Young Adam
Double 0 Seven James Bond : a Report. BY 0. F. Snelling. (Spearman-Holland, 18s.) 0. F. SNELLING's Double 0 Seven sets out, or so the blurb claims, to explain the immense appeal and success of the late Ian Fleming's creation, James Bond. Mr. Snelling has some shrewd things to say of Bond's more scrupulous predecessors in his kind (Drummond, Hannay, et al.), but for the most part this book reads like a mere brochure, and a facetious one at that: it offers convenient summaries of Bond's tastes, women, adventures and equipment, insists, time and again, that we, like Mr. Snelling, must find it all absolutely irresistible, and gives not one word of critical explanation why.
Others, of course, have already remedied this deficiency, but most of them in a sour tone of complaint. 'Sex, snobbery and sadism'; gross pandering to the acquisitive and materialist in- stincts; a false image of virility: all these and more have been accounted and denounced as the secrets of Bond's popularity. No doubt there is some substance in these accusations, but in my submission the important point has been overlooked, and it is this: Bond has become a legend; as such he must have, by definition, at least one legendary quality; what is it?
Sexiness, luck, courage, charm—none of these by itself is enough. No; what makes for the
stuff of legend in this instance is that Bond, in aggregate, is the perfect example of Natural Man. He is an Archetype; he is Adam before he left the garden; he is what the race of man should and could have been, had not someone introduced complications about morality and sin. His attitudes and behaviour on all occasions are entirely simple, sensible, direct—and guilt- less. If there is a woman he sleeps with her, and then passes on to the next without hesita- tion or remorse. If there is good food he enjoys it; if there is no food, or other hardship, he endures it as best he may. If he is attacked, he kills, without pleasure but without regret. He has rejected politics (natural wisdom if ever there was) and is utterly indifferent to questions of social justice; for while he is not without a certain brisk kindness within his own terms of reference, he cannot be involved for long with lesser beings' whines and weaknesses, lest the infection • should pass to himself. As a final proof of his superabundant normality, we may note that he occasionally likes, in sexual or other practice, to deviate a little from the norm.
Bond, in truth, is innocent. Neither serpent nor woman has introduced him to the apple; or rather, they both have, but he has eaten it without noticing. The ability to do this has raised him from something more than human to something only less than divine. Like the im- mortal gods, he feasts and laughs unquenchably, condescends regally to humans who obey and please him, disposes summarily of those who cross him, and returns to Olympus without giving any one of them another thought. Small wonder the daily prayers of millions follow him.
SIMON RAVEN
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