Ghost of a flea: Not By Strength, by Guile

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November 23, 2006

Not By Strength, by Guile

Babbling Brooks reviews Casino Royale, pointing to the film's website and an MI6 dossier of the new double-O. Flea-readers who have yet to see the film should exercise caution as a harmless detail for some is a spoiler to others. One biographical fact deserving particular attention is Bond's record of service with the SBS; a nice compromise which accounts for his special forces training while keeping his Royal Navy pedigree intact.

The novel really is excellent too, btw. Virginia Postrel quotes from Simon Winder's The Man Who Saved Britain and a vignette I had forgotten. We latter-day Bond fans have developed palettes sufficiently jaded to forget the meaning of the word "exotic".

The book teems with now almost invisible digs--indeed the whole idea of the casino with its theoretically limitless stakes and winnings must have seemed derangedly heady to the book's first readers. ... For me the heart of the book, though, must be the scene when Bond tucks into an avocado pear. An avocado! These were exotic in 1939 but they could at least be bought. Avocados only really became available again in Britain in the late 1950s and had a desirability status akin to that felt (rather more democratically) for bananas by East Germans. The sense of the exotic which Fleming had to work for really hard in later books is won here with a mere oily tropical fruit on the windswept Channel coast.

Small point of Flea biographical interest: I consulted for Vickers for two years. I was working submarines but I did know the head of Land & Armaments procurement. Good times. Good times.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at November 23, 2006 07:41 AM

Comments

I once had perhaps one comparable moment , in an Eastern European country, when met the military attache to a western consulate who inquired and answered my questions about Warsaw tank movements in my zone.

Posted by: Alan McLeod at November 23, 2006 08:55 AM