Showing posts with label Bond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bond. Show all posts

Wednesday, 20 November 2019

Fleming threatened to rename the character 'Goldprick', and the case never came to court.

[Brutalism's] most notorious exponent was the patrician Hungarian-born architect Erno Goldfinger, who lived in an uncompromising concrete framed cottage in Hampstead that he had designed himself, infuriating his wealthy neighbours. The novelist Ian Fleming took such exception to Goldfinger's home that he used his surname for one of James Bond's most evil adversaries. When Goldfinger consulted his lawyers, Fleming threatened to rename the character 'Goldprick', and the case never came to court.

D. Sandbrook, White Heat (2006), 622-3

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

They eat nothing but offal cooked in rancid olive oil in Turkey

Bond sat down in a comfortable-armed chair and took the small tumbler the waiter offered him. He lifted it towards Kerim and tasted it. It [raki] was identical with ouzo. He drank it down. At once the waiter refilled his glass.

"And now to order your lunch. They eat nothing but offal cooked in rancid olive oil in Turkey. At least the offal in Misir Carsasi is the best."

I. Fleming, From Russia, with love (1957), 109

Friday, 26 December 2014

Pussy Galore ... can scarcely be taken for standing for 'the eternal feminine'

In every  story it is, of course, a different woman, each given a flip, thowaway, double-entendre-type name such as Pussy Galore, Honeychile Rider, Tiffany Case. Such disposable images of womanhood, viewed only as fantasy objects of male erotic desire, can scarcely be taken for standing for 'the eternal feminine'. We may also then note that there is no sign of Bond having attained rule over any kind of a 'kingdom'.

C. Brooker, The seven basic plots (2004), 380-1

The whole of the last two thirds of the book is full of guff like this. Should you read it, I suggest you stop at page 230.