You Simply Can't Die
BOND, incredibly, is married: but not to worry, fans, it only lasts a few hours, after which it's the long box for Mrs. B, murdered by Ernst Stavro Blofeld of SPECTRE. Bond, outraged by this interference with his private life, starts suck- ing down the juice non-stop and staying away from the office. Whereat 'M' lifts a grizzled eyebrow, decides on kill or cure, and dispatches his problem widower to perform 'the impossible' in Japan: Bond is to persuade the Japanese to let us in on what comes out of a miraculous decoding machine, a new gadget which has hitherto been marked 'Out of Bounds' to Limeys on account of they're all such god-damn perverts.
• On arrival. in Japan, Bond is put in touch with Tiger•Tanaka, ex-suicide-pilot reprieved by Hiroshima, a Japanese doppel-Bond who, despite his enjoyable years at pre-war Oxford, has some scalding things to say about the West. Bond joins in with a nice jet of hate about American GIs (mostly mongrels who ought to be at the. bottom of Polish coalmines and not swaggering around under the protection of the Stars and Stripes), but feels bound to point out that the Japs are a scabby lot too; after which honours are declared even, sake goes down by the gallon, and agreement is reached: London can have what comes out of the new wonder-box provided Bond will undertake an assassination. It seems that a rich foreign botanist (who later turns out to be Blofeld) has set up, with the initial blessing of the Japanese Government, a kind of anti-Eden of poisonous flora.. and fauna - -which has since proved so titillating to exotic lord tastes in suicide that it is claiming hundreds of victims a month. All most unsuitable in .a modern, progressive, industrial democracy; so the Government, rather than embarrass itself by requesting 'honourable visitor' to move on, has decided to have him rubbed off. Bond, having first nourished himself on that unique Japanese delicacy, lobster served alive, is on his way. . . .
It seems to me that this splendid entertainment invites three observations. First, while the dia- logue is sometimes a bit wooden, the narrative is as goad as ever and the ornaments even better: leave aside the volcanic lavatory and the ninjas with self-retracting testicles, we are privi- leged to witness the distillation of genuine toad- sweat for aphrodisiacal use.
Secondly, however, 1 am worried about Bond himself. He has now become, just like' one of those cats or whatever in animated cartoons: even if he falls of a skyscraper and squashes himself flat on the. pavement, he just blows him- self up again and gets on with the next scene. True, convention allows, as the publisher no doubt demands, that he should always. survive for the next book; but the supernatural ver- satility with which he is. now endowed makes an end of any possible suspense. Time was when Bond had some human attributes, was at least theoretically mortal; now, in. all save his con- cupiscence. he is Arid or Puck.
Lastly, 1 notice that. Ian Fleming has taken a hint from films of his books and is now inclined to send himself up: I am not at all sure that he is wive, for it is,this, l suspect, ■A lila] has made for the Disneyesquc unreality of which 1 com- plain. To indulge in irony at his own expense is to invi:e the unbelief which hitherto, in deference to Commander. Fleming's blow-by-blow ex- pertise, one has always been willing to suspend.
SIMON RAVEN
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