a while to register that in 1959, when this was published, airports were exciting locations, and Miami Beach was still a glamourous tropical resort. Bond is not trapped with the many fractious families on their way home from Walt Disney World, and his original readers were as unlikely to share his ennui at being stuck at the airport as to sympathise with his mixed feelings about having killed a Mexican drug dealer. The setting is exotic, but Bond finds it tedious.
Luckily, he is rescued from tedium by an American with a problem he challenges Bond to solve. They have met before, and Bond initially recalls Mr Du Pont as "harmless", but he soon reassesses him as "shrewd" and "a wolf in ... Brooks Brothers clothing." (To be fair to Bond, this reassessment takes place before Mr Du Pont has bought him more than a bourbon on the rocks.) So when he reveals that he has been playing cards, and consistently losing, at a game where the players have equal chances, Bond is prepared to agree that his opponent is probably cheating. But how? They run through the possibilities: the cards aren't marked, the players are opposite each other so they can't see each other's cards, there is no assistant ("no kibitzer") to tip him off. But as the narrative proceeds, we realise there are three things Du Pont has not thought worth mentioning about his opponent. Goldfinger (because of course, that is who it is) is "very deaf" and wears an earpiece; he insists (because he suffers from agoraphobia) on playing out of doors, at a particular table, at which he faces the hotel and Du Pont has his back to it; and he is accompanied by his secretary, but although it is hinted that her services go beyond the secretarial, she remains in the hotel suite all day, instead of enjoying the pleasures of the resort. None of this seems at all suspect to the shrewd American, but Bond has no trouble working out what is going on.
He solves the case using his intelligence, but also a pass key, some professional quality photographic kit ("an M3 Leica, an MC exposure meter, a K2 filter and a flash-holder") and his irresistible personal magnetism. It's a cliché that many plots of the past would fall apart if their characters had had mobile phones, but I hadn't previously considered that the phone is also a camera: James Bond, packing for an assignment to tackle the Mexican drugs trade, has found room in his suitcase for flash bulbs, just in case.
Which was a piece of luck, because this fancy equipment wasn't part of his actual assignment, and back in London he doesn't even bother to have the film developed. When he decides to enliven a dull night shift by finding out more about the mysterious Mr Goldfinger, he provides Records with a picture not from his camera but by using the Identicast system. From the description of how this works, it either is the system now known as Identikit or something very similar. I think of it as something very long established, but the description suggests that it was new enough for Fleming to feel that it required explanation. Or perhaps I've got this the wrong way round, and he included it because it was an excuse for a chunk of explanation ("It works on the magic lantern principle."). I wonder how much Stieg Larsson learned from Ian Fleming: not only do they share a passion for brand names and model numbers, Fleming is the master of the infodump: already we have had explanations of the Mexican drugs trade, the game of canasta and now the Identicast; coming up, a lecture about gold.
If I were treating Goldfinger as a book to be read for its own sake, I'd probably be rushing through at breakneck speed, enjoying (or not enjoying) the plot. I might be reflecting on the character of James Bond, and wondering whether he agreed with this statement, or realised how a woman might interpret something he's just said... As it is, I've just done a search to find out about the Boris Anrep mosaics on the floor of the Bank of England (there are some in this leaflet, but his work at the National Gallery is better documented). Which is more entertaining than I expected...
